The concept of partnership is symptomatic of current new expectations that are put on contracts as form. As illustrated in the introduction to this book, a contract is put under pressure when it is set in the context of cross-sectoral collaboration, collectivity, agreements under developing conditions, project orientation and a focus on the future and visions. A contract is put under pressure when it is no longer perceived as functional in relation to conflict management, as we saw in the case of ISS Catering (pp 55-67). Moreover, a contract is put under pressure when it is seen as the counterconcept of partnerships. And finally, a contract is put under pressure when jurisprudence looks for ways to abolish the boundary between public and private and incorporate extra-contractual elements about justice into the contract.

We are left with two possibilities for the further analysis of partnerships. We can either subscribe to the contrasting of partnership and contract inherent in the partnership semantic and subsequently try to develop a theory about partnerships as a communicative form radically different from a contract as form. Or we can choose to see a partnership as a particular form of contract. It is the latter possibility that is pursued here. Thus, it is argued that the difference between partnership and contract is located within the form of contract, that the difference between contract and partnership is not essential and that partnership is a functional displacement of contract – a displacement, which, as will become apparent, has a number of implications.

What it is hoped to observe is a displacement in the form of contract and hence also a displacement in the way in which structural couplings are established between function systems. We will study partnerships as folded into a contract, a fold that is far from innocuous because it changes more than a few contractual properties. A partnership represents not merely a variation but a dislocation of the inner logic of a contract. Therefore, it is suggested that we see partnerships not as a radical new phenomenon but as an internal form displacement of an old form. As we saw in the previous chapter, a contract as a form contains a number of inherent tensions and paradoxes. Now, we will look at what happens to these in the partnership folding of a contract.