The challenge to make a difference

Abstract

My first degree was in political and social sciences. This study became an eye-opener and introduced me to the intriguing world of ‘the political’. Ever since I have retained a fascination for (political) decision-making. When I switched to planning and got involved in major planning projects (Albrechts, 1999), I developed a good understanding of how decisionmaking in these projects worked out. My own experience in practice was confirmed by ample examples of well-documented cases of ‘plan-making’ and formal decision-making in the planning literature (Altshuler, 1965; Benveniste, 1989; Flyvbjerg, 1998; Meyerson and Banfield, 1955) and by substantive literature on implementation (Gualini, 2001; Majone and Wildavsky, 1979; Mastop and Faludi, 1997; Pressman and Wildavsky, 1974; Wildavsky, 1979). However, I also noticed that hardly any examples of cases analyzed from the perspective of the political class were available. Understandably political decision-making often seems like a black box to planners. Research by Flyvbjerg (1998) makes it clear that critical analysis of cases is needed to discover the ‘whys and wherefores’ of how elected representatives or preferential actors change the plan and why and how executive officers depart from the formally approved plan. A few years after a major planning process I was heavily involved in came to an end I started a small research project that focused on understanding the power dynamics of the wider political context in this particular process (Albrechts, 2003a, 2003b, 2006; see also Huxley, 2000; Flyvbjerg, 1998; Forester, 1989; Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger, 1998; Yiftachel, 1998). What I really wanted to understand was how regional government