PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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new infrastructures, regardless of whether they are national or international. “Political
economy” arguments are less categorical. They make the “who benefits” question their
central focus. Yet depending on whether the arguments are made from a primarily urban
or rural, or a primarily national or local perspective, either backbone or secondary
infrastructure investments might be favored. “Communicative rationality” approaches,
by contrast, would put this process of normative preference setting (e.g. local vs.
international preferences) center stage, and rather than take a stand in it beforehand, open
it up for debate. They would certainly also insist on clear and transparent financing
procedures. Finally, much like political economy approaches, “reflexive modernization”
and “ecological modernization” approaches also privilege particular types of investments
over others. Quite predictably, EU-approaches favor an accession-oriented focus on
international links without necessarily relying on existing traffic flows or current market
demand. Yet even rather mainstream academic (NGO) sources in Brussels (e.g. CEPS)
as well as key experts in the EU and the CEEC are worried that the exclusive focus on
international links is misguided. At the same time, more conformist, accession-oriented
CEE government representatives work to rearrange national governmental perspectives in
light of EU demands in order to extract maximum financing from EU and other
international sources.