@book{Rademann2022,
  author    = {Jenny Rademann},
  title     = {On Track or Off The Rails?},
  publisher = {G{\"o}ttingen University Press},
  address   = {G{\"o}ttingen},
  isbn      = {978-3-86395-534-2},
  doi       = {https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2022-1906},
  pages     = {298},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {The call for a transport transition has reached political and mainstream attention in Germany during the first decades of the 21st century. A shift from car-based individual transport to rail-based modes of transportation (operated by electricity) is seen as an important building block of a more sustainable transport system and as such also integrated in official sustain-ability strategies. Among other measures, this demands a new focus in transport infrastruc-ture planning. Planning being a task primarily fulfilled by executive and administrative actors, ministerial bureaucracies assume a crucial role in this transition process. Their propensity (or not) to produce outputs that mirror a transition orientation sets the course for or against a modal shift. The preparation of the currently valid Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan (Bundesverkehrswegeplan, BVWP) allows a comparative view into decision-making processes on transport projects for different transport modes. The BVWP is a national transport strategy outlining which transport infrastructure is sup-posed to be built throughout the next fifteen years. It has no legal character and is the first step within a wider planning framework. Projects newly included in this master plan are usually still in a very early pre-planning stage. Nevertheless, inclusion in the BVWP is an important first step to secure potential federal funding for road, railway and waterway projects. Even though the BVWP is a national transport strategy, the first steps of its preparation are taken on the sub-national level, as the German L{\"a}nder prominently propose road projects and take part in proposing other infrastructure projects as well. This presents an opportunity to compare the processes in and outputs of sub-national ministerial bureaucracies when proposing infrastructure projects for different transport modes. Such an analysis provides insights into some determinants of transition-friendly decision-making and improves the understanding of how process characteristics shape ministerial outputs. This study finds its theoretical framework in actor-centred institutionalism and draws to-gether politics- as well as bureaucracy-centred perspectives in a delegation argument. I follow the argument that ministerial outputs are first and foremost shaped by ministers' programmatic positions. However, I challenge the view that the balance between ministerial and bureaucratic influence would be determined by the salience of the topic at hand in such a way that politicians would take care of their positions being duly executed when the re-spective topic is salient, and bureaucrats being more influential with non-salient topics. Instead, I argue that salient topics require more complex decision-making processes, i. e. processes that involve a greater variety of actors - rather than simply pushing through po-litical preferences - in order to ensure broadly accepted solutions that are in fact imple-mentable. Outputs of complex processes, in turn, are harder to predict. Building on document analysis and expert interviews with members of the sub-national ministerial bureaucracies, this thesis analyses how decision-making processes within bu-reaucracies shape policy outputs in transport infrastructure planning. Sub-national decision-making processes on which projects to propose for the BVWP 2030 serve as cases. These decision-making processes might either favour the car-dominated status-quo or a shift to-wards more rail-centred mobility, thereby hindering or furthering an overall move towards a systemic change in mobility and transport, referred to as transport transition - without this necessarily being the intention of the actors themselves. The analysis involves two steps. In a first analytical step, a content analysis serves to struc-ture the material and condense it into categories. I start with some theory-led concepts and then inductively develop sub-categories that capture the procedural steps pointed out in the material. In a second step, Qualitative Comparative Analysis will be employed to distinguish combinations of programmatic, procedural as well as capacity-related characteristics, that are sufficient for arriving at a less car-centred output. The results address pathways towards a transition-oriented output as well as determinants for the set-up of complex intra-ministerial decision-making processes. They support the view that programmatic positions of ministers can indeed shape ministerial outcomes in the direc-tion of a transport transition. Independently of programmatic positions, decision-making processes that are complex in the above-mentioned sense might also work positively to that end. However, none of these conditions is sufficient on its own. They both only work in con-junction with a transition-friendly behaviour of the respective sub-national ministries towards expectations on higher levels within the multi-level framework. At times, this means that L{\"a}nder might deliberately act against federal expectations even where the implementation of their decision depends on the federal level. Administrative capacity in sub-national ministries and the salience of the topic for the respective minister shape how ministries design their decision-making processes. Where capacity allows it, complex processes are set up when the topic is perceived as salient. The relevance of capacity in this context points to the impor-tance of a well-resourced bureaucracy for legitimacy-related purposes like setting up and carrying through public participation schemes.},
  language  = {en}
}