GAMESMANSHIP, third parties and arbitration: reflecting on the paradigm of PPP disputes

Disputes occurring in PPP projects pervade three interfacing levels of agreements: internal, downstream, and peripheral. PPP disputes have been free from arbitral dispute resolution and their legal environment is uncertain and deregulated. While project partners appear to have a natural monopoly of joining parties in the supply chain to their pending disputes, their decision is often driven by diversified expectations and conflict agendas. Analysis will investigate parameters of risk exposure as a business imperative of the parties’ choice of multiparty arbitration. Emphasis throughout is put on the game-playing capabilities of original and third project parties and the concomitant formulation of pairs, prior to their participation in a single arbitral setting. The impact of their synergistic interplay on the outcome of multiparty arbitration is also explored. The aim is to test the responsiveness of English law and institutionalised practice to the idiosyncrasies of PPP disputes. The results of this study seek to conceptualise multiparty arbitration as part of the parties’ informed business plans and alert legal researchers and industry practitioners to workable institutional arrangements.