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'Time to move on' or 'taking more time'? How disregarding multiple perspectives on time can increase policy-making conflict
Abstract
This article argues that when different perspectives on time remain disregarded in a public policy debate, policy-making conflict can increase. We present an in-depth qualitative analysis of media articles from 2005, 2009, and 2014 in the debate surrounding the contested 'Oosterweel connection,' a multibillion-euro infrastructure project in Antwerp (Belgium). Although concerns of time management motivated arguments to speed up the policy-process, the insensitivity of policy-makers to multiple perspectives on time increased conflict. Firstly, while administrative actors reasoned mainly from a procedural time perspective and saw time as scarce, citizens reasoned mostly from an impact-based time perspective and saw time as abundant. A binary debate on policy-making tempo (high versus low) ensued. Secondly, political actors often reasoned from political perspectives on time. Their actions, which were intended to appease, did not end the binary debate and sometimes reinforced it. As the debate on the Oosterweel connection persisted, parties increasingly believed that not only were their infrastructure goals incompatible, but so too were their goals for time management. This increased conflict.
... In fact, it could be argued that this type of conflict is the essence of democratic decision-making (Mouffe, 2009). Conflict can also focus on policy procedures (Breeman et al., 2013;Wolf & Van Dooren, 2018b), when actors disagree on what fair policy procedures are and whether the current policy procedures meet these demands or are, instead, biased towards the procedural goals of one of the parties (see also the procedural justice literature, i.e.: Tyler, 2000). Scrutinizing procedures keeps the policy-making system healthy. ...
... Making an analysis as complete and complex as possible might lead to a product which is very sophisticated from a scientific point of view, but will take up considerable time and resources, and will be less accessible. Especially in cases of politically controversial projects, the risk is that these types of analysis falsely depoliticize an essentially political process (Flinders & Wood, 2015;Wolf & Van Dooren, 2018b). These types of policy processes could do with more, rather than less, debate on personal preferences, staying true to the core of the policy conflict at hand. ...
Over the past decades, predictive or ex ante analyses have come to play an increasingly important part in policy processes. In infrastructure policy, they are used to predict the economic and environmental impact of investments. The ex ante analyses used in infrastructure policy processes are complex, difficult to understand and have limited predictive power, yet they also take up a central position in modern day policy processes.
This book offers a new perspective on the popularity of ex ante analyses based on an ethnographic study observing meetings in three large infrastructure policy processes in Belgium and the Netherlands. It argues that, besides the obvious informational role, ex ante analyses fulfil an important therapeutic function. The prime reason they are valued is not because they unambiguously tell policymakers what to do, but because they offer them the tools to move processes forward in a world characterized by ambiguity and uncertainty.
... The second dimension of policy conflict focuses on policy procedures (Breeman et al., 2013;Wolf & Van Dooren, 2018b) when procedural goals are perceived to be incompatible. If a conflict focuses on the procedural dimension, actors disagree on what fair policy procedures are and whether the current policy procedures meet their demands or are instead biased towards the procedural goals of one of the parties (see also procedural justice literature, e.g., Tyler & Blader, 2000). ...
A popular explanation for governments’ persistent enthusiasm for evidence-based policymaking (EBPM) is its expected capacity to solve policy conflict. However, research is divided on whether or not EBPM actually has a positive impact on conflict. On the one hand, EBPM is said to introduce a set of principles that helps overcome political differences. Simultaneously, EBPM has been criticised for narrowing the space for democratic debate, fuelling the very conflict it is trying to prevent. This article explores how EBPM structures policy conflict by studying the example of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) in policy processes through reconstructive interviews and ethnographic observations. It argues that, although EBPM channels conflict in a way that prompts engagement from stakeholders, it also escalates conflict by misrepresenting the nature of policy processes. As such, the findings suggest that managing process participants’ expectations about what evidence is and can do is key in fostering productive policy conflict.
... A nascent vein of enquiry has sought to redress the deficit of attention afforded temporalities in planning research by demonstrating the conceptual centrality of 'time' as an often unacknowledged concern of planning practice (Henneberry, 2017;Kitchin, 2019;Madanipour, 2017;Moore-Cherry & Bonnin, 2018;Wolf & Van Dooren, 2018). For example, Raco et al. (2018) demonstrate how time can be used as a resource within the development management process, such that 'it represents a source of both power and control', and can help explain 'why and how urban development projects in major cities have become increasingly global in scale and disconnected from broader social needs and objectives' (p.1190). ...
Time' is a taken-for-granted backdrop for most planning research. However, a nascent body of work suggests the need for greater sensitivity to the influence of time in stimulating views on what 'is' happening and 'should be' done about it. This paper extends such work by exploring how temporalities shape interpretations of reality in ways that can profile thinking and action. To achieve this, the paper mobilises the 'assemblage theory' of Deleuze and Guattari to facilitate an analysis of how signification and significance is constituted in the context of planning for change. A case study of coastal erosion is used to empirically explore the role of temporalities in contouring ontological, epistemological and normative perspectives. The analysis demonstrates that temporalities can be plural-and consequently political-in planning debates. This is important for planning research and practice as it suggests that attempting to appreciate diverging viewpoints in the absence of attention to different temporalities limits the capacity for understanding, and as such, curtails the feasibility of finding resolution to contentious planning issues. ARTICLE HISTORY
... This is also reflected in the Flemish coalition agreement. 4 Second, despite these pledges, mobility has been a concern for years in Flanders (Vanparijs et al., 2016;Wolf & Van Dooren, 2018). This, in combination with an actual citizens' panel on mobility in Brussels in 2017 (Vrydagh et al., 2020), makes the hypothetical decision of the Flemish government to engage citizens on this issue more realistic. ...
Academics and practitioners are increasingly interested in deliberative minipublics and whether these can address widespread dissatisfaction with contemporary politics. While optimism seems to prevail, there is also talk that the use of minipublics may backfire. When the government disregards a minipublic's recommendations, this could lead to more dissatisfaction than not asking for its advice in the first place. Using an online survey experiment in Belgium (n = 3,102), we find that, compared to a representative decision‐making process, a minipublic tends to bring about higher political support when its recommendations are fully adopted by the government, whereas it generates lower political support when its recommendations are not adopted. This study presents novel insights into whether and when the use of minipublics may alleviate or aggravate political dissatisfaction among the public at large. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
... More objectives are perceived to be incompatible and fewer opportunities remain to resolve conflict. Policy dialogue, after all, is hampered when parties refuse to participate in procedures (procedural conflict) (Wolf & Van Dooren, 2018b) or refuse to talk to each other (relational conflict) (Wolf, 2019). Different types of conflict thus demand different kinds of practices. ...
This article investigates the relationship between policy conflict and trust‐erosion. It concludes that in a context of trust‐erosion, practices to deal with conflict may backfire and lead to further conflict escalation. The article draws on an in‐depth analysis of 32 interviews with key actors in the conflict over a contested multibillion‐euro highway project in Antwerp (Belgium). It concludes that while all actors draw on the policy repertoire of “managing public support” to explain the conflict, their perspectives of what it means for a policy to have public support differ. Practices to “manage public support” that made sense from one perspective, contributed to the erosion of trust from those holding a different perspective, thus further escalating the conflict. Practices intended to end conflict proved to be fatal remedies.
... As a long-standing, complex, and divisive conflict, the Oosterweel link road struggle is appropriate for exploring the added value of a polysemic approach to social transformation. While this case is well-documented in newspaper articles, opinion pieces, academic studies (e.g., Coppens et al., 2018;Van Brussel et al., 2016), and reflections by involved activists and interested followers (Claeys, 2013;Leysen et al., 2017;Wolf & Van Dooren, 2017a), most analyses of the Oosterweel conflict focus on the causes of conflict escalation (Wolf & Van Dooren, 2017b). Some activists (Claeys, 2018) reflect on the transformative potential but do so mainly from an inclusion-oriented perspective on social transformation which, we argue, leaves out important parts of the transformative dynamics at work. ...
This article argues that applying a polysemic understanding of the concept of ‘social transformation’, in which inclusion-, power-, and subjectification-oriented approaches to social transformation are all taken into account, provides a richer understanding of the transformative dynamics at work in contentious urban planning processes. We illustrate this argument through an empirical investigation of the transformative dynamics in the Oosterweel link road conflict in Antwerp, Belgium. In this case, citizens whose voices were treated as irrelevant presented themselves as equals, altering the symbolic order (subjectification). Through mass mobilisation and legal action, citizen movements gained enough power to form a threat to the government and its plans, forcing the government to invite these movements to the negotiation table (inclusion). The case shows that different forces of transformation intertwine and can be mutually reinforcing in contentious planning processes.
... Time and timing are experienced differently by different social actors and powerful social institutions seek to impose temporalities that may jar with the experiences of those affected by change (Livingstone and Matthews and 2017;Wolf and Wouter 2018). In the context of urban regeneration in the United Kingdom, Raco, Henderson, and Bowlby (2008) explore the politics of space-time and show how administrative-bureaucratic time (e.g., phasing, ordering, milestones), political time frames, and developers' short profitoriented time frames clash with residents' expectations about the timing of the delivery of benefits. ...
Planning seeks to shape sociospatial outcomes but is also, by nature, future oriented. Yet, planning theory and practice have paid relatively little attention to ongoing debates about changing social relations to time. Building on a wide range of disciplines, we review the multiple temporalities through which lives are lived, the modern imposition of clock time, postmodern acceleration phenomena in the Anthropocene, and their implications for planning’s relationship to the past, present, and future and for planning theory. We discuss how thinking more and differently about time might challenge and improve planning by helping theory do better justice to the complexity of practice. We conclude by outlining eight propositions for rethinking planning’s relationship to time.
... nvolvement in the planning phase. Beginning in 2008, a second group of residents from the left bank, united under the name Ademloos, started to oppose the project for its impact on the environment and air quality. The Oosterweel case has received considerable academic coverage over the last several years (Govaert, 2011;E. E. A. Wolf & Dooren, 2017;E. Wolf & Van Dooren, 2018a; Wolf E.A. & Van Dooren W, 2018b), which has provided excellent in-depth background information on the case. In this paper however we focus on original data obtained from the action groups, which provides insight into the neighborhood effect. ...
In the literature on public opposition against spatial projects, social acceptance is considered a key variable in predicting protest. However, the process by which low levels of social acceptance are translated into real protest actions has received less attention in academia. Social movement theories predict that protest participation is strongly affected by social interaction. This article aims to connect theories on locational conflict with the growing literature on the neighborhood effect in social mobilization by conducting an empirical study of rare and unobtrusive data of protest participation, on the neighbourhood level in particular. Our case study focuses on opposition against a highway project in the city of Antwerp, Belgium. Based on a large, geocoded database with addresses of protesters and activists, we build a model to analyze activism and mobilization in neighborhoods. We control for the distance between the neighborhood and the project, as well as the socio-demographic profile of the neighborhood. As expected, we find that distance has a significant impact on the occurrence of protest. Contrary to expectations, the aggregated socio-demographic profile of a neighborhood is not significantly related to levels of opposition. However, the presence of social 2 capital and the presence of active protesters are good predictors of protest participation in the neighborhood. These findings support theories on the collective efficacy of neighborhoods.
... Forward looking also means that decision makers adopt a long-term time horizon to understand and frame the problem (Segrave et al., 2014). What constitutes the 'long-term' can strongly differ per actor and depends on the problem at hand (Bressers and Deelstra, 2013;Wolf and Van Dooren, 2017). A infrastructural solution can have a lifetime of up to 100 years but that does not necessarily imply that decision makers will define the problem that a new infrastructure needs to solve in terms of 100 years. ...
Long-term investments challenge decision makers to look into the far future. Existing future studies often build upon a rational idea of decision making that does not help to explain why decision makers anticipate the future. In addition, existing studies do not provide a clear definition of what is considered as “forward looking”. This article proposes a framework that can be used to evaluate and explain for what reasons and based on what criteria decision makers take forward-looking investment decisions. We apply this framework to a specific decision-making case about a Dutch sea lock, making use of interviews (n = 16) and a content analysis of primary documents (n = 430). We find that not all investment decisions are necessarily forward looking. Secondly, we conclude from our case that decisions became forward looking because administrators used scenarios, visions, and flexible solutions to build support, avoid political risks and comply to formal rules. Scenario developers and urban planners could therefore involve administrators in early stages of the decision-making process to increase their awareness of the future towards which they are steering and provide them with alternative future paths. Furthermore, they could identify and use relevant institutional rules with forward-looking features to stimulate forward-looking decisions.
... Forward looking also means that decision makers adopt a long-term time horizon to understand and frame the problem (Segrave et al., 2014). What constitutes the 'long-term' can strongly differ per actor and depends on the problem at hand (Bressers and Deelstra, 2013;Wolf and Van Dooren, 2017). A infrastructural solution can have a lifetime of up to 100 years but that does not necessarily imply that decision makers will define the problem that a new infrastructure needs to solve in terms of 100 years. ...
Long-term investments challenge decision makers to look into the far future. Existing future studies often build upon a rational idea of decision making that does not help to explain why decision makers anticipate the future. In addition, existing studies do not provide a clear definition of what is considered as “forward looking”. This article proposes a framework that can be used to evaluate and explain for what reasons and based on what criteria decision makers take forward-looking investment decisions. We apply this framework to a specific decision-making case about a Dutch sea lock, making use of interviews (n = 16) and a content analysis of primary documents (n = 430). We find that not all investment decisions are necessarily forward looking. Secondly, we conclude from our case that decisions became forward looking because administrators used scenarios, visions, and flexible solutions to build support, avoid political risks and comply to formal rules. Scenario developers and urban planners could therefore involve administrators in early stages of the decision-making process to increase their awareness of the future towards which they are steering and provide them with alternative future paths. Furthermore, they could identify and use relevant institutional rules with forward-looking features to stimulate forward-looking decisions.
... Policy-makers, who measured success as being able to finish this important public project, therefore pushed for implementation over conversation and saw resistance as a roadblock on the way to the finishing line. This was only exacerbated when delay set in and choosing a different option would amount to that delay being amplified (see also Wolf and Van Dooren 2017b). ...
This article argues that the efforts of policy-makers to avoid conflict in the short run can be counterproductive in the long run. Not only may policy-makers fail to reap the benefits of conflicts when they try to steer clear, but conflict may actually increase rather than diminish. We study conflict through the conceptual lens of (de)politicization in the lengthy and highly contested policy-making process over the multibillion-euro ‘Oosterweelconnection’ highway in Antwerp (Belgium). An in-depth media analysis of 739 articles is combined with data from 32 narrative interviews. We conclude that efforts to end public debate through depoliticization can have a boomerang effect, in which conflict disappears only temporarily, and that these efforts can ultimately increase conflict while wasting engagement and creativity. More attention to the productive aspects of conflict is needed in public administration literature and practice.
This article argues for the importance of cultivating temporal attunement through experimental tools and methods aimed at instigating reflective conversations on variegated temporalities within participatory processes. It contributes to, and develops on, research on seasons as rhythmic phenomena, temporal conflicts and efforts to make temporalities visible for reflections in participatory contexts. Drawing on this research, I develop ‘the Rhythmical Calendar’— a tool which foregrounds temporal, and with it seasonal, mismatches and conflicts in a case of participatory planning for the Danish River landscape of Gudenå. From here, I draw out three analytical themes from the Rhythmical Calendar: 1) embodied mismatches, 2) interpersonal mismatches and 3) more-than-human mismatches. In the first theme, I highlight how temporal mismatches in coordination can become embodied as affect in the shape of e.g., anxiety, stress and loss. In the second theme, I unfold the multiple seasons connected to human practices and the discrepancies between them. And in the third theme, I focus on relations to more-than-human actors through experiences with environmental mismatches in timing and coordination and reflections on the co-constructing of seasonal rhythms. I conclude that tools, such as the Rhythmical Calendar, are important prerequisites for attuning people to questions around time and temporality and that it is pivotal to include this knowledge in collaborative governance processes to realign rhythms in efforts to navigate in and manage conflicts.
While receiving more attention in the policy sciences in recent years, much remains unknown about policy conflicts. This research analyzes 48 in-depth qualitative interviews of people involved in, or familiar with, conflicts associated with shale oil and gas (aka “fracking”) policy proposals and decisions across 15 U.S. states. We ask the question: how do policy actors characterize policy conflicts? To guide interviews and data collection for this study, we rely on the Policy Conflict Framework (PCF). The PCF highlights how policy settings serve as the sources of conflict; the characteristics of policy conflict across settings, between policy actors, and over time; and the varying outcomes. Insights derived from interviews include that policy conflicts are far more complicated to portray than depicted in the literature, individuals shape and understand conflict through emotions and narratives, any descriptions of policy conflicts must account for time and their evolutionary nature, and conflicts involve diverse strategies of winning and mitigation. The conclusion links these findings to the literature to advance knowledge about policy conflict.
Despite the increasing need to address long-term challenges, public sector organizations are incentivized to focus on short-term results. This article uses an ethnographic approach to analyse how members of a regional water authority understand and deal with long-term policy problems as part of their everyday practices. It reveals three specific dilemmas: investing in the realization of objects or objectives, adopting a stable or responsive approach, and taking a proactive or reactive stance towards the external environment. The concept of strategic agility enables organizations to respond proactively to unexpected developments by devising strategies to steer as well as to accommodate change.
This chapter is the introductory chapter of this book, which starts with a brief introduction to Australia’s current debate about China, but focuses the analytical problem behind the debate characterised by attempts to explain post-multicultural realties in Australia according to pre-multicultural ideologies. This chapter has four sections. The first section sketches the history of Chinese immigration to Australia with a focus on recent periods. The second section reviews the existing literature related to three broad areas: studies of recent Chinese migration to Australia; studies of worldwide merit-based immigration systems; and studies of policy impact and evaluation. The third section is a discussion of the approach of this analysis. The fourth section outlines the structure of this book, including a brief synopsis of each chapter.
People’s judgements are not perfect. Even experts make mistakes. Interestingly, mistakes in judgement and decision-making are not random. Professionals deviate systematically from normative standards. Per definition, systematic biases result in reduced decision quality, and accordingly, may have serious consequences. However, the fact that judgement biases are systematic also gives hope. If the biases and their causes can be identified, it should be possible to correct them.
Back cover text: Megaprojects and Risk provides the first detailed examination of the phenomenon of megaprojects. It is a fascinating account of how the promoters of multibillion-dollar megaprojects systematically and self-servingly misinform parliaments, the public and the media in order to get projects approved and built. It shows, in unusual depth, how the formula for approval is an unhealthy cocktail of underestimated costs, overestimated revenues, undervalued environmental impacts and overvalued economic development effects. This results in projects that are extremely risky, but where the risk is concealed from MPs, taxpayers and investors. The authors not only explore the problems but also suggest practical solutions drawing on theory and hard, scientific evidence from the several hundred projects in twenty nations that illustrate the book. Accessibly written, it will be essential reading in its field for students, scholars, planners, economists, auditors, politicians, journalists and interested citizens.
The gales of climate change blow the future open and closed. In response, we are having to learn to live with a renewed notion of limits and a novel level of uncertainty. One emerging governance response is a turn to scenario planning, which generates narratives about multiple futures refracted out from the present. Like climate change itself, scenario planning, and the broader field of futures studies it is part of, is historically and socially positioned, belying its application as a mere method or tool. This paper discusses the growing turn to scenario planning within government climate change adaptation initiatives in light of parallel shifts in governance (eg, interest in efficiency and wicked problems) and adaptation efforts (eg, framed as risk management or resilience) and their shared roots in the ambiguities of sustainable development. It provides an extended introduction to a theme issue that provides, overall, a nested discussion of the role of scenario planning by government for climate change adaptation, noting how governance, climate change adaptation, and scenario planning all fold together the motifs of openness and closedness. This paper engages with the emerging field of future geographies and critical interest in future orientations to highlight the way society's growing engagement on climate change adaptation exposes, critiques, replicates, and amplifies our existing orientations to the future and time and their politically contested and embedded character. It points to the way the motif of open futures can be both progressive and conservative, as political and economic interests seek to open up some futures while closing down others in the name of the ambivalent goals of adaptation and sustainable development.
Time is often considered to be an inert background against which governance processes evolve. Instead, this article approaches time as a factor that influences the development of innovation processes in water governance. Drawing on two Dutch cases, we analyse perceptions of time and the management of time. Public managers manage time by trying to fix deadlines, by synchronizing different timelines or by imposing their time horizon on the process. Different actors' timeframes may interfere with one another, and this may hinder governance processes. The analysis of time helps to explain the dynamics of governance processes, and this article shows that the alignment of timeframes is a crucial activity in realizing innovations in governance.
Points for practitioners Time is a crucial factor in innovation processes. Actors often have different perceptions of time, including different time horizons and deadlines. Classic time management mainly aims at budgeting time. This article argues for time sensitive governance. An elementary step is to explicate actors' various time-horizons, time cycles and time-budget. Managers need to align short-term time horizons needed in competitive markets, with medium-term views required to carefully develop innovations and embed them in the policy environment. Adaptivity in dealing with time is important to synchronize the development of innovations with developments in the market and governmental organizations.
This paper takes stock of megaproject management, an emerging and hugely costly field of study, by first answering the question of how large megaprojects are by measuring them in the units of mega, giga, and tera, and concluding with how we are presently entering a new “tera era” of trillion-dollar projects. Second, total global megaproject spending is assessed, at US9 trillion annually, or 8% of the total global gross domestic product (GDP), which denotes the biggest investment boom in human history. Third, four “sublimes”—political, technological, economic, and aesthetic—are identified and used to explain the increased size and frequency of megaprojects. Fourth, the “iron law of megaprojects” is laid out and documented: Over budget, over time, over and over again. Moreover, the “break–fix model” of megaproject management is introduced as an explanation of the iron law. Fifth, Albert O. Hirschman's theory of the “Hiding Hand” is revisited and critiqued as unfounded and corrupting for megaproject thinking in both the academy and policy. Sixth, it is shown how megaprojects are systematically subject to “survival of the unfittest,” which explains why the worst projects get built rather than the best. Finally, it is argued that the conventional way of managing megaprojects has reached a “tension point,” in which tradition is being challenged and reform is emerging.
Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings contains the seminal articles from the growing body of research on megaproject planning and management along with an original introduction by the editor, Bent Flyvbjerg. The leading and most cited authority in the field, Flyvbjerg has used crowdsourcing and 25 years of experience to cherry-pick from several hundred articles and books the writings that define the field. This volume will be an indispensable source for those wishing to speak with authority about how megaprojects are prepared, delivered, and fought over. The target audience is students, academics, practitioners, and media pundits alike, as well as communities affected by megaprojects.
A critical pathway for conceptual innovation in the social is the construction of theoretical ideas based on empirical data. Grounded theory has become a leading approach promising the construction of novel theories. Yet grounded theory–based theoretical innovation has been scarce in part because of its commitment to let theories emerge inductively rather than imposing analytic frameworks a priori. We note, along with a long philosophical tradition, that induction does not logically lead to novel theoretical insights. Drawing from the theory of inference, meaning, and action of pragmatist philosopher Charles S. Peirce, we argue that abduction, rather than induction, should be the guiding principle of empirically based theory construction. Abduction refers to a creative inferential process aimed at producing new hypotheses and theories based on surprising research evidence. We propose that abductive analysis arises from actors’ social and intellectual positions but can be further aided by careful methodological data analysis. We outline how formal methodological steps enrich abductive analysis through the processes of revisiting, defamiliarization, and alternative casing.
The manner in which time is institutionalized is critical to how a political system works. Terms, time budgets and time horizons of collective and individual political actors; rights over timing, sequencing and speed in decision-making; and the temporal properties of policy matter to the distribution of power; efficiency and effectiveness of policy-making; and democratic legitimacy. This article makes a case for the systematic study of political time in the European Union (EU) - both as an independent and a dependent variable - and highlights the analytical value-added of a time-centred analysis. The article discusses previous scholarship on the institutionalization of political time and its consequences along the dimensions of polity, politics and policy; and then reviews dominant perspectives on political time, which centre on power, system performance and legitimacy. These perspectives tie in with diverse theoretical traditions in the study of the EU. Taken together, dimensions, perspectives and theories help to guide time-centred analyses of the EU political system.
If the new fin de siècle marks a recurrence of the real, Bent Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and Power epitomizes that development and sets new standards for social and political inquiry. The Danish town of Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding the real workings of power, and for grasping what they mean to our more general concerns of social and political organization. Politics, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader witnesses, firsthand, the classic and endless drama which defines what modernity and democracy are and can be.
The American Planning Association recently endorsed a new forecasting method called reference class forecasting, which is based on theories of planning and decision-making that won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics. This paper details the method and describes the first instance of reference class forecasting in planning practice. First, the paper documents that inaccurate projections of costs, demand, and other impacts of plans are a major problem in planning. Second, the paper explains inaccuracy in terms of optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation. Third, the theoretical basis is presented for reference class forecasting, which achieves accuracy in projections by basing them on actual performance in a reference class of comparable actions and thereby bypassing both optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation. Fourth, the paper presents the first case of practical reference class forecasting, which concerns cost projections for planning of large transportation infrastructure investments in the UK, including the Edinburgh Tram and London’s £15 billion Crossrail project. Finally, potentials for and barriers to reference class forecasting are assessed.
Lock-in, the escalating commitment of decision makers to an ineffective course of action, has the potential to explain the large cost overruns in large-scale transportation infrastructure projects. Lock-in can occur both at the decision-making level (before the decision to build) and at the project level (after the decision to build) and can influence the extent of overruns in two ways. The first involves the ‘methodology’ of calculating cost overruns according to the ‘formal decision to build’. Due to lock-in, however, the ‘real decision to build’ is made much earlier in the decision-making process and the costs estimated at that stage are often much lower than those that are estimated at a later stage in the decision-making process, thus increasing cost overruns. The second way that lock-in can affect cost overruns is through ‘practice’. Although decisions about the project (design and implementation) need to be made, lock-in can lead to inefficient decisions that involve higher costs. Sunk costs (in terms of both time and money), the need for justification, escalating commitment, and inflexibility and the closure of alternatives are indicators of lock-in. Two case studies, of the Betuweroute and the High Speed Link-South projects in the Netherlands, demonstrate the presence of lock-in and its influence on the extent of cost overruns at both the decision-making and project levels. This suggests that recognition of lock-in as an explanation for cost overruns contributes significantly to the understanding of the inadequate planning process of projects and allows development of more appropriate means.
Society requires new forms of science and technology to productively accommodate the intrinsic value-laden judgments needed to manage the high uncertainties and considerable long-term impacts of sustainable urban planning. Responses to these ‘wicked’ problems include the development of postnormal science in the early 1990s. In subsequent literature on postnormal sustainability technologies, multiactor approaches to decision making are beginning to emerge. I examine an example: the development in New Zealand of a 100-year vision: the Auckland Sustainability Framework. Developed over fifteen months through ‘messy’ consultation across stakeholders, it has provided a ‘clumsy’ outcome, namely one which enabled multiple viewpoints to be expressed and responded to by others. The process adopted offers evidence in support of the development of sustainability frameworks over much longer timescales than the current norm in local authorities, and indications of how such processes may unfold.
The sunk cost effect is manifested in a greater tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made. Evidence that the psychological justification for this behavior is predicated on the desire not to appear wasteful is presented. In a field study, customers who had initially paid more for a season subscription to a theater series attended more plays during the next 6 months, presumably because of their higher sunk cost in the season tickets. Several questionnaire studies corroborated and extended this finding. It is found that those who had incurred a sunk cost inflated their estimate of how likely a project was to succeed compared to the estimates of the same project by those who had not incurred a sunk cost. The basic sunk cost finding that people will throw good money after bad appears to be well described by prospect theory (D. Kahneman & A. Tversky, 1979, Econometrica, 47, 263–291). Only moderate support for the contention that personal involvement increases the sunk cost effect is presented. The sunk cost effect was not lessened by having taken prior courses in economics. Finally, the sunk cost effect cannot be fully subsumed under any of several social psychological theories.
Deals with a series of planning decisions, and analyses the central processes of planning that were involved. It isolates those which, in the view of many informed people, were disasters either because they were abandoned after much effort, or because they went ahead and were widely criticised as major misakes. Among the first group are London's third airport and the abandoned London motorways. Among the second are Concorde, the Bay Area Rapid Transit System in San Francisco, and the Sydney Opera House. Two cases of near-disasters that became relative successes are also considered: California's plan for new university campuses, and Britain's plans for a new national library in London. In the second part of the book the author looks at the roles of key people in the planning process, at community activists, professional bureaucrats, and politicians. Some suggestions for decision making in the future are offered. -Keith Clayton
Major projects generally have the following characteristics:
Such projects are inherently risky, due to long planning horizons and complex interfaces.
Technology and design are often not standard.
Decision-making and planning are typically multi-player processes with conflicting interests.
Often there is “lock in” with a certain project concept at an early stage, leaving alternatives analysis weak or absent.
The project scope or ambition level will typically change significantly over time.
Statistical evidence shows that such unplanned events are often unaccounted for, leaving budget and time contingencies sorely inadequate.
As a consequence, misinformation about costs, benefits and risks is the norm.
The result is cost overruns and/or benefit shortfalls with a majority of projects.
Despite attempts to connect planning with design disciplines, some opportunities to do so still await further inquiry, particularly the conception promoted by Throgmorton of planning as persuasive storytelling. According to this perspective, we persuade one another about what the future should and can bring, as well as convince others to agree on and engage in a trajectory of actions. Decision-making is not about separate facts but concerns stories that strike a chord among those who can make things happen. Stories about the future may create resonance and amplify into anticipation, due to their persuasive character. This article points to three implications of planning as storytelling that will help us to better understand the effects of interactive regional design processes. Firstly, regional design is considered to be a form of devising and sharing stories; a perspective that better serves design than its usual conceptualization in the planning literature. Secondly, by considering regional design as story-making, it is also seen to affect the frames with which we perceive reality, thus intervening in the social, cognitive and intentional processes of presenting and constructing reality and regional action. Thirdly, if designs, considered in terms of the stories that they tell, change perceived realities, the interaction between governments and citizens, notably the role of communication, needs to be redefined. It would be justifiable to consider a more symbiotic model in which all communication is found to cause change and formal decisions only confirm events that are already underway.
Major recent studies of the European Commission have emphasised the growing politicisation and centralisation as important trends transforming its organisation. The present article analyses the role that time rules and temporal practices that structure the operation of the Commission have played in these trends. It finds a clear temporal subtext to politicisation and centralisation. This becomes evident when one examines two key time-sensitive relationships: between the political level - the College of Commissioners - and the administrative level; and between central coordination units - notably the Secretariat-General - and line units. Political time-setting, monitoring and enforcement have assumed greater prominence, reducing the temporal discretion of the administration; central keepers of the clock' have acquired greater power; and traditional bureaucratic advantages in time budgets and time horizons have diminished.
This article explores the time dimension in policy evaluation studies. We argue that time has been given little attention in policy evaluation studies, despite it being very important for the occurrence and assessment of policy success or failure. We therefore propose to make time a central element of policy evaluation. First, we explore the theoretical foundations behind the concept of time. Second, we present a case study to investigate the presence of time in that specific case and the evaluation thereof. We conclude with recommendations for policy evaluation studies.
Current complex society necessitates finding inclusive arrangements for delivering sustainable road infrastructure integrating design, construction and maintenance stages of the project lifecycle. In this article we investigate whether linking stages by integrated contracts can lead to more sustainable road infrastructure development by assessing public and private experiences with inclusiveness of integrated Dutch Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) projects throughout the procurement, design, construction and maintenance and operation stages. Through semi-structured interviews and document analysis, we find that public and private parties experience that inclusiveness is increased by DBFM contracts, although differences between investigated actor, scope and time dimensions of inclusiveness exist. We conclude that integrated contracts can lead to more sustainable infrastructure development because of the lifecycle optimization incentives provided by the linked contract stages of design, construction and maintenance. Based on our findings we recommend to pursue three avenues towards more sustainable infrastructure development: green procurement, strategic asset management and relational contracting.
This paper seeks to conceptualize and explore the changing relationships between planning action and practice and the dynamics of place. It argues that planning practice is grappling with new treatments of place, based on dynamic, relational constructs, rather than the Euclidean, deterministic, and one‐dimensional treatments inherited from the ‘scientific’ approaches of the 1960s and early 1970s. But such emerging planning practices remain poorly served by planning theory which has so far failed to produce sufficiently robust and sophisticated conceptual treatments of place in today's globalizing’ world. In this paper we attempt to draw on a wide range of recent advances in social theory to begin constructing such a treatment. The paper has four parts. First, we criticize the legacy of object‐oriented, Euclidean concepts of planning theory and practice, and their reliance on ‘containered’ views of space and time. Second, we construct a relational understanding of time, space and cities by drawing together four strands of recent social theory. These are: relational theories of urban time‐space, dynamic conceptualizations of ‘multiplex’ places and cities, the ‘new’ urban and regional socio‐economics, and emerging theories of social agency and institutional ordering. In the third section, we apply such perspectives to three worlds of planning practice: land use regulation, policy frameworks and development plans, and the development of ‘customized spaces’ in urban ‘regeneration’. Finally, by way of conclusion, we suggest some pointers for practising planning in a relational way.
Contemporary social science analysis is dominated by utilitarian or functional approaches in which institutional structures are assumed to adapt in an optimal fashion to changing environmental conditions, and the preferences and capabilities of individual actors are ontologically posited. In contrast, an institutional perspective insists that past choices constrain present options; that the preferences and capabilities of individual actors are conditioned by institutional structures; and that historical trajectories are path dependent. Institutional structures persist even if circumstances change. In a world of nuclear weapons and economic interdependence, any adequate analysis of the nature of sovereignty operationalized with regard to transborder controls and extraterritoriality must be informed by an institutional perspective.
Research design is fundamental to all scientific endeavors, at all levels and in all institutional settings. In many social science disciplines, however, scholars working in an interpretive-qualitative tradition get little guidance on this aspect of research from the positivist-centered training they receive. This book is an authoritative examination of the concepts and processes underlying the design of an interpretive research project. Such an approach to design starts with the recognition that researchers are inevitably embedded in the intersubjective social processes of the worlds they study. In focusing on researchers' theoretical, ontological, epistemological, and methods choices in designing research projects, Schwartz-Shea and Yanow set the stage for other volumes in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods. They also engage some very practical issues, such as ethics reviews and the structure of research proposals. This concise guide explores where research questions come from, criteria for evaluating research designs, how interpretive researchers engage with world-making, context, systematicity and flexibility, reflexivity and positionality, and such contemporary issues as data archiving and the researcher's body in the field.
How common are cost overruns during the delivery of transportation infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges, and public transit facilities, and what explains their occurrence? This article compares the findings of studies by academics and independent government auditors, two groups that have different mandates, objectives, and access to data. There is a high level of consistency in the finding that transportation projects regularly experience escalating costs. Yet there are sharp divergences between the technical and managerial explanations prioritized by the auditors and the political, economic, and psychological explanations prioritized in much of the academic literature. The differences in explanations point to diverse remedies for the challenge of cost overruns.
Research in the past 15 years based upon laboratory experiments indicates that entrapment/escalating commitment is very likely to occur when an investment decision-maker feels the need to justify a previously chosen investment project. Many theories have emerged to explain the entrapment/escalating commitment phenomenon. Of these, self-justification theory stands out as one of the most plausible mechanisms which appear to explain the entrapment/escalating commitment phenomenon. However, none of the existing theories fully explains entrapment/escalating commitment. This review concludes that the entrapment/escalating commitment literature is discrete, and that each of the existing theories may possess a certain amount of explanatory power. The article encourages an integration of the current literatures dealing with entrapment and recommends further research focusing on the investment decision making process beyond laboratory settings.
This paper explores the imaginations of place and spatial organization and of governance mobilized in recent experiences of strategic spatial planning for urban regions in Europe. Drawing on examples of such experiences, it examines how far these imaginations reflect a relational understanding of spatial dynamics and of governance processes. Spatial imaginations are assessed in terms of the nature of the spatial consciousness expressed in a strategy, the way the multiple scales of the social relations of a place are conceived, and the extent to which relational complexity is understood and reflected in a strategy. Governance imaginations are assessed in terms of how the relation between government and society is imagined, how the tensions between functional/sectoral and territorial principles of policy organization are addressed, and what assumptions are made about the nature and trajectory of transformative processes in governance dynamics. The paper concludes that signs of a recognition of the “relational complexity” of urban and regional dynamics and of territorially-focused governance processes can be found in these experiences, but a relational understanding is weakly-developed and often displaced by more traditional ways of seeing place/space and governance process. The paper concludes with some comments on the challenge of developing a stronger understanding of “relational complexity” within strategic spatial planning endeavours.
Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition. By Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius, and Werner Rothengatter. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 218p. 20.00 paper.
Multibillion dollar infrastructural projects, or megaprojects such as the Channel Tunnel, the Øresund bridge between Denmark and Sweden, the Hong Kong and Denver airports, or many high-speed rail links in Europe, continue to be built in record numbers despite poor performance and colossal losses. Why? The authors provide ample evidence to substantiate their claim that such projects are systematically misrepresented in public and private deliberations because many of the participants in the process have incentives to underestimate costs, overestimate revenues, undervalue environmental impact, and overvalue economic development effects.
Decision makers have a strong tendency to consider problems as unique. They isolate the current choice from future opportunities and neglect the statistics of the past in evaluating current plans. Overly cautious attitudes to risk result from a failure to appreciate the effects of statistical aggregation in mitigating relative risk. Overly optimistic forecasts result from the adoption of an inside view of the problem, which anchors predictions on plans and scenarios. The conflicting biases are documented in psychological research. Possible implications for decision making in organizations are examined.
Cet article cherche a determiner a quels types d'evenements historiques s'applique l'analyse de path dependence. Selon l'A., il s'agit de sequences historiques au sein desquelles des evenements contingents mettent en mouvement des modeles institutionnels ou des chaines d'evenements ayant des proprietes deterministes. L'identification de la path dependence implique a la fois de relier un resultat a une serie d'evenements et de montrer en quoi ces evenements sont eux-memes des occurences contingentes ne pouvant etre expliquees par des conditions historiques prealables. Ces sequences historiques sont generalement de deux types : les sequences a auto-renforcement et les sequences reactives
It is increasingly common for social scientists to describe political processes as "path dependent." The concept, however, is often employed without careful elaboration. This article conceptualizes path dependence as a social process grounded in a dynamic of "increasing returns." Reviewing recent literature in economics and suggesting extensions to the world of politics, the article demonstrates that increasing returns processes are likely to be prevalent, and that good analytical foundations exist for exploring their causes and consequences. The investigation of increasing returns can provide a more rigorous framework for developing some of the key claims of recent scholarship in historical institutionalism: Specific patterns of timing and sequence matter; a wide range of social outcomes may be possible; large consequences may result from relatively small or contingent events; particular courses of action, once introduced, can be almost impossible to reverse; and consequently, political development is punctuated by critical moments or junctures that shape the basic contours of social life.
The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"âmetaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association and at a Conference on ‘What is Institutionalism Now?’ at the University of Maryland, October 1994. We would like to acknowledge the hospitality and stimulation that W. Richard Scott, the Stanford Center for Organizations Research, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences provided while the preliminary work for this paper was being done, and we are grateful to Paul Pierson for many helpful discussions about these issues. For written comments on this earlier draft, we are grateful to Robert Bates, Paul DiMaggio, Frank Dobbin, James Ennis, Barbara Geddes, Peter Gourevitch, Ian Lustick, Cathie Jo Martin, Lisa Martin, Paul Pierson, Mark Pollack, Bo Rothstein, Kenneth Shepsle, Rogers Smith, Marc Smyrl, Barry Weingast, and Deborah Yashar.
This paper examines the dynamics of allocation under increasing returns within a model where agents choose between technologies competing for adoption and where each technology improves as it gains in adoption. It shows that the economy, over time, can become locked-in, by "random" historical events, to a technological path that is not necessarily efficient, not possible to predict from usual knowledge of supply and demand functions, and not easy to change by standard tax or subsidy policies. Rational expectations about future agents' technology choices can exacerbate this lock-in tendency. It discusses the implications for economic history, policy, and forecasting. Copyright 1989 by Royal Economic Society.
Analysis of decision making under risk has been dominated by expected utility theory, which generally accounts for people's actions. Presents a critique of expected utility theory as a descriptive model of decision making under risk, and argues that common forms of utility theory are not adequate, and proposes an alternative theory of choice under risk called prospect theory. In expected utility theory, utilities of outcomes are weighted by their probabilities. Considers results of responses to various hypothetical decision situations under risk and shows results that violate the tenets of expected utility theory. People overweight outcomes considered certain, relative to outcomes that are merely probable, a situation called the "certainty effect." This effect contributes to risk aversion in choices involving sure gains, and to risk seeking in choices involving sure losses. In choices where gains are replaced by losses, the pattern is called the "reflection effect." People discard components shared by all prospects under consideration, a tendency called the "isolation effect." Also shows that in choice situations, preferences may be altered by different representations of probabilities. Develops an alternative theory of individual decision making under risk, called prospect theory, developed for simple prospects with monetary outcomes and stated probabilities, in which value is given to gains and losses (i.e., changes in wealth or welfare) rather than to final assets, and probabilities are replaced by decision weights. The theory has two phases. The editing phase organizes and reformulates the options to simplify later evaluation and choice. The edited prospects are evaluated and the highest value prospect chosen. Discusses and models this theory, and offers directions for extending prospect theory are offered. (TNM)
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