Exploring the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) in the UK’s transport sector of roads: a governmentality perspective
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis is chiefly concerned with a better understanding of why and how successive UK (central) governments over the last two decades have adopted and developed PFI (Private Finance Initiative) as a major procurement programme for public infrastructure, and how central government’s policy objectives (in PFI) are operationalised within the UK’s transport sector of roads through the PFI contracts. At a macro-level this thesis analyses the UK central government’s policy discourse on PFI as contained in the policy documents published by the relevant central government bodies from 1992 when PFI was formally launched until 2012 when it got reformed into PF2, as well as seeks the perceptions of senior PFI policy-related (UK government) officials, in order to better understand: the UK government’s rationales for pursuing PFI; shifts in the policy objectives over the two decades of PFI’s use; and the technologies of government used by successive governments through which policy objectives in PFI have been operationalised. At the micro-level this thesis analyses an operational road case study PFI project under the UK’s Highways Agency in order to develop our understanding better about the localised practices and processes, particularly management control systems (MCS) and trust, through which the macro-level (i.e. central government) policy objectives in PFI are enacted. As a theoretical framework this thesis adopts governmentality as it allows to unbundle the specific rationales, the ends sought and the governing technologies that underlie the researched policy (PFI in the present case), and provides a conceptualisation about the micro-level practices and processes through which the macro-level policy objectives (in PFI) are enacted by the localised (project-level) actors. This thesis specifically focuses on fiscal and Value for Money (VfM) rationales for PFI as often advocated by UK government and argues that an under-invested government infrastructure amidst tight borr…
abstract: This thesis is chiefly concerned with a better understanding of why and how successive UK (central) governments over the last two decades have adopted and developed PFI (Private Finance Initiative) as a major procurement programme for public infrastructure, and how central government’s policy objectives (in PFI) are operationalised within the UK’s transport sector of roads through the PFI contracts. At a macro-level this thesis analyses the UK central government’s policy discourse on PFI as contained in the policy documents published by the relevant central government bodies from 1992 when PFI was formally launched until 2012 when it got reformed into PF2, as well as seeks the perceptions of senior PFI policy-related (UK government) officials, in order to better understand: the UK government’s rationales for pursuing PFI; shifts in the policy objectives over the two decades of PFI’s use; and the technologies of government used by successive governments through which policy objectives in PFI have been operationalised. At the micro-level this thesis analyses an operational road case study PFI project under the UK’s Highways Agency in order to develop our understanding better about the localised practices and processes, particularly management control systems (MCS) and trust, through which the macro-level (i.e. central government) policy objectives in PFI are enacted. As a theoretical framework this thesis adopts governmentality as it allows to unbundle the specific rationales, the ends sought and the governing technologies that underlie the researched policy (PFI in the present case), and provides a conceptualisation about the micro-level practices and processes through which the macro-level policy objectives (in PFI) are enacted by the localised (project-level) actors. This thesis specifically focuses on fiscal and Value for Money (VfM) rationales for PFI as often advocated by UK government and argues that an under-invested government infrastructure amidst tight borr…
author: Ahmad, Salman
language: eng
date published: 2014-12
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:56:11Z
provider: Queen's University Belfast
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Queen's University Belfast