INTRODUCTION

Infrastructures are the precondition for the delivery of services that are indispensable to modern societies, e.g., services such as drinking water supply, the provision of electricity, data communication and flood control. But the significance of infrastructures for society goes beyond the delivery of services. As Van der Woud's study (2006) has shown, infrastructures have been the prerequisite for economic, social and cultural development in societies. Infrastructures serve a wide array of public interests and values; from sustainability; public health, safety and reliability; affordability and many more. The relation between these public values and the investment in infrastructures is evident. Since the mid-19th century (Disco 1990), infrastructures have been a major policy tool for governments in the realisation of these broader public values and, over the last centuries, governments have sought to direct and develop societies through infrastructures.

With regime change that has occurred since the 1980s, however, emphases on efficiency gains, improvement of the service and on the short-term were introduced. Chapter 2 described this movement as an emphasis on ‘Type I’ market failure. Recently, attention has again been drawn to wider public values, which were described in chapter 2 as ‘Type II’ market failures. This renewed attention is partly a reaction to the narrower focus stemming from the previous stage of regime change, but it is also due to new external challenges, e.g., climate change and the future depletion of fossil fuel resources (International Energy Agency 2007). These challenges require systems innovations in many infrastructures, e.g., road and railway transport that is more sustainable; the strengthening of dikes; energy provision that relies on non-fossil fuel sources; co2 storage and natural gas storage.

Since public values are the heart of the matter in infrastructures, governments have continued to play a role in ensuring that ‘physical’ infrastructures are guaranteed now and in the future. The processes of regime change (as discussed in chapter 2) have altered the role of the state with respect to infrastructure provision, however. Instead of producer/operator, the state has now become a ‘director’ (Tweede Kamer 1999-2000, 27018, no. 1). This shift has an impact on the way in which public values are articulated, balanced, realised and monitored (see also Teisman 2008; Larouche 2008).