All aboard?: Managing consensus and commitment in the moral economy of public transportation

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Bureaucratic Politics (Table 15)

Abstract

Given American infrastructure weakness, this study examines the conditions under which regional infrastructure projects are built in the United States. While “state capacity” and “regime” theories explain developmental outcomes at the country or city-level, regional public goods distribution involves inter-city competition and coordination. Using the case of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) public transportation extensions, this study analyzes archival data and over 80 interviews with Bay Area agency bureaucrats, politicians, business lobbyists, and advocates to trace how their relationships shaped four extension projects. Two extensions — BART to Silicon Valley and BART to Warm Springs — benefited from consensus management, or the mechanism through which non-state actors suppress fragmentation and secure projects’ moral legitimacy among bureaucrats. Framed as public commitments to expecting taxpayers, both projects ultimately received “full,” system-standard extensions. Without managed consensus, bureaucrats’ evaluations of recipient cities’ deservingness shaped each extension’s perceived moral legitimacy. While eBART’s perceived conditional legitimacy compelled bureaucrats to deliver an “abridged” or cheaper extension, BART to Livermore’s moral illegitimacy engendered no such obligation and was called off. By illuminating the cultural processes undergirding infrastructure development patterns, this study demonstrates how non-state actors can influence state decision-making by generating moral consensus about who deserves large public investments.

Author

• Rachel Y. Kim, Harvard University