Concession Agreements: From Private Contract to Public Policy

Abstract

Many concession agreements between governments of developing countries and corporations have failed to produce expected infrastructural, monetary, and efficiency gains. This Note argues that these agreements fail in part because the parties construct them as traditional private contracts. Given their subject matter, their noneconomic focus and purposes, and the ways in which they shape future economic development strategy, international policymakers and business leaders should conceptually and procedurally recast concession agreements as traditional matters of public policy. This reinterpretation will make the agreements more stable and successful by making their costs and benefits more transparent, their drafters more accountable to the populations they are intended to benefit, and their terms more responsive to the concerns of those populations.