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Public Storylines in the British Transition from Rail to Road Transport (1896-2000): Discursive struggles in the multi-level perspective

Published as: Roberts, C. and Geels, F.W., 2018, Public storylines in the British transition from rail to road transport (1896-2000): Discursive struggles in the Multi-Level Perspective, Science as Culture, 27(4), 513-542

Abstract:

An analysis of the transition from railways to highways as the dominant British transport system during the twentieth century shows that public storylines about competing niche and regime technologies can have a powerful influence on socio-technical transitions. These storylines are developed by supporters and opponents of the competing technologies, with each group attempting to frame their favoured technology positively. The public salience of these storylines can be evaluated by assessing how highly they score on four elements of frame resonance: empirical fit, experiential commensurability, actor credibility, and macro-cultural resonance. These storylines can be seen at play across the entirety of the transition to a road-based transport system, from the very early history of the automobile through to the turn of the millennium, when public opposition to road transport was becoming increasingly pronounced. This case study uniquely traces discursive conflict over the entire course of a multi-decade transition. While existing literature in the multi-level perspective typically emphasises the disadvantages faced by niche-innovations, this case study shows that powerful storylines, enabled by the right cultural repertoires and possibly negative storylines about existing socio-technical systems, can create powerful political support for a new technology, giving it an advantage against more established incumbents.

Keywords: Socio-technical transitions; Discursive storylines; History of transport;

Transport politics; Multi-level perspective

Introduction

New technologies often struggle to attain legitimacy and discursive support (Smith and Raven, 2012), as is currently visible in public debates about wind turbines (due to noise, landscape impacts, or effects on wildlife) or the safety and environmental impacts of nuclear power. Established socio-technical regimes, in contrast, typically enjoy the support of durable, established discourses (Pesch, 2015). Auto-mobility is a good example of this, being commonly perceived as offering speed, convenience, and freedom, regardless of common complaints about air pollution, accidents, and congestion..

The discursive hurdles facing incumbent technologies is addressed in a wide-ranging literature on discourse in socio-technical transitions (Geels and Verhees, 2011; Jensen, 2012; Sovacool and Brossman, 2013; Pesch, 2015; Hermwille, 2016, Rosenbloom et al., 2016, Roberts, 2017). This literature mainly makes use of case studies focusing on specific instances of discursive conflict during transitions, such as debates over the legitimacy of new technologies (Bergek et al., 2008; Berkhout, 2006; Sovacool and Brossmann, 2013); public conflicts as they become more successful (Markard et al., 2016; Rosenbloom et al., 2016); or challenges to the legitimacy of established socio-technical regimes (Geels and Verhees, 2011; Jensen , 2012; Hermwille, 2016; Roberts, 2017). This literature thus accounts for conflict in socio-technical transitions, but does not do so longitudinally for the entire course of transitions. This is a problem, as transitions are multi-decadal processes, in which in which discourses attached to a radical innovation must change as the technology they support or oppose develops into an established incumbent system (Pesch, 2015).

We therefore aim to expand on the literature on discursive conflict in socio-technical transitions by developing a longitudinal understanding of how discursive storylines, both supportive of, and in opposition to, a niche innovation, develop in response to wider changes in the transition context. We adopt an argumentative/rhetorical discourse approach, highlighting the goal-oriented, instrumental use of language by conscious, reflexive actors trying to shape perceptions in an effort to ensure support or opposition for niche or regime technologies in an effort to ensure support from key decision makers and the general public (Lounsbury and Glynn 2001; Geels et al., 2007; Garud et al., 2014). This assumption allows us to track the development of discourses as they shape a socio-technical transition, but also respond to new challenges and opportunities from the wider transition context. Discursive storylines thus respond to evolving transition challenges, but also to contribute to them, with their contribution depending on their resonance with different audiences, as well as their content. To look for a wider range of discursive conflicts, we focus on discourses aimed at wider publics, rather than expert groups such as engineers or policy actors.

Based on this delineation of the research topic, we address two research questions: 1) how do discursive storylines change in the course of socio-technical transitions? 2) How does the resonance of these storylines develop over time?

To answer these questions, section 2 develops a conceptual perspective combining ideas from discourse analysis with the multi-level perspective (MLP) (Geels, 2005a; Smith et al., 2010), to delineate four phases, each of which includes a different set of challenges which niche and regime supporters and opponents respond to by developing competing storylines. with different challenges for which we can develop propositions about different storylines. We confront this framework with a historical case study of the transition from railways to cars as the dominant inter-city transport system in the United Kingdom, from the early emergence of cars to their replacement of the railways as the dominant transport regime. Section 3 discusses methodological issues. Section 4 presents the case study. Section 5 considers this case study in light of the conceptual framework, and section 6 draws conclusions.

Analytical perspective

This section integrates two strands of literature to develop an analytical perspective that accounts for longitudinal development of discourse in socio-technical transitions. The first of these is the multi-level perspective, which provides a longitudinal understanding of transition struggles. The second is various literatures on storylines and frame resonance, which provide an account of socio-technical storylines and their resonance. The resulting analytical framework is further elaborated in the analysis section, based on case study findings.

Multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions

The multi-level perspective (MLP) conceptualizes transitions as shifts in ‘socio-technical systems’ of technologies, supply chains, infrastructures, markets, regulations, user practices, and cultural meanings providing societal functions such as mobility, housing and sustenance (Geels, 2004; Geels and Schot, 2007). These shifts occur through interactions occurring at three conceptual levels. At the regime level, existing systems are maintained, defended and incrementally improved by incumbent actors, who are guided by a deeply entrenched rules and institutions, termed ‘socio-technical regimes’. At the niche level, radical innovations gain a foothold in particular applications or experimental spaces. These niches facilitate network building and learning around the innovation, including the articulation of “cultural and symbolic meaning” (Schot and Geels, 2008: 540), possibly allowing the niche-innovation to develop to a point where it can mount a challenge to the incumbent socio-technical regime. The third level is the socio-technical landscape, which refers to broad contextual developments, for example in large-scale political, cultural, or economic trends. These developments can be sudden shocks, such as wars or economic crises, or gradual changes, such as demographic shifts. Landscape events can facilitate transitions by destabilising incumbent regimes and creating windows of opportunity for niche-innovations.

The MLP distinguishes four phases in transition processes, although it is not teleologically pre-ordained that any one innovation will make it through all four phases (Geels, 2005b; 2007a; 2014):

1) Radical innovations emerge in niches on the fringe of existing regimes, supported by unstable networks of innovators who propagate different design options.

2) The innovation enters small market niches that provide resources for further development, specialization, and stabilisation of expectations and rules.

3) The innovation competes directly with the established regime. It can succeed in this competition due to a combination of internal drivers (such as price/performance improvements and scale economies) and windows of opportunity created by tensions in the regime or landscape pressures.

4) The innovation substitutes the existing system and creates a new regime which becomes institutionalised and taken for-granted, resulting in adjustments in infrastructures, policies, lifestyles and views on normality.

The cultural dimension is one dimension of struggles between niche-innovations and regimes, and appears at all levels of the MLP, and in multiple arenas of transitions (public debates, politics, commerce, etc.) (Fischer and Gottweis, 2012; Deuten and Rip, 2000).

Our approach to discourse analysis

Heracleous and Mershak (2004) distinguish three understandings of discourse. The communicative view of discourse, which we reject as too naive and simple, sees discourse as a neutral medium for conversation. The constitutive view of discourse suggests that discourse is fundamentally constitutive of actors’ realities: “without discourse, there is no reality, and without understanding discourse we cannot understand our reality, our experience or ourselves” (Phillips and Hardy, 2002: 2). While we sympathise with this view on ontological grounds, its tendency towards reductionism, in which language or texts are seen as the most foundational or ‘ultimate’ dimension of reality (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000; Fairclough, 2005) conflicts with our ontological choice for a more co-evolutionary or interactive approach that also acknowledges the causal importance of non-discursive dimensions, as well as the ability of actors to strategically use discourse for their own ends.

We therefore adopt the ‘situated action’ (Heracleous and Mershak, 2004) or argumentative/rhetorical view of discourse (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000), which assumes that actors’ statements and utterances have deliberate instrumental effects on other actors, for example persuading them that something is legitimate or worthy of support. Discursive resources are thus seen as a ‘toolkit’ (Swidler, 1986) that actors can use strategically. This approach thus accepts that actors are shaped by existing discourses, but also gives them purposive agency to shape and contest discursive meaning.

We assume that the public sphere is an important (though not the only) arena for discursive competition in socio-technical transitions. Actors in transitions aim to influence public discourse about socio-technical systems because this discourse shapes the perceptions of policymakers, investors, and others who can support a niche or regime technology (Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001; Geels et al., 2007). This leads to an antagonistic dichotomy between ‘for’ and ‘against’ each technology, as suggested by Rip and Talma (1998).

A concrete instantiation of discourse, which we will use in this paper, are storylines, which Hajer (2006: 69) describes as “a condensed statement summarising complex narratives, used by people as ‘short hand’ in discussions”. Storylines are a ‘mid-range concept,’ (Hajer, 1995), which sits at a higher level of aggregation than individual texts, but a lower level than broad cultural tropes or repertories (Swidler, 1989). They selectively mobilize aspects of reality and embody narratives or symbols (phrases, labels, metaphors) that shape meanings, and also act as organising principles for discourse coalitions (Bulkeley, 2000; Hajer, 1995). Because it is difficult to study the rhetorical strategies of all relevant actors over multiple decades, we analyse interactions between competing storylines, and how these vary over time.

Storylines are strategically mobilized during transitions in debates about particular topics or issues that appear as transitions unfold (e.g. accidents caused by cars or poor service by railways). Discursive struggles, in other words, are about something. Unlike the wider sociological literature on issues (Marres, 2007; Bigelow et al., 1993), we see multiple issues or topics as arenas or platforms for public struggles between niche and regime supporters. We accept that single issues are socially shaped, defined and placed on agendas, but this is beyond our analytical focus. While debates about specific topics may be short-lived, storylines evolve over time through thematic linkages between multiple topics.

To understand what shapes the salience of storylines, we use the concept of resonance, or the appeal of a storyline for its intended audience. Various determinants of discursive resonance have been articulated, such as alignment with “other stories in currency and with the broader discourses that are unfolding” (Garud et al., 2014: 1481). One such set of broader discourses is identified in flexible toolkits which actors use creatively in their discourses. Also relevant is McGee’s (1980) concept of the ‘ideograph’: ideologically-charged terms such as freedom, democracy, or progress to which actors can link their arguments. These cultural repertoires or ideographs fit well with the MLP’s landscape level: they cannot be influenced at will by regime and niche actors, but change slowly over time as a complex aggregative result of discursive struggles in multiple domains.

Building on Benford and Snow’s (2000) and Geels and Verhees’ (2011) further work on discursive resonance, we propose that storylines have higher resonance with wider publics if they score well on the following dimensions.

· Empirical fit describes the extent to which a storyline fits with widely-acknowledged (but not necessarily objectively true) facts about the world.

· Experiential commensurability describes the extent to which a storyline fits with the lived experience of its audience.

· Macro-cultural resonance describes the extent to which a storyline fits with broader cultural repertoires and ideographs, as discussed above.

· Actor credibility describes the extent to which the actors promoting a storyline are perceived as knowledgeable and trustworthy.

Note that we have chosen to omit Benford and Snow’s category of centrality, which refers to the perceived importance of the topic that a frame speaks to, because our research focuses on competition between storylines addressing the same topic. We suggest that actors strategically craft storylines that fit with these frame resonance dimensions (and attack the opponents’ storylines to lower their fit).

Storylines in the course of transitions

Combining ideas from section 2.1 and 2.2, we now propose an analytical scheme for mapping the longitudinal development of storylines over time. While the specific content of storylines depends on landscape-level repertoires and the transition context, this framework proposes a pattern in what storylines rhetorically aim to achieve at different points during a transition. We use the four transition phases described in section 2.1 and address three analytical issues: a) the core challenges or struggles in each phase, b) the storylines actors can develop to influence these challenges or struggles, c) which dimension of frame resonance these storylines are likely to mobilize.

The first phase is legitimation and early support. In this phase, radical niche-innovations face two core challenges: a 'liability of newness' (Freeman et al., 1983), (they may be seen as radical or strange); and a lack of resources and allies to aid in further development. Niche actors’ goals are therefore twofold: First, they must establish the basic legitimacy of their innovation (Geels and Verhees, 2011; Rao, 2015); and, secondly, they must attract external support to enable niche development (Smith and Raven, 2012).

To accomplish this, storylines supporting the niche-innovation are unlikely to be able to draw on strong empirical fit or experiential commensurability, due to the lack of a strong track record. Positive storylines are therefore more likely to rely on macro-cultural resonance, using visions of the future to position the innovation in a way that appeals to cultural norms. The sociology of expectations (Borup et al., 2006; Bakker et al., 2011; Van Lente, 2012) emphasizes the performative roles that visions and expectations play in early technological development: They function as strategic ‘bids’ for public support, helping niche-innovations attract attention, direct learning processes, and coordinate action.

The second phase is societal embedding. As radical innovations gain widespread public use and acceptance, must be embedded in broader societal contexts (Deuten et al., 1997). This requires niche actors to advocate for adjustments in policies, user practices, economic contexts and infrastructures. To do this, they emphasise not just technology-specific characteristics, but also problems in the existing regime or broader society the niche technology may help address (Greenwood et al., 2002).

Niche actors are also likely to face stronger negative storylines during this phase, drawing empirical fit and experiential commensurability from the increasing problems associated with the expanding niche-innovation. These might include accidents, conflicts with other systems, or disruptions of people’s lives. At the same time, however, the niche-innovation will be starting to demonstrate its utility, meaning that in addition to positive visions, its supporters can now make empirically credible and experientially commensurable arguments about the niche-innovation’s capacity to fix problems in the incumbent regime.

The third phase is regime competition. Once a new technology establishes itself as a stable, reliable, and effective system, it faces political and commercial conflict with the incumbent regime over public resources, policy support, and consumer loyalty. The incumbent regime will push aggressively against the clear threat posed by niche-innovation, possibly by mobilizing political connections (Geels, 2014; Hess, 2014). Niche actors’ primary goal in this phase is therefore to position their system as more deserving of large-scale public support, both in terms of widespread use and favourable policies, than the incumbent system.

At this point both the incumbent system and the new technology are stable, reliable, and demonstrably functional systems. The niche-innovation has a few possible advantages, however. First, it may still have a more open possibility space (Berkhout, 2006), allowing it to be portrayed as the harbinger of a new age or new kind of society, building macro-cultural resonance for positive storylines. The incumbent system, meanwhile might be the source of long-standing public frustrations due to unsolved problems (Roberts, 2017).

The fourth phase is regime consolidation. When the new technology replaces the existing system, it becomes the new incumbent regime, meaning that the principal challenge for its supporters is to deal with on-going problems and ensure that it continues to be perceived as legitimate and worthy of support (Jensen, 2012). This requires, firstly, a response to problems whose persistence or prominence might contribute to long-term, stable negative storylines about the regime (Roberts, 2017). Supporters of the now incumbent technology will be able to rely on overwhelming empirical fit and actor credibility for storylines portraying the system as stable, reliable, and dependable.

Methodology

The development of storylines in socio-technical transitions is a complex and context-dependent phenomenon well suited to a qualitative case study methodology (Eisenhardt, 1989; Flyvbjerg, 2006). To explore the conceptual framework presented in section 2.3, we therefore develop a paradigmatic case study (Flyvbjerg, 2006), to provide an empirical reference point for the wide range of storylines discussed above. Intercity surface transport is an ideal case for this, as its high visibility and the big public disagreements it provokes ensure a large number of storylines and topics to investigate. While the content of these storylines is specific to the case and therefore not predicted in detail by the conceptual framework, the framework can assess how these storylines appeal to shifting opportunities for frame resonance. Our case study therefore observes storylines promoting and opposing road transport in the United Kingdom from the early emergence of cars in the late nineteenth century to the year 2000. The British transport system is a good setting for this research because are many media and political archives in which to trace storylines, and because as an island nation, the United Kingdom’s surface transport networks do not normally intersect with those of other countries.

We used secondary historical sources to divide the transition into four periods. In each period, we used historical primary sources (newspapers, magazines, advertisements), selected to reflect social and political diversity in their audiences. Each source was searched using a sampling technique to allow the entire period of the transition to be considered. The sources and the sampling methodologies applied to each one are listed in table 1.

We looked for prominent topics in each source using two techniques. Firstly, we read them in detail to assess the relative importance of different topics based on factors such as the strength of the language and the prominence and biases of the writer. Secondly, to guard against selection bias in the previous approach, we applied a quantitative content analysis of the newspaper sources (which are used for this approach due to their availability in easily searchable databases which can sort articles algorithmically). We read the top 30 opinion articles in each of three prominent British newspapers, as sorted by relevance according to the search engine on Proquest’s newspaper archive, and recorded the topics appearing in each one. The topics discovered using both techniques were amalgamated into wider storylines by looking for common causes or courses of action that are linked to each topic.

Case study: The transition towards road transport in the United Kingdom (1896-2000)

Cars in the United Kingdom emerged during the late nineteenth century, but remained recreational novelties until after the First World War, when they became a more utilitarian transport system capable of competing with the railways. Partly due to the construction of motorways, this system expanded dramatically after the Second World War, eclipsing the railways by the 1960s (Figure 1). Based on these turning points, we have divided the case study into four periods: 1896-1918, 1918-1945, 1945-1963, 1963-2000.

For each period, we first describe the transition context and prevailing challenges for niche actors. Next, we identify the most prominent topics in the period, the storylines that these topics contributed to, and the elements of frame resonance from which these storylines benefited. Where relevant, we also describe the storylines pertaining to the railways.

Period 1: Legitimation and early support (1896-1918)

Before the First World War, cars were recreational vehicles rather than a practical means of transport (Jeremiah, 2007). The dominant political struggle over was over the legal rights of cars on public highways, which played out in debates such as those around the 1896 Locomotives on Highways Act and the 1903 Motor Car Act (Bagwell, 1988; Jeremiah, 2007). The issues at stake in these debates appear prominently in table 2, which summarises the results of a quantitative analysis of newspaper opinion articles about cars between 1896 and 1918, recording the popularity of each topic as a ratio of the articles surveyed. It shows that safety concerns such as accidents and spooked horses were linked to calls for greater regulation on cars. At the same time, however, another collection of topics portrayed cars as progressive and exciting, and motorists as unfairly oppressed.

The text of the articles themselves shows that opposition to cars was often framed in class terms, with critics describing driving as a dangerous nuisance inflicted by the upper classes on the rest of society (The Daily Mail, 1903, The Manchester Guardian, 1908, Butterworth, 1909). Support for cars in newspapers and car magazines, meanwhile, often associated driving with ideographs such as freedom, progress, or gentlemanliness (Autocar, 1896; Bath Chair et al, 1902). In 1896, for example, the editor of Autocar complained that “innovation and enterprise are throttled at their birth in this land of so-called freedom” (Autocar 1896; Bath Chair et al, 1902).

Parliamentary debates around the 1896 Locomotives on Highways Act and the 1903 Motor Traffic Act included many references to cars as a dangerous and annoying upper-class technology, with conservative MP Lord Lamington describing motoring as “a branch of sport indulged in on the public roads at considerable risk to the public” (HL Deb 30 April 1903 vol 121 col 926-8). Positive parliamentary depictions of road transport described its future potential as a useful transport system, although a suggestion that the roads might one day supplant rural light railways was laughed at in Parliament (HC Deb 30 June 1896 vol 42 col 440).

Advertisements, car magazines, and newspaper coverage of the British International Motor Show echo the storylines promoted by car advocates elsewhere, positioning cars as a technological novelty and status object. They include elaborate technical descriptions, and clearly indicated an upper-class audience with references to fine wines and servants (Automobile Correspondent, 1908). As the class criticism of cars mounted, however, it became increasingly common to talk instead about the possibility of “cars for everyone” in these forums (Edge, 1913; Bliss, 1908), despite the fact that cars remained unaffordable to most of the middle and working classes (O’Connell, 1998).

Storylines in this phase leveraged themes of progress, annoyance, danger, and class. The dominant negative storyline about cars portrayed them as dangerous, annoying, and impractical machines operated by the upper classes to the detriment of everyone else. This developed macro-cultural resonance from its association with class conflict, and empirical fit and experiential commensurability from the problems caused by cars. An early positive storyline describing cars as technical novelties or elite status objects had experiential commensurability among wealthy recreational motorists, but only exacerbated the negative storyline discussed above. A second storyline predicting “cars for everyone” was more effective in creating broader appeal for cars (O’Connell, 1998), and giving discursive cover for politicians as they created a legal framework for driving (O’Connell, 1998).

Period 2: Societal embedding (1918-1945)

The First World War facilitated technical and cost improvements in road transport, allowing it to become reliable, efficient, and, particularly thanks to buses, more affordable (Bagwell, 1988; Dyos and Aldcroft, 1974). This led to a commercial struggle with the railways, which were hobbled by war damage and regulations, and to a surge in car accidents and unsightly rural congestion (Figure 2). Debate in this period over the embedding of cars in British society was influenced by inter-war British ruralism, which prized the countryside as a true store of British values (Jeremiah, 2007).

Tables 3 and 4 show that safety concerns and calls for further regulation remained prominent during this period, with critics of cars also bringing up concerns about rural aesthetics (Figure 3). Coverage of car accidents and rural blight was often dramatic (The Manchester Guardian, 1927; The Daily Express, 1929; The Daily Mirror, 1928). The Manchester Guardian described at one point “the highways of Britain scattered like a battle-front” (The Manchester Guardian, 1927). Railway magazines, newspaper commentators, and parliamentarians seized on the issue to argue that cars were unsafe (The Railway Gazette, 1937; Medicus, 1927; HC Deb 18 February 1930 vol 235 col 1262). Meanwhile, popular books such as Clough Williams-Ellis’ England and the Octopus and John Moore’s Britain and the Beast, portrayed cars as an attack on the British landscape (Moran, 2010).

A qualitative analysis, however, shows the increasing prominence of a new argument, portraying road transport not just as progressive and unfairly suppressed, but as a practical, transport system with the potential to replace the railways. This was strengthened by the railways’ commercial struggles, brought on by a combination of road competition, war damage, regulation, the Great Depression, and, crucially, poor public perception (Roberts, 2015). The railways’ historic dominance of long-distance transport had earned them a reputation, acknowledged even in railway journals (The Railway Gazette, 1907), as abusive monopolists who deserved to fail (The Daily Mail, 1921; Economist, 1920; The Times, 1922). In 1920, the editor of The Times observed that “The quiet British public, weary of high charges, of discomfort, of the theory that travellers can be flung about like cattle, has sought its own remedy [buses] after the manner of our people” (The Times, 1920). This view was particularly evident in the opinion columns written by powerful car supporters such as William Joynson Hicks and Lord Montagu, both of whom were explicitly arguing by 1921 that road transport should replace the railways (Hicks, 1919; Montagu, 1921).

Meanwhile, problems with road transport, such as accidents and rural blight, were increasingly interpreted as reasons to further expand, rather than curtail, the road transport system. Foreign motorways and new domestic roads such as Manchester’s Princess Parkway, were given glowing reviews focusing on their safety and aesthetic benefits (The Daily Mail, 1931; The Manchester Guardian, 1937; The Manchester Guardian, 1931; Swinton, 1929). In 1938, Alker Tripp’s book on Road Traffic and its Control argued that the roads would become safer if they were rebuilt with cars in mind. The British government had taken this advice a year earlier: Their 1937 programme to improve 4,500 miles of trunk roads for motor traffic was given the slogan “the quickest way to safety” (Our Motoring Correspondent, 1937).

Cars during this period could no longer be realistically described as useless luxuries, meaning that the dominant anti-car storyline shifted to portray them as a safety hazard and a threat to the countryside. This gained empirical fit and experiential commensurability from accidents and rural blight, and macro-cultural resonance from popular ruralism. A positive storyline portraying the roads as a welcome alternative to the railways was more effective, gaining empirical fit, experiential commensurability, and actor credibility from frustrations with the railways. Even more effective was another storyline using the problems of accidents and rural blight cited in negative storylines about cars as reasons to expand the road network. This allowed car advocates to co-opt their opponents’ most successful storyline in a way that supported their own goals, such as investment in new roads.

Period 3: Regime competition (1945-1963)

After the Second World War, car ownership increased due to more affordable models and increases in middle-class income. The government invested built over 1,000 miles of motorway between 1958 and 1970 (Moran, 2010). The railways, which were nationalised in 1948, were also given some government investment (Aldcroft, 1968), but in 1963 the Beeching Cuts resulted in a dramatic reduction in the country’s railway infrastructure.

The main challenge for road transport actors during this period was to encourage the support of motorways, which competed for financial and political capital with railway repairs and upgrades. Storylines during this period thus had an important political function. They were also influenced by a powerful cultural trend of High Modernism, which predicted a new, high-tech, efficient, and prosperous post-war future for the country (Pugh, 2012).

The quantitative analysis of newspapers in this period is almost completely dominated by support for motorway construction (Table 5). The language used in these articles is urgent and dramatic. Critics often highlighted the government’s lack of progress compared with foreign countries, often portraying the country’s existing roads as Victorian, or even medieval (Cardew, 1956; Crossman, 1959; Swinton, 1929; The Manchester Guardian, 1957; The Manchester Guardian, 1959; The Daily Mail, 1953a; The Daily Mail, 1953b). The Daily Mail argued in 1957 that on the question of roads, Britain was “the most backwards of all industrial nations.” (The Daily Mail, 1957). Support for motorways was also motivated by practical concerns, such as the congestion caused by increasing car ownership (Table 5). News coverage of planned roads hailed them as modern marvels, and promoted ambitious, futuristic plans to re-make the country to accommodate cars (The Daily Mirror, 1955; Edwards, 1955). Colin Buchanan’s 1963 widely hailed (The Daily Mirror, 1963; The Daily Mail, 1963) report about motor traffic in British cities made heavy use of this modernist imagery as it advocated a massive programme of investment in multi-level, car-friendly, urban infrastructures (Buchanan, 2015).

Positive portrayals of cars and motorways were boosted by continued negative storylines about the railways, which in addition to previous criticisms, were now also portrayed as anti-modern, and not worthy of government investment (The Daily Mirror, 1957; The Daily Express, 1959; The Manchester Guardian, 1959; The Times, 1958; The Times, 1955; HC Deb 03 February 1955 vol 536 col 1355; HL Deb 02 March 1955 vol 191 col 663). This financial complaint, when considered in light of enthusiastic calls for motorway construction, shows the power of modernist themes in this period. Ultimately, these criticisms of the railways legitimised Richard Beeching’s substantial cuts to the country’s railway infrastructure (Bagwell 1988).

The dominant storyline during this period positioned roads and railways on opposite sides of a modernising trend. This provided a strong case for investment in motorways, while giving political cover for the scaling-back of railway infrastructure. The appeal of this storyline came primarily from its strong macro-cultural resonance in light of high modernism. While it is difficult to reliably measure the impact that this had on policymakers, newspaper editorials and political debates show that it made subsidies for railways less politically defensible than subsidies for the motorways, facilitating a policy re-alignment towards road transport.

Period 4: Regime consolidation (1963-2000)

After the Beeching cuts and the construction of the first motorways, the car regime consolidated itself as the dominant means of transport (Fouquet, 2012). This meant that old problems such as accidents intensified, while new ones, such as air pollution and urban displacement due to motorway construction, emerged (Moran, 2010). This combined with an increasing interest in environmentalism during the 1970s and 1990s, leading to a series of direct-action protests that put the car regime on the defensive (Merriman, 2005; Moran, 2010).

The quantitative analysis of newspapers during this period reveals increasing concern about issues such as pollution, accidents and the negative impacts of motorways (Tables 6 and 7). In the 1970s, a series of disruptions of motorway planning inquiries led by Sheffield Polytechnic lecturer John Tyme received sympathy from many newspapers (Williams, 1979; Levy, 1976; HL Deb 02 July 1976 vol 372 col 984; Graham, 1976). By the 1980s, Tyme’s cause had spilled over into parliament, where Shadow Secretary of State for Transport John Prescott condemned the government’s motorway construction plans, arguing that “10-lane super-highways speeding traffic into the cities are useless if chronic congestion means that it cannot move in the cities when it arrives there” (HC Deb 18 May 1989 vol 153 col 485). By the 1990s, this rhetoric was being adopted by environmentalist protesters disrupting road infrastructure, one of whom described cars as “killer metal aliens [which have] colonised our streets and squashed us up against the wall. If we don't act quickly they will consume the city completely” (Williams, 1995). These protests again received some favourable media coverage, despite the disruption they caused (Joseph, 1993; 2001; 2002; 1999).

Car magazine responded to these problems by describing visions of new kinds of road transport systems, including electric cars and urban light rail (Winding-Sorensen, 1973). By the 1990s, however, some disillusionment had set in regarding these options, and so car supporters instead maligned the critics of the road transport regime as hippies (Daniels, 1996; Clarkson, 1993; Autocar, 1998a; Young, 1998; Autocar, 1998b; DTC Box, 1998; Wallinger, 1998; Autocar and Motor, 1998).

Complaints about the road regime during this period settled on a storyline portraying it as a terrifying, oppressive, and anti-human system. This storyline traded on empirical fit and experiential commensurability from unsolved problems with road transport, and benefited from macro-cultural resonance due to the growth of environmentalism. A storyline arguing that there was no credible alternative to the road regime and that its critics were unrealistic hippies was the most effective counter to this. This built empirical fit from the clear importance of the road transport regime, and actor credibility from the presumed expertise of its supporters compared with the young, radical protesters.

Analysis

Table 8 summarizes the transition struggles, topics of debate, most salient storylines, and elements of frame resonance appearing in each phase of our case study, while Table 9 lists all the topics that contributed to each storyline, and Figure 4 indicates the quantitative importance of various topics of debate, categorized in terms of their position and the proportion of articles in which they appear. While the importance of topics is contextual and should not be overemphasised, table 9 and figure 4 nevertheless show that most topics attract low to moderate attention (below 20% of mention in newspapers articles on road transport), while only a few attracted high attention. This suggests that storylines benefit from the combination of many complementary topics, rather than one big topic.

To consider the reasons for the different levels of resonance in positive and negative storylines in this case study, we provide a deeper analysis, using the four elements of frame resonance discussed in section 2.2.

Period 1: Legitimation and early support

During the first period there were two dominant positive storylines about cars. One, aimed at wealthy motorists, described cars as an exciting novelty. Another, which emerged later and was aimed at the public, promised the development of cars for everyone. Both were weak on empirical fit, experiential commensurability, and actor credibility, because cars were a new and unproven technology which few people had experience with. Utopian visions of a motorised society, however, scored well on macro-cultural resonance, due to popular technological enthusiasm. This fits well with the literature on visions of the future: The vision of cars for everyone was useful, because it exploited the open possibility space that automobiles enjoyed to develop a narrative of an appealing positive future which helped make cars’ problems in the present more tolerable (Berkhout, 2006; Borup et al., 2006; Van Lente, 2012).

The dominant negative storyline, describing car as dangerous nuisances, scored highly on empirical fit and experiential commensurability, since most people's experience of cars was as bystanders. It also scored highly on macro-cultural resonance due to the salience of class conflict: The narrative of irresponsible wealthy people endangering the working classes was a useful cultural repertoire for road transport’s opponents. The actor credibility of this storyline was limited for the same reason as for the positive storyline, however: no prominent people were involved in the debate.

The pattern here is that positive storylines were more about the future than the present, using visions to position cars as an embodiment of popular societal values, while negative storylines dragged cars back into the present, framing their visible problems they caused in terms of class conflict. Based on this, we can suggest an updated conceptual description of phase 1: To provide arguments for its ‘right to exist’, advocates of a niche-innovation advance storylines focusing on positive experiences (e.g. fun, excitement) and diffuse visions of the future, which distract attention from present-day problems. Negative storylines try to drag the innovation back into the present by emphasising the harms it causes.

Period 2: Societal embedding

This period fits well with the literature on the societal embedding of technologies, as it was primarily defined by road transport advocates encouraging the embedding of cars into physical infrastructures and societal institutions by positioning them as a solution to societal problems; particularly the tyranny of the dysfunctional railways. Interestingly, car advocates also claimed that further embedding of road transport could solve problems that were caused by road transport itself, such as accidents and rural blight. Both storylines gained empirical fit due to the demonstrated viability of the growing road transport system. The storyline about an improved road system solving its own problems relied not just on public awareness of these problems, but also depended on blaming the problem on roads, rather than cars. These storylines gained experiential commensurability due to increasing public experience with road transport and frustration with the railways, and macro-cultural resonance from prominent concerns about the country-side. Their actor credibility was growing relative to the first period, due to the increasing support of prominent actors such as Lord Montagu.

The dominant negative storyline in this period emphasised concerns over prominent problems such as accidents and rural blight, giving it strong empirical fit and experiential commensurability. It also enjoyed macro-cultural resonance due to cultural attachment to the countryside (as with the positive storyline), and moderate actor credibility due to prominent literary figures speaking out against urban sprawl.

One interesting finding in this period is that the resonance of the positive and negative storylines were closely correlated, and indeed benefited from many of the same topics. Storylines supporting the road transport system co-opted storylines opposing it by positioning problems with cars as evidence of the need to adapt society to the automobile, rather than the other way around. This was made empirically credible and experientially commensurable by the increasing utility of the road transport system. A similar strategy might appear in other transitions, with the supporters of a growing niche-innovation highlighting mismatches with its societal context, to argue for changes to the context.

Based on these findings, we can update our conceptual description of the societal embedding phase as follows: To provide arguments for adjustments to existing structures, storylines supporting the niche technology focus on problems that the new system can solve. In some cases, niche advocates may also co-opt negative storylines, framing problems caused by the expanding niche-innovation as ‘growing pains’, which can be resolved through further societal embedding.

Period 3: Regime competition

The transitions literature reviewed for the analytical perspective suggests that there should be a major push-back against the niche technology during this period (Geels, 2014; Hess, 2014). Interestingly, however, this did not happen in our case study. In fact, the railways spent the 1950s and 1960s almost completely on the defensive, failing to come up with their own storyline that could compete with the utopian modernism used in support of road transport. Positive storylines about road transport, meanwhile, enjoyed empirical fit and experiential commensurability, as technical improvements, greater affordability, and high modernism made the idea of a motorised society seem both utopian and plausible. Finally, this storyline enjoyed strong actor credibility, due to support from prominent engineers, politicians, business leaders, and cultural figures.

Positive storylines about road transport were complemented by negative storylines about the railways, which experienced popular consumer frustrations, while also being seen as backwards and undesirable. This shows that storylines affecting niche-innovations develop in relation to predominant storylines about the incumbent regime. The role of the railways in this period also shows the importance of topics in shaping the storylines that can be told about competing technologies. There is no conceptual reason why the railways could not have been the subject of high-modernist storylines in the same way that the roads were. While prominent topics about roads included excitement about cars and highways, however, prominent topics about railways expressed deeply-rooted frustrations with the system. It would thus have been untenable to talk about a coming modern railway age in the same terms that prominent storylines talked about a coming motor age.

Interestingly, there was no clearly evident negative storyline in this period. Problems such as accidents had become framed as problems with roads rather than with vehicles, removing any empirical credibility from negative storylines about cars. Because most of the public had positive experiences driving cars, negative storylines also failed to generate experiential commensurability. And the high modernism of this period, combined with the overwhelming expert support for road transport, limited macro-cultural resonance and actor credibility.

Based on this, we can update our description of the regime competition phase as follows: Storylines supporting the new system portray the dawn of a new age leading to total societal transformation. The appeal of these storylines, however, depends heavily on a supportive cultural context, meaning that the kinds of utopian storylines that support the wholesale overthrow of an incumbent regime in favour of an innovation may not be viable until the right cultural moment arrives.

Period 4: Regime consolidation

During the fourth period, the dominant positive storyline portrayed car use as an essential modern freedom, and as a system to with no alternative. This enjoyed strong empirical fit, because there was no well-demonstrated alternative system; and strong experiential commensurability, because driving had become central to most people's lives. It also enjoyed actor credibility, as prominent actors continued to take automobility for granted and condemn anti-motorway protesters. As suggested by Jensen (2012), and Roberts (2017), however, once road transport had been established as an incumbent regime with its own long-term entrenched problems and new macro-cultural trends such as environmentalism, it could no longer be portrayed in such an optimistic light, and its supporters had more of a challenge maintaining support for it.

The dominant negative storyline in this period portrayed road transport as an anti-human, ecocidal system. Although problems such as pollution and population displacement by motorways gave this storyline empirical fit and experiential commensurability, radical green activists had limited actor credibility. By the end of the period, however, the negative storyline gained macro-cultural resonance due to the strengthening of environmentalism.

This period suggests that a storyline arguing that an incumbent regime is inevitable and unchangeable part of life is easy to tell and enjoys a high degree of resonance in the context of a mature socio-technical regime. Negative storylines, however, can also gain strength with some audiences, as persistent unsolved problems create frustration and disillusionment.

Based on this, our new description of the regime consolidation phase casts it as one in which positive storylines position the incumbent regime as the only rational and efficient possibility, for which there is no viable alternative. Negative storylines emphasising the system's new or unsolved problems often struggle against deeply entrenched discourses that stabilise the existing system, but benefit from popular perception of persistent problems. These negative storylines may gain momentum when they become linked to niche-innovations that can be portrayed as solutions (Kingdon, 1984).

Conclusion

Contributing to the debate on discourse and socio-technical transitions, we have developed a longitudinal and dynamic account of the unfolding of discursive storylines during entire transitions. Our conceptual framework combined ideas from discourse theories with the multi-level perspective to describe longitudinal changes in, and the wider resonance of, positive and negative storylines during a socio-technical transition. Our framework and our case study show that despite a major role reversal (from niche advocates advocating for change to incumbents advocating for stability), the same elements of frame resonance can explain storylines about a technology throughout a transition.

Our analysis shows that supporters and opponents of new technologies tailor their storylines to the status of a niche-innovation at four different phases of a transition. The salience of these storylines depends on the changing status of the niche-innovation, from a radically new technology full of unsolved problems but subject to excited future visions, to an established incumbent system, firmly entrenched as normal, but possibly faced with increasingly negative persistent externalities that generate deep-seated resentments.

Our case study suggests several new dynamics that were not accounted for in our analytical perspective. The second period contains a particularly interesting new finding regarding the way that storylines can frame a growing regime as a solution to societal problems. Specifically, we did not anticipate that they might use problems created by road transport itself, such as accidents and rural blight, for this purpose. This created an element of circular causality, in which clever discursive framing allowed the niche technology to create the conditions that justified its own expansion. Niche actors also enjoyed an unexpected discursive advantage in phase 3, where virtually no popular themes or storylines supported rail transport or opposed the expansion of road transport. This could have been due to a particularly supportive cultural context (high modernism), and thus not generalizable, but it nevertheless suggests that it is possible for an emerging regime based on a niche technology to have a large discursive advantage, over an incumbent regime. This point about the cultural context feeds into a elaboration on our framework more generally: In all the periods we studied, macro-cultural resonance appears to have had a disproportionate importance: Ideas of progress played a key role in visions legitimising the early automobile; interwar ruralism motivated the development of new road infrastructure that would preserve the rural landscape; high modernism helped frame motorways as part of a transition to a modern, post-war Britain; and late 20th century environmentalism undermined pro-road storylines during the 1970s. This suggests that the macro-cultural context has a powerful influence on the development of storylines both supporting and opposing socio-technical niche and regime technologies.This case study also has implications for the multi-level perspective more generally. Research in the multi-level perspective, and socio-technical transitions more generally, has already showed the importance of discourse, as discussed in our analytical perspective. Our research, however, shows the details of a storytelling strategy which, when combined with the right cultural context, can be extremely powerful. Our case study is an effective paradigmatic case (Flyvbjerg 2006) which shows how a niche-innovation and its supporters can overcome some of the political disadvantages identified by Geels (2014) and Hess (2014), by generating a high level of public and political appeal. While this likely requires both a supportive cultural context, as discussed above, and a strong niche-innovation in other respects (such as technological development and financial viability), it does suggest one possible pathway that subverts the political obstacles facing the proponents of niche technologies. This pathway shows that the right discursive strategy, combined with a supportive cultural context and pre-existing negative story-lines about the regime technology, can flip the script, handing the niche-innovation a valuable discursive and political advantage.

There are some limitations to our approach. Our focus on a publicly contested technology may limit the applicability of our framework to less publicly contested technologies, such as production technology. Another difficulty comes from the fact that this case study takes place in a wealthy, western, English-speaking democracy, meaning that its findings might be less applicable to other political, cultural, or economic contexts. Finally, our historical approach risks not taking account of how the media, political, or cultural landscape may have changed in recent decades. More research will therefore have to be done to apply the framework to transitions in other sectors, countries and periods. While our analysis suggests that the framework is useful to understand the unfolding of storylines in transitions, further empirical research will be necessary before it is more reliably applicable.

We also suggest that future research could further develop the role of agency with regard to the promotion of storylines, who they are aimed at, and how they influence this audience. While our case study offered interesting findings about strategic agency (e.g. how car proponents framed road accidents as a problem with roads rather than cars), this issue could be further developed. The notion of storyline resonance seems fruitful in that respect, because it can accommodate both the articulators of storylines and intended audiences. We thus hope that our initial framework of storylines in transitions will open up new questions that can be addressed in future research.

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