PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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consistent with the needs assessed at the local level? And finally: What is the particular
situation in the case of the enlargement countries that are not yet members of the EU?
What are the power relationships between the EU, member states and candidate
countries?
Both explanatory paths are valid ways of organizing an investigative study on EU
transport sector investments, and as we will see, both yield interesting answers about how
the EU makes and implements decisions, not only in the realm of transport, but also as an
institution more generally. However, my study explicitly does not choose between either
path of investigation. Instead, I am interested in showing the relationship between the
validation and the implementation of the concept of sustainable transport. At the
intersection between underlying rationales and real-life processes of decision-making
always lies the intellectual process of rationalization, or, as Bent Flyvbjerg terms it more
appropriately, Realrationalität. For Flyvbjerg (1998:7), “the main question is not only
the Weberian ‘Who governs’ posed by most other students of power-as-entity […] [but]
also the Nietzschean question, ‘What “governmental rationalities” are at work when those
who govern govern?’” Enveloped in an in-depth case study of politics, administration
and planning in the Danish town of Aalborg, Flyvbjerg’s study Rationality and Power
presents a captivating analysis of real-life decision-making in modern (Western)
democracies. The key conclusion of his book is immensely relevant to my own study as
well (Flyvbjerg 1998:236):
The focus of modernity and modern democracy has always been on ‘what should be
done,’ on normative rationality. What I suggest is a reorientation toward the first half
of Machiavelli’s dictum, ‘what is to be done,’ toward verita effecttuale. We need to
rethink and recast the projects of modernity and democracy, and of modern politics,
administration, and planning, in terms of not only rationality but of rationality and
power, Realrationalität. Instead of thinking of modernity and democracy as rational