The discontinuation of the Private Finance Initiative : an analysis of the UK's abolition of the PF2 model

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are long-term development and service contracts between the government and a private partner with the purpose of delivering infrastructure and public services. As an innovative public procurement approach, PPPs have gained considerable attention from academic circles, however, the UK’s abolition of its approach to partnership arrangements, namely the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), poses a new topic in this field. This study explores possible influences on the decision to terminate the use of PFI/PF2 in light of discontinuation governance research. For that, based on theory on actor framing and multi-level perspectives (MLP), accessible government publications, parliamentary reports alongside quantitative datasets on existing PFIs serve as sources for a systematic understanding of the case. MLP theory serving as a structuring device contributes to the systematic analytical understanding of the case. The research focusses on key issues and events in order to draw a comprehensive picture of the specific situation and concludes that framing techniques make use of different connecting mechanisms in order to make considerations and specific understandings of complex situations accessible and applicable to others. This study contributes to research on the reflexivity of framing and points to the symbolic value of framing techniques in discontinuation processes.