Arenas without Rules and the Policy Change Process: Outsider Groups and British Roads Policy
| Author | Jeremy Richardson,Geoffrey Dudley |
| Published date | 01 September 1998 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00164 |
| Date | 01 September 1998 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Arenas without Rules and the Policy Change
Process: Outsider Groups and British
Roads Policy
GEOFFREY DUDLEY AND JEREMY RICHARDSON1
University of Staordshire and University of Essex
A key task of governments is to construct and manage systems of consultation
whereby the vast array of interest groups seeking to in¯uence public policy can be
accommodated. Conventional wisdom holds that key insider groups secure for
themselves special privileges, not least of which is an ability to prevent radical policy
change. A concomitant view is that public policy emerges from relatively stable
networks of actors who have some mutual resource dependencies. One reason why
this paradigm is showing signs of intellectual fatigue is that it seems weak in
explaining policy change. Yet, policy change does take place. Indeed, it is one of the
characteristics of the 1980s and 1990s. This article examines an example of the tradi-
tional modalities of consultation failing to accommodate new interests, knowledge
and ideas. This breakdown appears to have occurredby the use of alternative policy
`arenas without rules' by outsider groups, leading to a radical new `framing' of
transport policy. Moreover, governmenthas failed to constrain the new policy issues
in predictable and stable systems of consultation.
One of the central tasks of modern governments is the management of con-
sultation with the wide range and large numbers of interest groups seeking to
in¯uence the formation and implementation of public policy. In the British
case, the established traditions of consultation have been well documented.2
Conventional wisdom holds that the grip of established insider groups on key
policy sectors has been strong, and that this in part explains the diculties
which governments encounter in bringing about radical policy change. A
concomitant of this view is that certain types of groups tend to be excluded from
key policy decisions, being regarded as outsiders on the classi®cation ®rst
suggested by Grant.3A related paradigm suggests that policy emerges from
#Political Studies Association 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 CowleyRoad, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Political Studies (1998), XLVI, 727±747
1This article forms part of a research project on Policy Communities and Policy Networks Over
Time: British Transport Policy 1945±95, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council
(Reference Number: R00023482801). The authors would like to thank civil servants, ministers,and
group ocials who agreed to be interviewed, and the Editor and two anonymous referees for their
valuable comments on earlier drafts.
2E.g. A. G. Jordan and J. J. Richardson, `The British Policy Style or the Logic of Negotiation?'
in J. J. Richardson (ed.), Policy Styles in WesternEurope (London, Allen and Unwin, 1982), pp. 80 ±
110, W. Grant, Pressure GroupPolitics and Democracy in Britain (Hemel Hempstead, Philip Allan,
1989); and J. J. Richardson, `Interest Group Behaviour in Britain: Continuity and Change' in
J. J. Richardson (ed.), Pressure Groups (Oxford, University Press, 1993), pp. 86±99.
3W. Grant, `Insider Groups, Outsider Groups and Interest Group Strategies in Britain',
University of Warwick, Department of Politics, Working Paper No.19, (1978).
relatively stable networks of policy actors who have some mutual resource
dependencies.4Yet, as Smith suggests, the ¯aw in the paradigm is that network
analysis tends to be a static model.5Thus, one reason that network analysis is
showing some intellectual fatigue is that it seems weak in explaining how policy
change comes about.6Yet, policy change does take place. Indeed, the 1980s and
1990s have seen pretty well all Western democracies going through a continuous
process of radical policy change. No doubt there are many causes of this change
process, but even policy areas such as agriculture and roads policy ± hitherto
thought to be in some kind of corporatist grip ± have shown signs of loosening
up, with shifts in the distribution of power, and at least the potential for major
policy change.7
Our case study is essentially a story of the failure of the traditional modali ties
of consultation to accommodate the increased diversity of interests claiming
some `stakeholder status'8in the transport sector. These interests found that
existing processes did not enable them to raise, eectively, new issues which
challenged the then policy core beliefs of the hegemonic policy community. The
institutional site for structuring the process of consultation (in this case Highway
Inquiries) worked only when the participants did not abuse the unwritten rules
of the game and accepted the dominant `framing' of the transport problem.
Once new knowledge and ideas began to suggest the possibilities of alternative
`frames', new interests began to exploit the Highway Inquiries as an `arena with-
out rules', just as Parnell and the Irish had exploited the (then) lax rules of the
House of Commons in the cause of Irish independence in the nineteenth
century. In both cases, the new interests exploited an existing institutional site
which was designed with `gentlemen' in mind.
Policy determining major road construction in Britain was perhaps a classic
case of an insider group securing for itself enormous in¯uence over public
policy. For example, Finer's now classic study of the `roads-lobby'9demon-
strated just how eective those interests likely to gain from a major trunk road
building programme had become. However, the policy area some forty years
later looks quite dierent. At least four major changes seem to have takenplace.
First, the public and e
Âlite discourse has changed, from a perception of road
building as a solution, to road building as a problem. Secondly, the range of
interest groups claiming some kind of stakeholder status has expanded con-
siderably. Thirdly, the market for policy ideas and the knowledge base of the
policy area have been widened greatly. Fourthly,there are signs that policy itself
may be undergoing some fundamental changes partly as a result of these new
4R. A. W. Rhodes and D. Marsh, `Policy Networks in British Politics. A Critique of Existing
Approaches' in D. Marsh and R. A. W. Rhodes (eds), Policy Networks in British Government
(Oxford, Clarendon, 1992), pp. 12± 13.
5M. J. Smith, Pressure. Power and Policy (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993),
p. 72.
6K. Dowding, `Model or metaphor? A critical review of the policy network approach', Political
Studies, 43 (1995), 136±58.
7See Smith, Pressure, Powerand Policy and G. F. Dudley and J. J. Richardson, `Why does policy
change over time? Adversarial policy communities, alternative policy arenas, and British trunk
roads policy 1945±1995', Journal of European Public Policy, 3 (1996), 63±83.
8See J. J. Richardson, `Policy-Making in the EU: Interests, Ideas and Garbage Cans of Primeval
Soup' in J. Richardson (ed.), European Union Power and Policy-Making (London, Routledge, 1996),
pp. 23±32.
9S. E. Finer, `Transport interests and the road lobby', Political Quarterly, (1958), 47±58.
728 Outsider Groups and British Roads Policy
#Political Studies Association, 1998
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