Control and Legitimation in Government Accountability Processes: The Private Finance Initiative in the UK

This paper explores a number of dimensions of the accountability processes of governments. Accountability is associated with giving reasons for conduct for responsibilities or authority granted. A key argument of this paper is that governments make themselves accountable but only in a political, rather than managerial, sense resulting in, paradoxically, increasing, rather than decreasing, forms of control over society. Due to their unique position in society, where their very existence is dependent upon them exercising control over other parts of society, anything they do has a controlling outcome. Couple this with a lack of day by day control by the voting public, who have power to elect these bodies in western democracies but not a power to dictate practical action, leaves governments in a uniquely powerful position. The accountability of governments is caught in this dynamic. The very process of governments making themselves politically accountable leads to forms of control. Increasing detail in the accountability of governments, often caused by pressure and concern from the voting public, leads to increasing forms of control being exercised. Partly to avoid the searching questions from the public, resulting in more detailed forms of political accountability, and, following the logic of the paper, increasing control, governments have seen it appropriate to set up separate internal bodies (such as the auditor generals and the national audit offices) to demonstrate that they are subject to investigation. However, a further key argument of the paper is that, rather than providing an independent voice, auditor generals and the national audit offices provide legitimation to the original actions rather than a curtailment of these processes. The paper builds this complex argument conceptually and empirically. At a conceptual level it draws from a number of different literature bases to provide a ‘middle range’ (Laughlin, 1995) theoretical schema. This is then amplified and developed through an empirical case in connection with the UK’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI). This case study is an illustration of the way pressure on the UK Government about PFI resulted in them becoming more and more politically accountable for this Initiative. This increased level of accountability led, in turn, to an increase in control over how PFI deals should be decided. This controlling intent was, in effect, legitimised by the UK’s Auditor General and the National Audit Office by their active engagement and ratification strategy of these processes. This case study provides both an amplification and development of the conceptual schema as well as a way of informing understanding as often occurs through ‘middle range thinking’.