Arenas Without Rules and the Policy Change Process. Outsider Groups and British Roads Policy

Arenas without Rules and the Policy ChangeProcess: Outsider Groups and British

Roads Policy

GEOFFREY DUDLEY AND JEREMY RICHARDSON1

University of Staordshire and University of Essex

A key task of governments is to construct and manage systems of consultation

whereby the vast array of interest groups seeking to influence public policy can be

accommodated. Conventional wisdom holds that key insider groups secure for

themselves special privileges, not least of which is an ability to prevent radical policy

change. A concomitant view is that public policy emerges from relatively stable

networks of actors who have some mutual resource dependencies. One reason why

this paradigm is showing signs of intellectual fatigue is that it seems weak in

explaining policy change. Yet, policy change does take place. Indeed, it is one of the

characteristics of the 1980s and 1990s. This article examines an example of the tradi-

tional modalities of consultation failing to accommodate new interests, knowledge

and ideas. This breakdown appears to have occurred by the use of alternative policy

arenas without rules by outsider groups, leading to a radical new framing of

transport policy. Moreover, government has failed to constrain the new policy issues

in predictable and stable systems of consultation.

One of the central tasks of modern governments is the management of con-sultation with the wide range and large numbers of interest groups seeking toinfluence the formation and implementation of public policy. In the Britishcase, the established traditions of consultation have been well documented.2

Conventional wisdom holds that the grip of established insider groups on keypolicy sectors has been strong, and that this in part explains the dicultieswhich governments encounter in bringing about radical policy change. Aconcomitant of this view is that certain types of groups tend to be excluded fromkey policy decisions, being regarded as outsiders on the classification firstsuggested by Grant.3 A related paradigm suggests that policy emerges from

#Political Studies Association 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 MainStreet, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Political Studies (1998), XLVI, 727747

1 This article forms part of a research project on Policy Communities and Policy Networks OverTime: British Transport Policy 194595, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council(Reference Number: R00023482801). The authors would like to thank civil servants, ministers, andgroup ocials who agreed to be interviewed, and the Editor and two anonymous referees for theirvaluable comments on earlier drafts.

2 E.g. A. G. Jordan and J. J. Richardson, The British Policy Style or the Logic of Negotiation?in J. J. Richardson (ed.), Policy Styles in Western Europe (London, Allen and Unwin, 1982), pp. 80110, W. Grant, Pressure Group Politics and Democracy in Britain (Hemel Hempstead, Philip Allan,1989); and J. J. Richardson, Interest Group Behaviour in Britain: Continuity and Change inJ. J. Richardson (ed.), Pressure Groups (Oxford, University Press, 1993), pp. 8699.

3 W. Grant, Insider Groups, Outsider Groups and Interest Group Strategies in Britain,University of Warwick, Department of Politics, Working Paper No. 19, (1978).

relatively stable networks of policy actors who have some mutual resourcedependencies.4 Yet, as Smith suggests, the flaw in the paradigm is that networkanalysis tends to be a static model.5 Thus, one reason that network analysis isshowing some intellectual fatigue is that it seems weak in explaining how policychange comes about.6 Yet, policy change does take place. Indeed, the 1980s and1990s have seen pretty well all Western democracies going through a continuousprocess of radical policy change. No doubt there are many causes of this changeprocess, but even policy areas such as agriculture and roads policy hithertothought to be in some kind of corporatist grip have shown signs of looseningup, with shifts in the distribution of power, and at least the potential for majorpolicy change.7

Our case study is essentially a story of the failure of the traditional modalitiesof consultation to accommodate the increased diversity of interests claimingsome stakeholder status8 in the transport sector. These interests found thatexisting processes did not enable them to raise, eectively, new issues whichchallenged the then policy core beliefs of the hegemonic policy community. Theinstitutional site for structuring the process of consultation (in this case HighwayInquiries) worked only when the participants did not abuse the unwritten rulesof the game and accepted the dominant framing of the transport problem.Once new knowledge and ideas began to suggest the possibilities of alternativeframes, new interests began to exploit the Highway Inquiries as an arena with-out rules, just as Parnell and the Irish had exploited the (then) lax rules of theHouse of Commons in the cause of Irish independence in the nineteenthcentury. In both cases, the new interests exploited an existing institutional sitewhich was designed with gentlemen in mind.Policy determining major road construction in Britain was perhaps a classic

case of an insider group securing for itself enormous influence over publicpolicy. For example, Finers now classic study of the roads-lobby9 demon-strated just how eective those interests likely to gain from a major trunk roadbuilding programme had become. However, the policy area some forty yearslater looks quite dierent. At least four major changes seem to have taken place.First, the public and elite discourse has changed, from a perception of roadbuilding as a solution, to road building as a problem. Secondly, the range ofinterest groups claiming some kind of stakeholder status has expanded con-siderably. Thirdly, the market for policy ideas and the knowledge base of thepolicy area have been widened greatly. Fourthly, there are signs that policy itselfmay be undergoing some fundamental changes partly as a result of these new

4 R. A. W. Rhodes and D. Marsh, Policy Networks in British Politics. A Critique of ExistingApproaches in D. Marsh and R. A. W. Rhodes (eds), Policy Networks in British Government(Oxford, Clarendon, 1992), pp. 1213.

5 M. J. Smith, Pressure. Power and Policy (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993),p. 72.

6 K. Dowding, Model or metaphor? A critical review of the policy network approach, PoliticalStudies, 43 (1995), 13658.

7 See Smith, Pressure, Power and Policy and G. F. Dudley and J. J. Richardson, Why does policychange over time? Adversarial policy communities, alternative policy arenas, and British trunkroads policy 19451995, Journal of European Public Policy, 3 (1996), 6383.

8 See J. J. Richardson, Policy-Making in the EU: Interests, Ideas and Garbage Cans of PrimevalSoup in J. Richardson (ed.), European Union Power and Policy-Making (London, Routledge, 1996),pp. 2332.

9 S. E. Finer, Transport interests and the road lobby, Political Quarterly, (1958), 4758.

728 Outsider Groups and British Roads Policy

#Political Studies Association, 1998

factors. The purpose of this article is to focus on the relationship between institu-tions and ideas as a spark for policy change over time.The main thrust of our argument is that an analysis of the exploitation of a

particular institutional structure in this case formal Public Inquiries intotrunk road schemes (so-called Highway Inquiries) by anti-road protesters,illustrates the conditions under which an institutional arena can function as aneective site for agents seeking policy change. One of the key conditions, wesuggest, was that Highway Inquiries were essentially arenas without rules whichallowed interests not part of the inner core, or policy community,10 to introducenew knowledge and ideas into the policy process and to challenge existingpolicy. Moreover, when this arena ceased to be seen as an eective site for policychange, these same interests were able to move to dierent arenas without rules,enabling them to further undermine the hegemony of the old roads lobby. Thehistory of the use by these outsider groups of arenas without rules alsoillustrates the more general problem which modern governments face, as politicsincreasingly becomes a multi-level, multi-arena game. Just as Heclo was correctto jolt our perceptions of iron triangles and policy communities as the dominantprocedural norms of modern policy making, when he suggested that policymaking was much messier than those neat models suggested,11 so we need totake account of the fact that this multiplicity of actors uses a multiplicity ofarenas or venues to use a term suggested by Baumgartner and Jones.12 We alsoneed to take account of the fact that the extended participation in the policyprocess and the use of multiple arenas almost inevitably expands the market forideas, making it rather more dicult for the old hegemonic and corporaterelationships to survive.Before discussing our case study and its broader implications, we turn to a

discussion of the general question of how ideas and institutions might interact inorder to bring about major shifts in the direction of policy. We describe thesemajor shifts as changes in the policy flow. Drawing upon Kingdons revealinginterview with a Washington ocial, to the eect that public policies were notlike rivers one could not identify the specific source of the policy as one couldfor a river13 we suggest that, nevertheless, as with rivers, the general directionof policy can shift over time, in quite major ways. Without even the participantsrealising it, policy can end up moving in a quite dierent direction. One of theconditions for this change of direction to take place is that policy-makers aremade to confront new ideas and new knowledge (as well as new interests) and,thereby, policy problems come to be framed14 dierently. This, in turn, opensup new possibilities in terms of policy solutions.

10 J. J. Richardson and A. G. Jordan, Governing under Pressure (Oxford, Martin Robertson,1979).

11 H. Heclo, Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment in A. King, (ed.), The NewAmerican Political System (Washington DC, American Enterprise Institute, 1978), pp. 87124.

12 F. R. Baumgartner and B. D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (ChicagoUniversity Press, 1993).

13 J. W. Kingdon, Agendas. Alternatives and Public Policies, 2nd ed. (New York, HarperCollins,1995), p. 73.

14 M. Rein and D. A. Schon, Frame-Reflective Policy Discourse in P. Wagner, C. H. Weiss,B. Wittrock and H. Wollman (eds), Social Sciences Modern States, National Experiences andTheoretical Crossroads (Cambridge, University Press, 1991), pp. 26289.

GEOFFREY DUDLEY AND JEREMY RICHARDSON 729


Ideas, Institutions and Changing the Policy Flow

Kingdon suggests that we miss a great deal if we see public policy solely in termsof such concepts as power, influence, pressure and strategy. The contents of theideas themselves, far from being mere smokescreens or rationalizations, areintegral parts of decision making in and around government hence the notionof an idea whose time has come.15 Similarly, institutions are important.16 In ourcase, a particular institutional site (Highway Inquiries) was structured by fewrules and this helped to facilitate the key process by which new ideas enter thepolitical discourse.The process by which new ideas are transmitted is, as Hall suggests, dicult

to model. He sees change as coming about through a process of social learningin which (quoting Heclo) powering and puzzling often go hand in hand.17 Indiscussing the importance to the policy process of the transmission of ideas, henotes that the terms of political discourse privilege some lines of policy overothers, and that the struggle for leverage with which to alter the terms ofpolitical discourse is a perennial feature of politics. In a key passage, heconcludes that:

Organised interests, political parties and policy events do not simply exertpower; they acquire power in part by trying to influence the politicaldiscourse of their day. To the degree they are able to do so, they may have a

major impact on policy without necessarily acquiring the formal trappingsof influence. The resultant flow of ideas is an important dimension of theprocess in which policy is made.18

The transmission of ideas, therefore, is not simply an attempt to push aparticular item to the top of the political agenda. Those who transmit the ideasare seeking to alter the whole terms of the policy debate. Thus, Rein andSchon use the term policy discourse to refer to the interactions of individuals,interest groups, social movements, and institutions through which problematicsituations are converted to policy problems, agendas are set, decisions aremade, and actions are taken.19 From this policy discourse, they use theconcept of framing to describe a way of selecting, organizing, interpreting,and making sense of a complex reality so as to provide guideposts for know-ing, analysing, persuading and acting. Consequently, a frame consists of theunderlying structures of belief, perception, and appreciation on which policypositions rest. Policy disputes arise when the contending parties hold conflict-ing frames.20 In terms of our case study, as we shall see, the concept of framingis especially useful. The history of British trunk roads policy is a story of rivalinterests competing to dominate the framing process and of one set of interests

15 Kingdon, Agendas. Alternatives and Public Policies, p. 125.16 As Weaver and Rockman argue, specific institutional arrangements are insucient to

guarantee a high or low level of a specific capability, but they may exacerbate failures of governmentor help to make society more manageable. R. K. Weaver and B. A. Rockman, Do InstitutionsMatter? (Washington DC, The Brookings Institution, 1993), p. 446.

17 P. A. Hall, Policy paradigms, social learning and the state: the case of economic policy-makingin Britain, Comparative Politics, 25 (1993), 2889.

18 Hall, Policy paradigms, social learning and the state, p. 290.19 Rein and Schon, Frame-Reflective Policy Discourse, p. 263.20 D. A. Schon and M. Rein, Frame Reflection. Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy

Controversies (New York, Basic, 1994), p. 22.



which had generally been excluded from traditional forms of consultation the anti-roads lobby using a particular arena (the Highway Inquiry) tochallenge existing policy frames, as a means of securing policy change.There is a methodological diculty, however, in assessing change, just as

there is in assessing power. When is change radical or major and what indi-cators can be used? Moreover, at what point does apparently incremental andsuccessive change end up as a major shift in what we term the policy flow? Inthe context of an issue acquiring a new policy frame, Hall provides a usefultaxonomy of three orders of change. First and second order changes can beregarded as cases of normal policy making, such as budgetary changes fromyear to year (first order) and new systems for controlling public expenditure(second order). On the other hand, third order change reflects a process markedby the radical changes in the overarching terms of policy discourse associatedwith a paradigm shift.21 It is important to note, however, that a paradigmaticshift at the centre in terms of ideas and values may not be immediately expressedin terms of policy outcomes government may have ongoing commitmentswhich cannot easily be jettisoned; there may be a time lag while a consultativeprocess takes place; or a degree of inertia may be present in the policy process asthe implication of the new ideas (and new knowledge) is absorbed by policymakers and as the broader climate of opinion (for example amongst voters)catches up. Thus, as Sabatier suggests, what he terms the policy core beliefswhich represent an advocacy coalitions basic normative commitments will beslow to change.22

However, as March and Olsen propose political structures are also important.They create and sustain islands of imperfect and temporary organization inpotentially inchoate political worlds.23 One feature of these political structuresis, of course, the existence of rules which constrain behaviour and secure adegree of predictability. In practice, March and Olsen define rules as

the routines, procedures, conventions, roles, strategies, organisational formsand technologies around which political activity is constructed. We also

mean the beliefs, paradigms, codes, cultures and knowledge that surround,support, elaborate and contradict those rules and routines.24

In our study, we turn this description on its head, as it were. If arenas withrules can provide stability, then equally it could be said that arenas withoutrules can sometimes provide instability. If an arena lacks formalized pro-cedures, conventions and cultures, then it is open for shrewd actors to exploitthis situation and adapt the arena to their own objectives by transmitting newideas to other arenas and actors. In the 1970s, the Highway Inquiry was aparticularly eective instrument for this purpose. The relative lack of proceduralrules allowed environmental activists to manipulate proceedings in order notonly to disrupt the policy implementation process, but also to attempt to

21 Hall, Policy paradigms, social learning and the state, p. 279.22 P. A. Sabatier, Policy Change Over a Decade or More in P. A. Sabatier and H. C. Jenkins-

Smith (eds), Policy Change and Learning: an Advocacy Coalition Approach (Boulder CO, Westview,1993), pp. 334.

23 J. G. March and J. P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions. The Organisational Basics of Politics(New York, Free, 1989), p. 16.

24 March and Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions, p. 22.



transmit their own ideas and values to policy makers, to other policy actors,and, perhaps more importantly, via the mass media to the general public.

The Use of Highway Inquiries as Arenas without Rules

A paradox of characterizing Highway Inquiries as arenas without rules is thatthey have the image of a court of law, with evidence submitted by counsel forboth sides, and witnesses cross-examined, before an impartial judge. In reality,however, the ultimate judge of any road scheme is the Department whichproposed it. TheMinisters powers and duties were set out in the 1959 HighwaysAct, which consolidated a considerable amount of earlier legislation. A detailedexamination of the statutory framework for trunk roads lies beyond the scope ofthis study, but the fundamentals of the process have remained relativelyunaltered. After the Minister is satisfied that a strong case exists for an improve-ment to an existing road, or for the construction of a new road, design workbegins on the basis of the known trac data, a provisional estimate of cost andan outline of possible solutions. Once practicable routes have been identified, aprocess of consultation takes place. Those consulted include not only statutorybodies such as local authorities, but also national interest groups such as theNational Farmers Union, the Country Landowners Association, and nationaland local amenity societies. Nowadays, there is usually an exhibition, wheremembers of the public can study the line options. Once the chosen line ispublished as a draft scheme there is then an opportunity for people to makerepresentations or objections. If the objections cannot be satisfied by a furtherconsultative process, only then will the possibility arise of a Public Inquiry.Statutory objectors, such as local authorities, can insist on an Inquiry beingheld.After the Inquiry, the Inspector writes a report and gives his or her recom-

mendations to the relevant Ministers. The Secretaries of State for the Environ-ment and Transport will then decide whether to accept the draft schemes,modify them, or abandon them altogether. If the proposals are extensivelychanged, then the Inquiry may be re-opened, or the draft schemes withdrawnand new ones published. Once the schemes are published, objectors then havethe right to apply to the High Court for the consents to be quashed on suchgrounds as statutory powers being exceeded, or the requirements of the Act notbeing complied with. In recent years, objectors also have the option of making acomplaint to an alternative policy-making arena in the form of the EuropeanCommission, on grounds such as the UK governments failure to conduct aproper Environmental Impact Assessment as set out in an EC Directive of1985.25

Highway Inquiries, therefore, play a political consultative rather than ajudicial role. This consultative purpose is the principal explanation for therebeing no statutory procedural rules. Instead, the Inquiry Inspector has con-siderable discretion, even though the Inquiries are part of the total statutoryframework supporting the building of trunk roads. In a sense, the Inquiriesthemselves should be seen as part of the hegemony of the road lobbysframing, in that they were there to facilitate the overall policy of building moretrunk roads. History was to show that they could work only when all of the

25 Directive 85/337.



interests who participated accepted certain behavioural norms and, moreimportantly, existing framing and the broad objectives of policy.

Humdrum Policy Making: Highway Inquiries in the 1950s and 1960s

Although certain interests, such as environmentalists, eventually perceived theconsultation processes enshrined in Public Inquiries as sham consultation, thevery existence of the Inquiry system is a reflection of the strong cultural traditionof consultation and participation. Though the policy area appeared to bedominated by a specific set of interests, leading to a hegemonic framing,governments nevertheless felt obliged to devise a consultative process. The so-called aected interests had to be given the chance to participate, consistentwith the British policy style. Indeed, even in the 1950s and 1960s, prior to theexploitation of Public Inquiries by a new breed of environmentalists, theadministrative process for deciding to build a new trunk road was extremelydrawn out, as it was (in contrast to France, for example) for all major infra-structure projects. Even without disruption of existing procedures, planning inBritain was not easy. Thus, as Gregory noted in 1967:

Any student of British government who claims to detect a disquieting trend

towards administrative ruthlessness and arrogance in the interests of speedand eciency and at the expense of the rights and property of the individualshould draw comfort from an examination of the procedure through which

the Ministry of Transport goes when planning the route of a motorway andacquiring the land necessary for its construction.26

Gregory maintained his ironic tone when he noted that it came as nosurprise to find that, while the actual construction of the M1 from London toRugby took twenty months, the preparatory stages occupied eight years.27

Yet, of course, the motorway was built, i.e. the main lines of public policywere not overturned by this long and drawn out consultation process. Timeconsuming though the process was, the concessions were largely at the marginsof policy.The Highway Inquiry holds, therefore, only a potential position as one arena

within a long and complex process. In the 1950s and 1960s, its lack of use placedit in the category of what might be termed a potential institution. This reflectedthe hegemony of roads as a solution as much as it did the failure by objectorsto recognize the potential of this particular institutional site for securing or evensuggesting major policy change. Thus, Ministers were keen to project the imageof the motorway building programme as part of the essential modernisation ofpost-war Britain and as part of the new consumer revolution, giving votersgreater freedom of mobility. This appeared to secure widespread support. AsLevin observes:

During the 1960s the need for motorway and trunk road building waswidely taken for granted. Such objections as were made were often disposed

26 R. Gregory, The Ministers Line: or the M4 Comes to Berkshire in R. Kimber andJ. J. Richardson (eds), Campaigning for the Environment (London Routledge and Kegan Paul,1974), p. 104.

27 Gregory, The Ministers Line, p. 106.



of without recourse to an Inquiry: . . . in 1967 only 11 per cent of motorwaymiles and 16 per cent of trunk road miles went to Public Inquiry.28

The politics of trunk road building was based on the Nimby principle (Not-in-my-back-yard) rather than on any lofty notions of bringing about a newpolicy discourse and a shift on the framing of policy problems. Moreover, thebenefits of trunk roads policy were front-loaded. The disbenefits such as thehealth risks caused by vehicle pollution, and the risk of global warming werelargely unheard of at that time. The existing institutional modalities for con-sultation were, it seems, underpinned by a fairly strong policy core.29 While thispolicy core remained relatively unfractured, all was well and broader problemsof governance presented by groups who would not play the game remained wellhidden. Potential opponents could be accommodated by gradual proceduralreform, long-drawn out processes, and concessions at the margin of policy.

Policy Discord: Exploiting Arenas without Rules

A key feature of the Inquiry system as a consultative mechanism was its informalcharacter, itself reflecting the age of consensus politics. Once consensus began tobreak down, the system was exploited and almost destroyed when new actorsentered the arena. Indeed there is some political irony in the fact that HighwayInquiries only found their identity as an institution when exogenous changesplaced trunk roads policy on an altogether higher level of political salience.From the early 1970s there was a general heightening of awareness of environ-mental issues in many policy areas.30 Thus, there was a mood change31 or shiftin the broad climate of opinion which policy makers in a number of sectorscould not ignore. This exogenous change sparked endogenous shifts in percep-tions of problems by actors at the sectoral level. A second major exogenousinfluence was the severe restriction on public expenditure, dating from 1973.Traditionally, a capital programme such as roads is particularly vulnerableduring public expenditure crises, and in 1976 alone there were three significantcuts made to the trunk roads programme. Consequently, at 1978 prices,expenditure on trunk roads construction and maintenance declined from 741million in 197576 to 520 million in 197980.32 A cynical view of the dynamicsof policy change might be that environmental arguments against road buildingare always more fashionable with governments during public expenditure crises.Although there is no doubt some truth in this hypothesis, it fails to take accountof the techniques adopted by the environmental lobby to take advantage ofthese favourable exogenous circumstances, or policy windows.33

The propitious shift in the general climate of opinion, together with thewindow of opportunity presented by the need to curtail public expenditure,allowed a new breed of environmental activist to be more entrepreneurial in their

28 P. H. Levin, Highway inquiries: a study in governmental responsiveness, Public Admin-istration, 57 (1979), p. 22.

29 Sabatier, Policy Change over a Decade or More, p. 35.30 See Kimber and Richardson, Campaigning for the Environment.31 A. King, Governmental responses to budget scarcity, Policy Studies Journal, 113 (1985),

47693.32 Basic Road Statistics, 1980.33 Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, p. 20.



tactics. In particular, a policy entrepreneur34 emerged who saw the potential ofthe existing Highway Inquiry system for opening up the market for policy ideas.John Tyme, a zealous individual who believed that the motorway programmeposed a consummate evil, and constituted the greatest threat to the nation in allits history,35 toured the country appearing for objectors at a large number ofPublic Inquiries. Notwithstanding his apparently eccentric stance, he proved tobe a shrewd political tactician, making particularly skilful use of the mass mediato convey the new image and new message to a wider audience and to otherarenas. In order to achieve this goal, he adopted some highly unorthodoxtechniques.For example, from the early stages of his campaign he realized that, as a

leader of a minority coalition,36 his distinctive style of civil disobedience couldonly work if he had large numbers of his supporters in the hall. This techniqueworked well at the Aire Valley Inquiry in Yorkshire, where support wasparticularly large and enthusiastic, and two attempts to open the Inquiry wereabandoned by the Inspector when objectors repeatedly interrupted proceed-ings.37 Tyme was taking advantage of a situation where people aected by theline of a proposed road were deeply disillusioned by what they considered to bethe Governments failure to take adequate notice of their views. In eect, thefact that Tyme and others could mobilize such wide support (and action) was aclear indicator that the traditional British institutional modalities, throughwhich those aected by public policy were consulted, could no longer accom-modate the range and number of new claimant stakeholders in this policy area.More importantly, perhaps, it illustrated the fact that trunk roads policy was nolonger a relatively narrow technical issue. Thus, over time, issue expansion hadoccurred and this had implications for the way politics could be conducted.Tymes campaign achieved its peak of political salience during the M3

extension Inquiry at Winchester in 1976. The ultimate significance of thisproposed road cannot be overstated. The actual line of theM3 bypass to the eastof the ancient city of Winchester had already been approved at an Inquiry in1971 in a more quiescent phase38 of the policy process. The 1976 Inquiryconcerned merely side roads and compulsory purchase orders. In the hands ofTyme, however, it was transformed into something of a test case for theGovernments trunk roads policy itself. By this time, Tyme had discovered thatthere were no statutory rules attached to Inquiries, and that the proceedingswere largely left to the discretion of the Inspector. He had found an arenawithout rules and was quick to see its potential in terms of issue expansion. Histactics at the Aire Valley Inquiry, and the associated media coverage, hadattracted the attention of groups opposed to the Winchester bypass, and in theclassic policy entrepreneur fashion, he was recruited to represent them at theInquiry. Within Winchester itself, the campaign against the road had attractedwidespread support. In addition, there was no doubt that media interest washeightened by the image of Winchester as a citadel of the establishment, with its

34 M. Mintrom and S. Vergari, Advocacy coalitions, policy entrepreneurs, and policy change,Policy Studies Journal (1997) (forthcoming).

35 J. Tyme, Motorways Versus Democracy (London, Macmillan, 1978), p. 1.36 Mintrom and Vergari, Advocacy coalitions, policy entrepreneurs, and policy change.37 See Tyme,Motorways, Versus Democracy, pp. 1430 and Levin, Highway inquiries: a study in

governmental responsiveness, p. 21.38 Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Politics, p. 167.



ancient cathedral and famous public school. Thus it was generally consideredthat mass protest here would indeed indicate that the Governments roadspolicy was in severe trouble.In the event, all of Tymes objectives were fulfilled. Significantly, on the

second day of the Inquiry, he fought a successful battle to keep the televisioncameras in the hall, so ensuring that events would achieve maximum publicexposure and the image could be projected of an existing policy in disarray.Tymes strategy was to switch the attention of the Inquiry to the actual need forthe road, and so to undermine the Governments whole trunk roads policy.Thus, he was attempting to transform Highway Inquiries from an institutionalsite designed to facilitate and support the main thrust of policy at that time building more trunk roads and motorways (albeit via a veneer of consulta-tion) into an institutional site where new interests could question the funda-mentals of existing policy and introduce new knowledge and ideas which couldfacilitate a re-framing of the policy problem. Clearly, the Government did notintend consultation to mean that! After apparently showing initial sympathyfor Tymes arguments, however, the Inquiry Inspector backtracked. Since thefirst day of the Inquiry, proceedings had been interrupted and vociferousobjectors led from the hall. Now, after a further altercation with the Inspector, itwas Tyme himself who was escorted out by the police. Tyme himself takes upthe story:

As I waited outside the vestibule under the watchful eyes of the police Ireceived messages to the eect that the inspector was obdurate; momentum

was being lost. It seemed clear that a reassertion of popular power wasrequired. So seizing a suitable moment when police attention wandered, Ire-entered the theatre, raced down the aisle and faced the General (the

Inspector) eyeball to eyeball. The eect was dramatic. Two masses of peoplemoved towards me at once: the men of Winchester and the police. Theresulting melee, with scores of people, including the headmaster ofWinchester College, escorted out, fully restored the collapsing situation.

It was a reminder to the General of the power of the forces ranged againsthim.39

As we suggested earlier, Highway Inquiries could work only when theparticipants adhered to certain behavioural norms both in terms of acceptingthe thrust of policy as sensible and by not exploiting the rather lax and flexiblerules instituted when, no doubt, gentlemen were gentlemen. The new activistsdemonstrated that lax institutional rules and the opportunity for issue expan-sion are closely related. The real significance of disruption of the hithertosmooth-working institutional modality for consultation was, therefore, not thedisruption itself, but the fact that the objectors had begun to shift the perceptionof roads policy from being a key element in the modernization of Britain, to onewhich could promote the bitter opposition of even the most respected andconservative members of English society.Tyme understood instinctively that the Highway Inquiry was his arena, and

that he would be weakened if he left it. Consequently, he displayed no interest inconventional direct lobbying of national government. Moreover, the exploita-tion of the arena without rules via the mass media conveyed a clear message to

39 Tyme, Motorways Versus Democracy, p. 40.



policy makers. The then Transport Secretary (197679), William Rodgers,acknowledges that the disruptions of Inquiries were politically eective as anindication of growing public disquiet with trunk roads policy. Rodgers waspersonally sympathetic to many of the objectives of the environmental lobby,40

but his own strategy was to separate those with legitimate grievances fromactivists such as Tyme.41 In other words, Rodgers was seeking a peace treatybetween the road and environmental lobbies, and wanted to bring the issue backinto the traditional decision-making procedures, where bargaining and con-sensus are the norm and the traditional institutional modalities of consultationcould again be made to work.

Policy change and the emergence of a temporary peace treaty

In January 1976, the Minister for Planning and Local Government hadannounced that the Council on Tribunals would re-examine the adequacy ofHighway Inquiry procedure.42 Rodgers ensured that this review was givenpriority and that the conclusions would be published as a White Paper. TheWhite Paper,43 however, rejected one of the key arguments of the environmen-talists that they should have the right at Inquiries to challenge governmentroads policy. On the other hand, several important concessions were made.These included the appointment of Inspectors by the Lord Chancellor insteadof the Department of Transport (DoT); the publication of a greater range ofinformation prior to the opening of an Inquiry; permission for televisioncameras to record events at Inquiries provided they did not influence theproceedings (in the light of Tymes strategy this was probably a vain hope); andsetting up pre-Inquiry procedural meetings. This last provision was of particularsignificance, for it indicated an ocial desire to undermine Tymes strategy ofexploiting an arena without rules by trying to create an environment at Inquirieswhere all those involved would accept at least an implicit system of rules. Inother words, an attempt was being made to shift Inquiries back into thetraditional modality where rules could constrain issues and a challenge to thepolicy core could be avoided.In the event, this proved to be a forlorn hope. Once an issue has escaped the

confines of traditional policy making procedures (such as tightly drawn policycommunities or, in this case, Public Inquiries), it is dicult to claw it back. Asenior ocial within the DTP at that time considers that the disruptions ofInquiries were a major factor in the minds of Ministers when framing transportpolicy, particularly in the mind of the then Transport Secretary.44 During 197677, the Labour Government conducted a review of transport policy and theresultant White Paper45 produced a major policy shift. Within the prevailingexpenditure constraints, the strategic plan for trunk roads was to be abandonedin favour of a more flexible and piecemeal approach, and the available resourcesswitched to subsidizing public transport, particularly buses. The reasons given

40 See G. F. Dudley and J. J. Richardson, Promiscuous and celibate ministerial styles: policychange, policy networks and British roads policy, Parliamentary Aairs, 49 (1996), 56683.

41 Interview 10 May 1995.42 H. C. Deb., written answers C 3848.43 Cmnd. 7133, Report on the Review of Highway Inquiry Procedures, (London, HMSO, 1978).44 Interview 25 July 1995.45 Cmnd. 6836, Transport Policy (London, HMSO, 1977).



for abandoning the trunk roads strategic plan included greater caution on theneed for roads capacity in view of the oil crisis, and the requirement to controlpublic expenditure. In addition, however, it was stressed that there was now amuch greater concern about the impact of large-scale engineering on towns andthe countryside, and more concern for the environment.46 This latter commentcould be seen as a direct response to events in places such as Winchester, andsuggests that the Government was indeed concerned to draw up a peace treaty.With hindsight, however, it is possible to see that the peace treaty signed in thelate 1970s did not represent permanent third order change.47 Although thepotential for a paradigmatic shift from the hegemonic values of the road lobbyapparently existed, the new ideas had only partially permeated the policyprocess. As Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith have suggested in their reformulation oftheir advocacy coalition framework, significant perturbations external to thesubsystem (such as changes in public opinion) are a necessary but not sucientcause of change in the policy core attributes of a governmental programme.48 Infact, by the late 1980s, the conditions of the peace treaty had begun to dis-appear. Ironically, part of the peace treaty breakdown could be attributed to thefailure of the Inquiry process in its new guise.

The 1980s: Traditional Consultation Modalities Fail Again

In the early to mid 1980s, the new policy settlement of the 1970s held firm. Thusexpenditure on trunk roads was held down (between 1975 and 1985 roadsexpenditure as a percentage of total public expenditure declined from 2.8% to1.8%)49 while the environmentalists were subdued. John Tyme had retired fromthe fray in the late 1970s, and the Governments concessions on Inquiry rulesappeared to have secured a return to normality. In the late 1980s, however,exogenous and endogenous developments were taking place which were to blowthis peace treaty apart in the 1990s.In the 1980s, the road lobby had a key political ally in the Prime Minister,

Margaret Thatcher, who even refused to travel by rail and spoke enthusiasticallyof the great car economy. More tangibly in policy terms, there was increasingalarm in both ministerial and ocial circles about the continued growth intrac and the eects on road congestion. This led to the setting up of a JointTrunk Roads Policy Review between the Treasury and the Department ofTransport. The outcome of this review was the 1989 White Paper Roads forProsperity50 which announced a doubling of the trunk roads programme. In thelight of a National Road Trac Forecast that trac demand could increase bybetween 83% and 142% by the year 2025, compared with 1988, the new pro-gramme was aimed primarily at providing extra capacity on the motorways andother strategic inter-urban routes. Treasury backing for this programmeensured that it was given priority, and a 1990 Report stated that a substantial

46 Cmnd. 6836, Transport Policy, para. 246.47 Hall, Policy paradigms, social learning and the state, p. 279.48 P. A. Sabatier and H. C. Jenkins-Smith, The Advocacy Coalition Framework: an Assessment

in P. A. Sabatier (ed.), Theories of the Policy Process (Boulder CO, Westview, 1998, forthcoming).See also P. A. Sabatier, The advocacy framework: revisions and the relevance for Europe, Journalof European Public Policy, 5, 1 (1998), 98130.

49 Basic Road Statistics, 1995.50 Cmnd. 693, Roads for Prosperity (London, HMSO, 1989).



number of the new schemes would be completed by the year 2000.51 Conse-quently, total trunk roads expenditure increased again from 1.64 billion in198990 to 2.48 billion in 199394, and roads expenditure as a percentage oftotal public expenditure rose from 1.8% in 1985 to 2.5% in 1993.52 Thus, the oldhegemony seemed to have been restored, despite the hiatus of the 1970s. Ina sense, policy makers were able to concentrate on their traditional problemstream53 namely the need to somehow accommodate the ever increasingnumber of cars coming onto Britains roads. The new problem streams withwhich we are now very familiar, such as global warming and the adverse healtheects of exhaust pollution were not yet challenging the policy core beliefs of theexisting policy community.Moreover, the road lobby had only grudgingly accepted the 1970s peace

treaty, and in the late 1980s it managed to exploit the new political climate, withthe backing of the Prime Minister, to re-assert its strong position within the oldpolicy community. In that arena, at least, normality had returned. However,confining key policy decisions to this very restricted institutional site ran the riskthat those not incorporated would again seek other institutional sites wherethey could raise broader issues. The old consultative modalities could neitherconstrain the new interests nor the new issues.Thus, the Highway Inquiry was again to have an important eect on policy

change. The location was once more the M3 extension around Winchester, butthis time the impact of the Inquiry was to be much more convoluted than in the1970s. After the uproar at the 1970s Inquiry, the Inspector had recommendedthat the Government should reconsider the proposed line of the M3 to the Eastof Winchester. ln 1980 the Conservative Government had accepted this recom-mendation, and appointed consultants to look again at the problem. In 1983 theconsultants recommended a new route, further still to the East of the city,through Twyford Down. Initially, it appeared that the new line for the roadwould be acceptable to the aected interests, as identified by the Ministry ofTransport. Gradually, however, there was a realization locally that the new roadwould gouge a huge cutting through an area of great scenic beauty and ofnational archaeological importance. From small beginnings, the campaign tosave Twyford Down gathered support from interests initially reluctant todisturb the existing peace treaty. For example, one of the opponents empha-sizes that she and other key objectors deliberately conducted a rational andmeasured campaign in order to avoid a repetition of the highly emotional scenesof the 1970s, and also because they were determined not to discredit a soundcause with inaccuracies.54 At the two Highway Inquiries in 1985 and 1987, there-fore, opponents of the scheme adhered strictly to the rules. For example, unlikeTyme, they acknowledged the need for the road, and made no attempt todisrupt proceedings. In this respect, events had much more in common with the1960s M4 case study described by Gregory, than with Tymes eorts to createhis own distinctive rules.

51 Department of Transport, Trunk Roads, England into the 1990s (London, HMSO, 1990), paras23.

52 Basic Road Statistics, 1995.53 Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, pp. 90115.54 B. Bryant, Twyford Down, Roads Campaigning and Environmental Law (London, Spon, 1996),

p. 26.



Unfortunately for the Twyford Down campaigners, their model behaviourdid not bring the desired results. They had played by the old fashioned rulesreflecting the institutional modalities of consultation and, predictably perhaps,had got an old fashioned result. They had argued that the road should be putthrough a tunnel, and so avoid the damage and visual intrusion to the Downitself. Apparently, this plan did win favour with some key ocials within theDoT but was eventually vetoed by the Treasury on the grounds of cost. TheInspectors themselves, after each Inquiry, had recommended a cutting routerather than a tunnel. The Inquiry had been oered the chance to create a new,and final, peace treaty for the M3 but Ministers and ocials failed to grasp theopportunity. The scene was now set for the environmentalists 1990s counter-revolution against the power of the road lobby. This time, there was increasingdetermination to bring about enduring third order change and not to settle forthe second order change achieved in the 1970s.How can this change in attitude be explained? After all, in the 1950s,

for example, traditional processes of consultation had worked perfectly well.Environmental interests had either not used the Inquiry system or had actuallyhelped it to work by accepting the procedural rules of the game and the broadpolicy objectives. Yet by the 1990s the system was failing to accommodate therange of aected interests. The explanation for the change in approach by theenvironmentalists is partly that a new breed of environmental organization hademerged. Quite simply, by then, direct action in arenas without rules (such asthe Greenpeace campaigns on the open seas) had been shown to work in manywestern democracies. More importantly, by the 1990s the issue area was alreadycharacterized by a much broader knowledge and ideas base. What Weiss termsthe enlightenment function of research (in this case in policy sectors other thanthe roads sector) had begun to impinge on policy actors.55 Thus, the globalwarming problem, which had not even been discovered in the 1950s and 1960s,was by then conventional wisdom, as were the adverse health eects caused bymotor vehicle emissions. Road building was no longer simply a question of lossof amenity in the traditional sense, but raised major questions of health andeven climate a classic example of issue expansion.

The 1990s: The Emergence of a New Arena without Rules

After their defeat in the Inquiry arena, the Twyford Down road objectorssought new arenas in which to conduct their campaign, reflecting both themulti-issue and multi-arena politics which now characterizes politics in WesternEurope. For example, an attempt to challenge the legality of the scheme in theCourts (a tactic somewhat more common in Britain in the 1990s) proved fruit-less, and an inconclusive attempt was made to shift the issue to the EC arena(now extremely common in Britain) on the grounds that the Government hadfailed to conduct a proper Environmental Impact Assessment as required by EClaw.56 By the end of 1992, however, construction of the road had begun, and thenational environmental groups who had backed the campaign had withdrawndefeated. In 1993, however, the construction site was occupied by a rainbowcoalition of radical green activists and largely middle class local residents. On

55 C. Weiss, Using Social Research in Public Policy Making (Lexington, Heath, 1977).56 Bryant, Twyford Down Roads Campaigning and Environmental Law, pp. 22593.



several occasions during the year, this direct action was transformed into a seriesof large scale demonstrations, all attracting national mass media attentioncomparable to that secured by Tyme in the 1970s. The campaign culminated inJuly 1993 when seven protesters were jailed for defying a High Court injunctionnot to occupy the site.The Twyford Down protesters had exploited the lack of rules governing

construction sites (indeed, two of them subsequently received substantial com-pensation for wrongful arrest) and, although they could not prevent construc-tion of the road, had achieved some success on several levels. First, securitycosts now had to be built into controversial road schemes (in 1995 the NationalAudit Oce estimated that the security costs of five sites totalled 18 million).Secondly, the publicity given to the direct action had once again begun to trans-form the image of road building towards the values held by the environment-alists. Thirdly, photographs of the major damage done to Twyford Down by thenew road became important symbols in the general campaign against roadbuilding.In the 1990s, however, Highway Inquiries had little part to play as an institu-

tional site for consultation. The intensity of the battle between rival interestswas greater than in the 1970s, reflecting the issue expansion suggested above,and also that new arenas had come to the fore. Now, a number of the TwyfordDown protesters were instrumental in founding Road Alert! a groupdesigned to promote and co-ordinate the direct action movement. Thus, justas Tyme had done in the 1970s, these new policy or movement entrepreneursexploited what they saw as a new market opportunity57 on the many roadconstruction sites available to them. Specific issues, such as this or that piece ofamenity, were bundled into a broader issue framework, drawing upon, by then,respectable scientific research about the disbenefits of building yet more roads.Over the next few years, large scale occupation of road construction sites, allattracting considerable national media attention, took place on regularoccasions. None of these occupations could prevent a road being built, butthere was evidence that the threat of occupation was causing the DTp to havesecond thoughts about future schemes. For example, the long standingcampaign to prevent the East London River Crossing running through theancient Oxleas Wood achieved its aims shortly after 3000 people signed apetition vowing to lie down in front of the bulldozers if construction wentahead.Eventually, the Government recognized the threat posed by direct action,

and, as in the case of Inquiries, attempted to impose its own rules in order toconfine participation to recognized channels. Consequently, the 1994 CriminalJustice and Public Order Act introduced the new oence of aggravated trespass.Current evidence suggests, however, that this new legislation, far from con-straining the issue, has simply facilitated its further expansion by adding a newdimension to the protesters portfolio of arguments. Thus, in garbage canfashion58 the issue of civil liberties and the rights of the unorganized to

57 J. J. Richardson, The market for political activism: interest groups as a challenge to politicalparties, West European Politics, 18, (1995), 11639.

58 M. D. Cohen, J. G. March and J. P. Olsen, A garbage can model of organisational choice,Administrative Science Quarterly, 17 (1972), 125.



participate in the formulation of public policy have now been drawn into theonce simple, roads issue.By the mid-1990s, the sustained multi-arena, issue expansion approach was

helping to produce major changes in public policy. In 1995, the British RoadFederation estimated that a series of cuts had shrunk trunk roads expenditurefrom a 20 billion 500-scheme programme in 1993 to a 6 billion programme of150 schemes in 1996. In fact only nine publicly funded trunk roads improvementschemes were expected to start in 1996.59 It is, of course, possible to suggest thatthis was all simply an artefact of exogenous change namely the Governmentsfirm commitment to reduce public expenditure in order to fund tax cutsas a General Election approached. No doubt the Treasury was, as usual, beingopportunistic in forcing cuts on one of the spending departments. As TheEconomist noted in mid 1996, pressed by a fearsome alliance of the Treasuryand environmentalists, the government has ditched most new road construc-tion.60 Thus, one might argue that a disconnected but expedient alliance hademerged from a combination of expenditure squeeze and successful issueexpansion.These changes might be seen as a possibly temporary outcome of the normal

swings and roundabouts of traditional pressure group politics, just as in 1989.However, there is some evidence of a paradigm shift in the political discourse, asa precursor of third order change. For example, in 1994, Transport Secretary,Brian Mawhinney, had declared that the Great Car Economy was not a phrasehe would be using in future. Instead, he considered that managing trac ratherthan building roads oered the best way forward.61 He followed this up bymaking an impassioned plea for a national transport debate and a cease-fire inthe feuding over transport issues.62 As in the 1970s, the Government wasdesperately seeking both a new peace treaty and an institutional modality forbringing together these very diverse and conflicting interests who had by nowclaimed stakeholder status in this policy area. On the one hand, the Governmentsought to tighten up on Inquiry procedures by empowering Inspectors to refuseto hear what they considered to be irrelevant or repetitious evidence. On theother, it also experimented with a number of round table pre-inquiry confer-ences in an attempt to secure more local peace treaties. This had all theappearance of locking the stable door after the horse had bolted, for by now theInquiry process had been largely discredited in the eyes of the environmentalists,while its own heyday as an instrument of policy change in the Tyme era hadpassed into history.

Participation, Policy Discourse and Policy Change

Although policy sectors in a state of war may be highly inconvenient forGovernments, they do suggest conditions under which policy change can takeplace. In the case of trunk roads, there were important links between institu-tional dynamics and policy change. As Marr observes, the trunk roads story is

59 Contact Journal, 07 December 1995.60 The Economist, 10 July 1996.61 Observer, 16 October 1994.62 Financial Times, 08 December 1994.



instructive for anyone looking at how British politics really works, because itbrings together so many relevant new themes:

The green organizations involved in the anti-roads campaign muster farmore active members than all the political parties sitting in the House of

Commons, and the disproportion is particularly large among youngervoters. The main parties were all split on the roads question and rarely ledthe argument. The anti-roads movement used a wider variety of politicalprotest, ranging from sabotage and mass civil disobedience on the one

hand, to a subtle understanding of the Whitehall power-play and the use ofresearch to sway opinion, which left most opposition politicians wallowingfar behind . . . Ministers rarely spoke publicly about the issues involved, and

political leaders found themselves unable to make capital from them . . .Here is a new politics confronting an Old Constitution.63

Our own characterization of the roads policy process, similar to Marrs, isquite dierent from earlier models, which saw the policy processes as wellordered and managed, predictable, essentially private, and reflecting a stableand well mannered relationship between government and outside interests. Thepolitical skill of the newer breed of environmentalist was in linking whatBaumgartner and Jones term image and venue. There was an important linkbetween shifting the trunk roads debate to a dierent venue, and the attempt tochange the nature of the political discourse in order to bring about a re-framingof the problem. As we have seen participation can take dierent forms. Thispossibly suggests a reappraisal of the importance of policy insiders andoutsiders.64 We noted that John Tyme understood instinctively the correctarena for his activity, and made no attempt to lobby central governmentdirectly. In the 1990s, the environmentalists have adopted similar tactics on theconstruction sites and in the public arena generally. As one leading environ-mental campaigner puts it: If people at the Department of Transport want toknow what Im doing, let them read about it in the papers!65 Nevertheless,evidence from our interviews with ministers and senior ocials suggests thatTyme had a significant eect within Whitehall.As we suggested earlier, Ministers took note of the impact of these outsiders.

But there is some evidence to suggest that the outsiders had insider allies. As onesenior ocial put it to us, in the case of trunk roads, he believed that if thosewithin Whitehall seeking third order change openly attacked DoT policy, thenthey would quickly lose credibility within the conventional policy network.Instead, he considered that a more eective technique was to resist policy initia-tives from the DoT, while seeking to undermine and change the values of theroads advocates with relentless pressure from a wide range of alternative arenas.Thus, he believed that civil servants were adept at spotting trends, and that theWhitehall network would operate to bring about a change in the natural flowof policy over time.66

63 A. Marr, Ruling Britannia. The Failure and Future of British Democracy (London, MichaelJoseph, 1995), pp. 3145.

64 E.g. see Grant, Pressure Groups, Politics and Democracy in Britain, pp. 1421 and W. A.Maloney, A. G. Jordan and A. M. McLaughlin, Interest groups and public policy. The insider/outsider model revisited, Journal of Public Policy, 14 (1994), 1738.

65 Interview, 24 October 1995.66 Interview, 12 October 1995.



Measuring these changes is, of course, dicult, especially as existing policies,like large oil tankers, may change direction imperceptibly at first. Moreover,there is always the possibility that a change in the discourse is simply cheaptalk.67 However, apart from the rapidly declining level of public expenditure ontrunk road building indicated earlier, there are other important indicatorsof change. For example, in 1996 the Government published its Green Paper,Transport, The Way Forward setting out its views on policy development.68 TheGreen Paper conceded that the debate showed a strong preference for improvedpublic transport over expanded roads capacity and stated that the Governmentbelieves there needs to be a shift in priorities to reflect this.69 An importanttheme related directly to one of the main concerns of our study namely, theattempts by anti-roads groups to change the way policy makers frame transportproblems. The whole tenor of the Paper was that transport problems had to beviewed in a new light. No better indicator of this changing discourse was thestatement that future spending will focus, increasingly, on maintaining andmanaging the capacity of existing roads, and selective improvements through newconstruction, such as providing much needed bypasses and removing bottlenecks.70

As if to underscore the fact that this was not simply rhetorical discoursedesigned to disguise business as usual, it reminded readers that the Govern-ments review of the Trunk Roads Programme, published in November 1995,had withdrawn some 77 road schemes from the programme . . . either becausethey were no longer considered to be environmentally acceptable or becausethey were unlikely to be taken forward in the foreseeable future.71 By 1996, inits autumn Budget, the Government was announcing the fourth year of cuts inroads expenditure, this time by another 6 billion. The problems of increasingtrac congestion remained much as they had done in the late 1980s, but nowroads were no longer seen as the policy solution.In 1997, the new Labour Government quickly indicated that it wished to

develop this policy by announcing a review of the whole trunk roads programmewhich would question the actual basis of road building decisions. This reviewwould run alongside preparations for a 1998 White Paper covering all modes oftransport, with ministers claiming there was now a consensus that the car shouldbe used less, and instead that an integrated public transport system should bedeveloped. As part of the White Paper, the Government was to look at thepossibility of creating a dedicated income stream for public transport fromsources such as motorway tolls, congestion charges in cities or a business levy.The debate was moving on, therefore, from defining roads as a policy problem,to the even more politically sensitive topic of imposing tolls.To demonstrate its intent, the Government subjected twelve particularly

controversial trunk road schemes to an accelerated review. This plan backfiredon the government somewhat, however, through internal disagreements betweenministers. In the event, two schemes were abandoned (including the contro-versial Salisbury bypass), four approved and the decisions on the other fivedeferred. The Transport Department had apparently wished to approve nearly

67 W. H. Riker, Liberalism against Populism: a Confrontation between the Theory of Democracyand the Theory of Social Choice (San Francisco, Freeman, 1982).

68 Cmnd. 3234, Transport. The Way Forward (London, HMSO, 1996).69 Cmnd. 3234, Transport. The Way Forward, p. 8.70 Cmnd. 3234, Transport. The Way Forward, p. 65.71 Cmnd. 3234, Transport. The Way Forward, p. 65.



all of the schemes, but the Labour Government had merged the Transport andEnvironment Departments under a Secretary of State, and the latter placed aveto on these plans. The traditionally roads biased Transport Department was,therefore, no longer in full control of its own destiny, which further weakenedthe advocacy coalition for road building.Hence, there is some indication that the policy core beliefs are beginning to

change in that environmental factors are being given much greater weight, albeitthat this is happily (for the Government) coincident with its desire to reducepublic expenditure. In addition to the specific policy entrepreneurship of theanti-roads protesters, the main focus of this study, it is evident that many otheractors have been drawn into the roads policy process, and that they too areimportant. Some of these actors are eminently respectable and of insiderstatus. The most obvious example of these is, of course, The Royal Commissionon Environmental Pollution. Its Report, Transport and the Environment, pub-lished in October 1994,72 stated that it did not regard . . . this cycle of continuedroad building facilitating continual growth of trac as environmentally sustain-able.73 Other new actors recognized as stakeholders include doctors on ques-tions of the health risks of pollution, and the scientific community on questionsof global warming. Even the more general issue of sustainability has begun toenter the transport debate.74 This suggests that although, as Sabatier andJenkins-Smith argue, existing (advocacy) coalition members resist informationsuggesting that their policy core beliefs may be involved and/or unattainable,75

this resistance had been overcome by the combination of forces discussed above.Behind these important shifts lay, of course, both the perception and reality ofpublic opinion. Here we see what Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith describe as asignificant perturbation.76 Growing evidence suggests that both public opinionitself and Governments perception of it is an important disturbance or perturb-ation for the sub-system of trunk roads policy. Thus, the Green Paper reportedthat surveys had revealed that:

There appears to have been a shift over the last five years or so away fromsupport for road building and towards measures to restrain car travel or

increase its costs. The reasons for the shift are not entirely clear: it mayreflect greater publicity given to environmental issues, especially to air pollu-tion and asthma, and a growing belief that building and widening roads inresponse to growing demand does not oer a long-term solution to the

problems caused by trac growth.77

Conclusion: Managing Consultation in the Absence of Core Policy Consensus

We began by suggesting that one of the central tasks of modern government isthe management of consultation with the wide range and large numbers ofinterest groups seeking to influence public policy. Disruption and exploitation

72 Cmnd. 2674, Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Eighteenth Report, Transportand the Environment (London, HMSO, 1994).

73 Cmnd. 2674, Transport and the Environment, p. xiii.74 E.g. UK Round Table on Sustainable Development, Defining a Sustainable Transport Sector

(London, Department of the Environment, 1996), paras 305.75 Sabatier, Policy Change Over a Decade or More, p. 35.76 Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, The Advocacy Coalition Framework: an Assessment, p. 27.77 Cmnd. 3234, Transport. The Way Forward, p. 18.



of Highway Inquiries began a very long process of change in policy discourseand policy itself, during which the traditional stakeholders fought back torestore their hegemony over the policy area. In time, however, the new interestswere able to find more arenas without rules, by which time other, morerespectable, interests had also demanded and gained stakeholder status. Also,new knowledge and ideas had permeated both public and elite opinions. Theend result is that the policy discourse has changed fundamentally and policyitself is exhibiting some of the characteristics of third order change as defined byHall.78 Yet one of the central problems of governance remains namely, howcan government find eective institutional modalities through which to consultand involve the wide range of interests now admitted to the policy area and tosecure a consensus when mutually exclusive frames are being advocated?Government has adopted three basic strategies. First, it has itself upheld much

of the discourse and framing of the anti-roads coalition. Roads are definitely theproblem not the solution nowadays. Secondly, policy has changed significantly.Thus, major reductions in real resources have been made possible in this policyarea. This is in contrast to health, for example, where policy change has had tobe confined to attempts to secure eciency gains via such measures as theinternal market in the national health service. The post-war programmes fortrunk road building now seem like a geological layer from the past, as the policyflow has changed in response to new problems, new ideas and new interests.Like the tower blocks which are the monuments of the post-war fashion inhousing policy, so the motorways and trunk roads once trumpeted as the way tomodernization are instead acquiring the popular image of the road to hell!Thirdly, attempts are being made to incorporate some of the new interests in theclassic fashion of governments faced with new groups and movements. Not onlyare doctors and scientists routinely admitted to policy deliberations, via thetraditional advisory committee structures still surrounding British government,but also people like Stephen Joseph, Director of Transport 2000 (a group longopposed to more trunk roads and strongly biased towards the development ofpublic transport) are now members of the Standing Advisory Committee onTrunk Road Assessment and the UK Round Table on Sustainable Develop-ment.The risk for the anti-roads interests is, of course, that as they get absorbed

into a core policy community their impact might be greatly reduced. There is acontinuing, if low key, debate amongst the anti-roads groups about the possiblelimitations of direct action, and the potential advantages in seeking to becomeinsiders. The central issue for them is to decide whether an outsider strategyis eective only in altering the policy image and starting the process of thirdorder change, and an insider strategy is required in order to consolidate thesegains. This was where the environmental lobby failed in the 1980s when theroads lobby exploited its insider status to regain its hegemony. The 1990s,however, look rather dierent for a number of reasons, not least of which is thecontinuing ability of anti-roads groups to exploit the multi-arena politics of theperiod. They know that skilful exploitation of alternative venues or institutionalsites does work, and that this strategy may not be inconsistent with the actionsof others, as insiders, to consolidate the considerable gains already made. Wemay predict, therefore, that governments will continue to find diculty in

78 Hall, Policy paradigms, social learning and the state, p. 279.



constraining debate and participation via the usual procedures of incorpora-tion. In so far as new and stable policy communities can be reconstructed onthe old model, they may find themselves reacting, again, to agendas setelsewhere and by others. Seemingly, the new politics is here to stay andgovernments risk being bounced along by action which they cannot structureand constrain.

(Accepted: 6 January 1997)



Date post:	10-Nov-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	intemperante
View:	214 times
Download:	0 times

Arenas Without Rules and the Policy Change Process. Outsider Groups and British Roads Policy

Documents