TIPP - Transport Institutions in the Policy Process
Overview
Background & policy context:
Transport policies are needed to guarantee efficient transportation systems that satisfy the mobility needs of people and firms and with a minimum cost and harm to the society and environment. Clearly this would not be possible without public effort. Compared to many other markets, in the transport sector there are significant market failures such as increasing returns to scale, non-price taking behaviour, external effects, public goods, and imperfect information. While the case for government action regulating and providing services is clear, in practice government behaviour, rather than promoting common economic wealth (welfare) through a rational decision-making process, often seems to result in inconsistent policies and even government failure. Much academic research has been conducted to increase our understanding of these issues. However, the focus of policy-oriented research and discussion of transport policies has predominantly been on what should be done, rather than on what can be done or what will be done. Some projects e.g. AFFORD and MC-ICAM have begun investigating these issues in relation to transport pricing. STELLA is an ongoing review project (Thematic Network), which addresses institutional issues. The fact that the actual implementation of certain transport policies in practice – pricing policies being the most notable example – has appeared to be problematic or simply failed is in many cases understood to be due to the fact that the existing government institutions and organisations either are inappropriate or ineffective for carrying out the optimal policies or may even themselves impose barriers or constraints on the implementation.
The TIPP project examines these and other similar implementation or formulation problems and suggests ways of overcoming them.
Objectives:
The overall objective was to describe how institutional arrangements and interactions affect the implementation of transport policies.
The project covered all levels of policy-making from local/regional to national and the EU, as well as interactions between these. The objective was not to assess transport policies themselves (in a normative sense), but to analyse how institutional settings contribute to the effective implementation of the policies and the achievement of policy goals.
Although TIPP focused on the positive analysis, ultimately its aim was to produce results that would help to develop better policies in a normative sense: how should institutional settings be arranged in different situations so that (the implementation of) policies would be effective and welfare maximising
Specific objectives of the TIPP project were:
- to provide a comprehensive picture of institutional framework conditions (constraints and enablers) for implementing transport policies throughout Europe;
- to develop an approach for studying the range of institutional implementation issues covered, by combining elements from different fields such as the positive theories of regulation, public choice, economic theory of federalism, institutional economics (new and old), political science, sociological approaches/theories, and modern theory of cognitive psychology;
- to derive results (theoretical and empirical) regarding the implications and impacts of different organisational and regulatory constraints and settings;
- to develop, based on the above considerations, concrete policy conclusions.
Methodology:
The TIPP approach to achieving these objectives was largely based on a wide range of case studies covering different situations in different parts of Europe (20 case studies were effectively carried out). The TIPP project was thus designed to analyse, through these case studies, how different institutional arrangements, systems and settings as well as interactions between different actors, organizations and institutions affect the implementation of transport policies. The overall objective of the project has therefore been very general. This feature was further strengthened by the fact that the project aimed to cover all levels of policy-making from the local/regional to the national and the EU level.
TIPP has been a first project of its kind and therefore had to enter unknown territory in many respects. Naturally, to carry out genuine analysis many methodological alternatives exist and some choices had to be made.
The objectives of the project were pursued through the following groups of activities.
- Setting the stage for the project by tentatively identifying and discussing all relevant aspects of the project. This included discussing the main research questions and their policy relevance and links to actual policy-making at different levels (local/regional, national, EU), preliminary surveys of recent policy developments and related policy implementation problems and of possible theories and approaches for analysing them. Finally the case studies were reviewed and directions for their carrying out in efficient and effective ways were laid down.
- Development of a theoretical foundation and framework for the project to be applied in the surveys and case studies, and at a later stage of the project for drawing and organising the main results and conclusions and policy recommendations. Two main areas of work here included the development of so-called analytical framework and a detailed and comprehensive review of existing theories to be potentially used in the different case studies. A particular task was to develop concrete guidance and instructions for the surveys and the case studies.
- Carrying out the necessary surveys of institutional framework conditions in different parts of Europe. The objective was to provide a comprehensive picture of institutional framework conditions (constraints and enablers) for implementing transport policies throughout Europe, as well as to develop a methodology for carrying out the surveys.
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