PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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explanations of why “in the end, the ruling class always wins.” But we tend to learn too
little about the decision-making powers of individual agents along the way. To some
degree, this criticism can also be transferred to Foucauldian discourse analyses. 1
This is
why I supplemented my initial, more discourse-analytical propositions with several
propositions that explicitly targeted on relative power relationships as well as nationally
and locally-specific outcomes.
10.3.3 Higher Stakes Increase the Sophistication of Alternative Discourses
Ever since the EU’s decision to co-fund the TENs, transport infrastructure
funding has become a hotly debated political issue even at the Pan-European level.
Somewhat counter-intuitively – and contrary to previous scholars of EU transport
infrastructure plans (e.g Ross 1998) – I find that this has ultimately increased the
opportunities for sustainable transport decision-making, albeit only indirectly and with a
time-lag. On one hand, it is true that the higher the stakes are, the more likely
accommodating, universally comfortable “sustainability” discourses will give way to
(self-interested) power play politics, and the TENs have in fact revealed the continued
political muscle of the European pro-growth players. Yet on the other hand, the
heightened politicization of transport infrastructure investment struggles has also led to
an increasingly sophisticated articulation of alternative development approaches based on
equity, environmental and procedural concerns. Needless to say, however, that unless
1 Remember, for example, that Maarten Hajer’s “discourse coalitions,” were not defined as a group of
individual decision-makers but “as the ensemble of (1) a set of storylines; (2) the actors who utter these
storylines; and (3) the practices in which this discursive activity is based,” i.e. a strange amalgam of people,
their practices and their discourses. So by design, the concept puts little emphasis on individual agency.
Also see the long footnote 9 in Chapter 6.