Governing Metropolitan Transport: Institutional Solutions for Policy Problems PDF
Preview Governing Metropolitan Transport: Institutional Solutions for Policy Problems
SPRINGER BRIEFS IN APPLIED SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY POLIMI SPRINGER BRIEFS Simone Busetti Governing Metropolitan Transport Institutional Solutions for Policy Problems SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology PoliMI SpringerBriefs Editorial Board Barbara Pernici, Milano, Italy Stefano Della Torre, Milano, Italy Bianca M. Colosimo, Milano, Italy Tiziano Faravelli, Milano, Italy Roberto Paolucci, Milano, Italy Silvia Piardi, Milano, Italy More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11159 http://www.polimi.it Simone Busetti Governing Metropolitan Transport Institutional Solutions for Policy Problems 1 3 Simone Busetti DIG—Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering Politecnico di Milano Milan Italy ISSN 2191-530X ISSN 2191-5318 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology ISSN 2282-2577 ISSN 2282-2585 (electronic) PoliMI SpringerBriefs ISBN 978-3-319-10658-8 ISBN 978-3-319-10659-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-10659-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014960232 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © The Author(s) 2015 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) To Ada and Giulio Preface Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem. Russell Ackoff Those who clamour for reforms in government are often quick to propose changes in rules, but how the purported solutions are supposed to work in order to solve policy problems is often unclear. The following pages investigate such ‘instrumen- tal logic’ by analysing the causal relation between institutional solutions and pol- icy problems, the factors characterising change processes, and the kinds of policy effects to be expected from institutional change. The first chapter challenges institutional instrumentality from a static perspec- tive by investigating weaknesses in the causal relation between institutions and policy outcomes. Concerning institutions (i.e. the independent variable), claims for institutional changes are often based on extremely vague conceptions of institu- tions. Typical labels such as ‘market-like’ or ‘presidentialist-style’ are appealing, since they immediately convey the automatic achievement of certain effects (e.g. lower costs or speedier decisions). However, these labels obscure most of the rel- evant details of a working institution, hindering the understanding of institutional effects. Applying institutional analysis to the case of Metropolitan Transport Authorities (MTAs) shows how, beneath this common label, there can be opposite kinds of institutions that are possibly conducive to opposite effects. Concerning the dependent variable, the discussion in the first chapter shows that present knowledge of the effects of different institutional arrangements is defi- cient and contradictory. Though institutions are said to have pervasive effects, in fact, the brief review conducted on metropolitan governance points at several blind spots and provides inconclusive results for adjudicating between unitary metropol- itan governments or interjurisdictional metropolitan bodies. In the case of MTAs, the diverse institutional forms across metropolitan areas are hardly reconcilable with a simple linear relation between institutions and policy outcomes. vii viii Preface The central claim of the first chapter is that institutional effects cannot be sought in policy outcomes. In fact, causal chains are too long for effects on policy to be traced with reliability. Instead, the problem of institutional causation should be addressed by picking only one link in the chain, the one between institutions and policy capacity, this latter intended as the ability to take intelligent policy decisions. Hence, different institutional arrangements and different MTAs should be evaluated according to their potential for enlarging policy capacity. Another major problem in institutional instrumentality is that it assumes pur- posive and instrumental design on the part of decision-makers. Accordingly, institutional designers would sit around and agree upon the best way of changing institutions in order to solve an identified policy problem. Challenging this view, the second chapter investigates theories of institutional change, looking at the dynamic side of the relation between institutions and policy outcomes. Even a quick look at ‘grand’ institutions such as governments or parliaments, for instance, reveals that they are not the simple product of purposive instrumental design. On the contrary, everybody knows that multiple factors have explanatory power in understanding institutional transformations.The key question is whether we should change logic and switch to one based on instrumental design when ana- lysing other kinds of institutions, such as, for instance, MTAs. The answer devel- oped in the second chapter is that we should not—at least, not completely. The starting point of the analysis is that institutions are objects of contention, entailing distributive conflict and triggering power struggles. In this respect, both institutional stability and change can be explained in terms of the conflict between opposing groups to control or appropriate institutions. Following this premise, the central claim of the chapter is that institutional change can be studied as a kind of policy change and that policy analysis can provide the tools for studying such processes. By working under this assumption, the second chapter characterises the pol- icy of institutional change in terms of two main features. The first is that a policy ‘without public’ will raise minor interest outside the narrow group of decision- makers. The second is that costs and benefits of the policy will directly affect those decision-makers. Accordingly, they will identify distributive conflicts as the key issue in the process of institutional change. The key message is that, in order to increase the likelihood of purposive instrumental changes, designers should aim at neutralising such conflicts. The chapter elaborates the issue by discussing the likely preferences of designers and the kinds of processes that are able to over- come distributive struggles. The theoretical elaborations of the first two chapters are tested on two cases of governance change for metropolitan transport, London and Barcelona, and are investigated in Chaps. 3 and 4. Transport policy makes for a good test of governance change. First, it has a typical metropolitan character and is one of the major responsibilities of local gov- ernments. Second, it is a crucial case for testing institutional instrumentality. With respect to other kinds of policies, in fact, transport has hard technical features that one would expect to be reflected in institutional arrangements for governing the Preface ix policy. In particular, favouring transport integration may be agreed upon as a gen- eral guideline for establishing institutions for transport. The two cities make good contrasting case studies for several reasons. First, their institutional histories have surprising parallels. London had a new metropoli- tan government established in 1965, while Barcelona had one about 10 years later, in 1974. However, both metropolitan institutions were abolished in the 1980s. The national government of Margaret Thatcher abolished the Greater London Council in 1986, centralising parts of its responsibility and devolving the rest to the bor- oughs. The Corporació Metropolitana in Barcelona was abolished in 1987, after a territorial reorganisation by the regional government. In its place, the Catalan region established functional bodies with limited powers over metropolitan issues. Finally, in the 1990s, both cities experienced institutional reforms for governing metropolitan transport. The Metropolitan Transport Authority (ATM) in Barcelona was established in 1997, while Transport for London (TfL) in 1999. The similarities end here, and the differences are the instructive part of the story. In fact, the two institutions represent different models of MTAs and come out of different processes of change. TfL is the product of national legislation, and it is part of a wider reform that included the establishment of a new metropolitan government with general responsibilities over London. The ATM has no metropol- itan government, but it is an intergovernmental body for managing transport in the metropolitan area, participated in by both the regional government and the munici- palities. Contrasting the two provides an interesting comparison for understanding how the two models of MTAs enlarged policy capacity and how the two processes of change were structured. The key point of the research is not to suggest that instrumental design is severely limited. It is limited, of course, but what institutional analysis can do is to understand these limits. Political struggles, conflicts over distribution and actors’ resistances to change are inescapable elements of institutional transformations and need to be considered for our institutional knowledge to be reliable and suitable for practical uses. In fact, the ‘practical institutionalist’—with all the limits posed on design—has no other option than designing in the face of these limits. Hence, understanding these limits, providing tips on how to conduct the process of change and investigating which results are to be expected in terms of capacity are funda- mental steps towards improving designs. To this aim, the final chapter provides conclusive remarks on the relation between institutions and policy outcomes on the base of the empirical findings in Chaps. 3 and 4. These are organised into three sections, each recalling a practical requirement for designers: how to trigger insti- tutional change, how to drive a change process and how different models of MTAs can deliver policy capacity. Simone Busetti Acknowledgments It took a long time to publish this research, so my debts have grown over the years. The core ideas and the case studies were developed in my doctoral d issertation defended at IMT Lucca in 2009, but they have been rethought several times, thanks to the work I have been doing at both Politecnico di Milano and IRS Milano. Ever since he began advising my dissertation, I have owed a debt of gratitude to Bruno Dente. Discussions with him and with Erica Melloni on institutional causality have influenced the reasoning that appears in the following pages. Claudio Radaelli, Joan Subirats and Wijnand Veeneman reviewed the project for the present redraft and provided useful comments. Joan merits double thanks for having hosted me at Igop in Barcelona when I was conducting the field research that became Chap. 4. When I was in London, Christian Wolmar lent me all his rare, unpublished materi- als on London government, which was priceless. I presented parts of this research at several conferences and received several comments, but Andrea Lippi com- mented on it twice, at SISP in Catania and in Pavia, and merits mentioning here. During my Ph.D., I enjoyed the friendship of and fruitful discussions with Michela Ceccorulli, Erika Conti, Stefano Costalli and Matteo Tondini. As their habit as good friends, Francesco Fabi, Antonio Laurino and Alessandro Salamone have not failed helping me also with parts of the present work. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the departed Victor Zaslavsky, for the early support and continual advice during my Ph.D. As usual, no one of the above bears any fault for the following text. xi
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