The curious death - And life? - of British transport policy

Docherty, I. , Shaw, J., Marsden, G. and Anable, J. (2018) The curious death - And life? - of British transport policy. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 36(8), pp. 1458-1479. (doi: 10.1177/2399654418764451)

Abstract

This article analyses the transport policy record of the 2010–2015 Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition and 2015–2016 Conservative majority UK governments. We argue that the style of policy making under these administrations departed significantly from that of previous decades, which had been characterised by the ascendancy of specific technical disciplines and decision-making norms about how transport planning should be carried out. Our key contention is that despite abandoning the idea of a single, overall narrative for transport policy, these governments (perhaps unwittingly) gave new life to broader debates about what transport investment is actually for and how investment decisions should be made. We interpret this as a shift away from the longstanding idea of a ‘deliberate’ strategy of intervention to a more ‘emergent’ approach, which raises important new questions about the future of transport policy both in terms of the objectives it seeks to realise and the relative influence of professional/technical and political actors in the policy process.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Docherty, Professor Iain
• Authors: Docherty, I., Shaw, J., Marsden, G., and Anable, J.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Management
• Journal Name: Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• ISSN: 2399-6544
• ISSN (Online): 2399-6552
• Published Online: 26 March 2018
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2018 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 36(8): 1458-1479
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher