A reflection on the Systems of Provision framework of analysis by way of a practical example

Abstract

I am glad to have the opportunity to offer a reflection on the Systems of Provision (SoP) framework, following Ben Fine and Kate Bayliss’s keyword essay in this issue (Fine and Bayliss, 2022). This is based on its use in my own work, which I hope will be useful as an illustration of some of its advantages to researchers. The SoP approach was introduced to me by Ben Fine, when I undertook PhD research into the political economy of railways in Britain under his supervision.1 Railways in Britain were one of the first in Europe to be privatised, as state-owned British Rail – a public body run at arm’s length from central government – was broken up and sold-off in the mid-1990s. It was perhaps the most controversial of the privatisations of public services that began in the 1980s, and remains deeply unpopular with the British public. When I began my PhD in 2015, much good literature had already been written about why privatisation failed to bring the benefits it had promised, centring on the pernicious role of the private sector as extractor of value from the railway system, at the expense of service quality and value-for-money fares. However, by 2015, much of what was supposed to have been a competitive, autonomous market for rail transport services had lapsed into state management and control, even if much of the system remained privately owned. That state involvement was used by policy elites in favour of continued privatisation to argue that public demands for renationalisation were misplaced. Why renationalise, when much of the system was already under state control, which was preventing the railways from developing solutions to the many operational and economic problems they faced? Indeed, direct and detailed control by central government civil servants appears to have caused significant problems in provision, not least because the individuals involved are not necessarily ‘railway people’, but government managers with a lack of industry-specific knowledge, leading