Suchergebnisse

Since the early 1980s, there has been a global trend to increasingly use private finance for public infrastructure. Part of a broader range of policies associated with the neoliberal agenda, such arrangements have become known as Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). While the proponents of PPPs stress the savings to be made by using financial intermediaries, the financial outcomes have been very different from the stated objectives. This paper seeks to develop this work by going beyond a financial assessment of the policy, focusing on political power and the way that the policy has led to a shift in the power of the state relative to the corporations. Using evidence from case studies of operational projects in the UK as exemplars, it will show how financial advisors, typically the big four international accountancy firms, play an increasingly important role in the development and implementation of policy, and how once projects are operational the private sector partners are increasingly able to strengthen their own position vis a vis the state. As such, the creeping privatisation espoused by all governments, the international financial institutions, the EU, and transnational corporations is an expression of more fundamental processes: the increasing domination of finance capital.

The nature of accidents—that they are the results of activities of road users, rather than the activities per se and that accidents are used inversely as indices of safety—requires that the focus of research interest be shifted to the activities that give rise to them, if one is ever to understand their occurrence. This in turn implies that any evaluation of accident countermeasures must be carried out in terms of these activities. The use and nature of such "intermediate" criteria is discussed in relation to an experimental evaluation of driver education. By taking this approach it is possible to learn more, not only about the effect of training on safety, but also about the nature of the relationship and, in fact, more about the nature of training. By increasing one's knowledge of the functioning of the criterion variables, one can see which criteria are relevant for assessing training and, thereby, be able to state more concerning the operation of training and the intervening variables.

English
This article explores how the control procedures designed to ensure value for money in the context of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), operate in the context of schools, using the case of the Pimlico redevelopment project. The evidence casts doubt on the strict regulatory control of this project, particularly in terms of meeting the identified needs of the school, ensuring value for money and affordability. The article considers the suitability of the PFI methodology and the process to appraise PFI schools projects, where the interests and different responsibilities of the local education authority and school governors may conflict.