The 1980s were a period of profound economic change in the UK. The consensus politics of the post-Second World War period disintegrated in the face of mounting disillusionment with the UK's economic record. It gave way to a radical style of politics that firmly rejected intervention by the state...

The paper records the substantial deficiencies that exist in the design and implementation of infrastructure programmes around the world. It points to three sources of failure. The first is a failure to recognize the systems nature of infrastructure and the implication of this for the...