MAILE, Stella <br/><br/>
Best Value and the politics of pragmatism 

 -  2001 
<br/><br/> This article and highlights critical themes emerging from the contributions to this Best Value section: that Best Value possesses subtle, and not so subtle, political, organisational, strategic and governmental dimensions. Drawing on these themes we develop our own argument that, during Blair`s first term, Best Value was presented as a potentially enlightened `user-friendly`tool for the expression of diverse social and organisational interests. Increasingly, it is emerging as yet another of a long line of retrograde managerial techiques. The pragmatism of Best Value is becoming more overtly bound up with government centralisation, support for neoliberalism and the private finance initiative