1 00:00:10,740 --> 00:00:17,740 Welcome to "The evolution of infra-systems: a historical perspective", 2 00:00:17,820 --> 00:00:21,310 my name is Johan Schot, professor in History of Technology and Sustainability 3 00:00:21,310 --> 00:00:29,800 Transitions from University of Sussex Science, Technology and Policy Research Unit, in short SPRU. 4 00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:35,800 This lecture will deal with the question how infrastructures we know today came into being 5 00:00:35,800 --> 00:00:39,600 and how this is still shaping our future. 6 00:00:39,600 --> 00:00:44,640 I will address this very broad question from one specific angle, 7 00:00:44,640 --> 00:00:48,330 which is the problem of interoperability across borders. 8 00:00:48,330 --> 00:00:55,250 This is the ability of specific infrastructures to connect up to other infrastructures in 9 00:00:55,250 --> 00:00:57,369 other countries. 10 00:00:57,369 --> 00:01:04,059 Such interoperability is key to a successful development of infrastructural systems, 11 00:01:04,059 --> 00:01:07,310 since they can only function when they are a network, 12 00:01:07,310 --> 00:01:13,950 not only on a national level but also beyond, on a European and a global level. 13 00:01:13,950 --> 00:01:18,399 Let me introduce the importance of this issue through an example: 14 00:01:18,399 --> 00:01:21,390 the so called Berne key. 15 00:01:21,390 --> 00:01:25,200 What is the Berne key? It is visible on the picture. 16 00:01:25,200 --> 00:01:35,200 It is a key designed for the first time in 1886 and used to open wagons when they crossed borders. 17 00:01:35,229 --> 00:01:40,740 Why was this such an important innovation and pivotal for the development of the rail 18 00:01:40,740 --> 00:01:43,009 system in Europe? 19 00:01:43,009 --> 00:01:49,990 Since this key made it possible to travel across the Europe without needing to transfer 20 00:01:49,990 --> 00:01:57,700 freight from one kind of wagon to another at the borders of different national railway systems. 21 00:01:58,900 --> 00:02:03,600 Before this invention, there were several different keys, 22 00:02:03,639 --> 00:02:05,710 standardization was lacking. 23 00:02:05,710 --> 00:02:11,600 It took many years of international negotiations to come up with design. 24 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:14,630 Why did it take so long? 25 00:02:14,630 --> 00:02:22,800 Because companies and nation-states could not decide on which key should become the main key. 26 00:02:22,860 --> 00:02:26,820 They all promoted their own solutions. 27 00:02:26,820 --> 00:02:33,580 The design visible on the picture is typically European compromise: 28 00:02:33,580 --> 00:02:38,000 it combines a French and German key into one. 29 00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:42,000 Therefore it consists of two parts that need to be put together. 30 00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:49,200 But we have to recall and understand that interoperability is never easy and will always 31 00:02:49,200 --> 00:02:53,830 be based on compromises. 32 00:02:53,830 --> 00:02:58,620 The Berne Key is a symbol for many other similar inventions. 33 00:02:58,620 --> 00:03:03,890 Think about it! In the nineteenth century many hundreds of smaller railway networks 34 00:03:03,890 --> 00:03:10,760 in Europe that all had started as local lines and networks run by private companies had 35 00:03:10,760 --> 00:03:13,150 to connect up? 36 00:03:13,150 --> 00:03:14,930 How could they connect up? 37 00:03:14,930 --> 00:03:20,000 After all, in a period in which nation states were struggling with each other, 38 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:21,930 as is visible in this picture, 39 00:03:21,930 --> 00:03:28,730 they were all using different gauges, trains, wagons, platform technologies, 40 00:03:28,730 --> 00:03:30,540 signaling systems etc. 41 00:03:30,540 --> 00:03:34,000 All these technologies had to become interoperable. 42 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:39,010 This process was further complicated by two facts. 43 00:03:39,010 --> 00:03:44,000 First companies were competing and second, nation-states were competing, 44 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:46,770 they all had their national champions. 45 00:03:46,770 --> 00:03:53,770 Hence standardization was shot through with tensions, as this comic map shows. 46 00:03:55,120 --> 00:03:58,870 How was then interoperability achieved? 47 00:03:58,870 --> 00:04:06,500 How was it made possible that in 1900 passengers and freight could move all over Europe in large numbers, 48 00:04:06,500 --> 00:04:14,400 in a situation of deep political conflict between nation states, as made visible in the cartoon. 49 00:04:14,430 --> 00:04:26,500 The answer is that the negotiation about standards was delegated to a community of experts, 50 00:04:26,500 --> 00:04:33,490 who were working behind closed doors, on the national as well as the international level. 51 00:04:33,490 --> 00:04:40,490 They became the mediators of the tensions between companies and states about standards. 52 00:04:42,330 --> 00:04:45,759 How did they achieve this aim? 53 00:04:45,759 --> 00:04:53,200 Through the development of a specific philosophy on how to negotiate interoperability and develop standards. 54 00:04:53,200 --> 00:04:59,240 I would like to refer to as technocratic internationalism. 55 00:05:01,169 --> 00:05:05,270 What is technocratic internationalism? Let me introduce it. 56 00:05:05,270 --> 00:05:10,000 It is a background ideology, which has shaped the historical development 57 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:14,080 of infrastructures during the twentieth century. 58 00:05:14,080 --> 00:05:17,240 It rests on three elements. 59 00:05:17,240 --> 00:05:23,000 First, it assumes that nation-states are a natural unit for infrastructure development, 60 00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:30,300 International, European and Global network development is not in conflict with network development. 61 00:05:30,439 --> 00:05:37,279 On the contrary European and Global networks should be built out of national networks. 62 00:05:37,279 --> 00:05:44,009 Second, infrastructure building across borders can help to avoid conflicts between nation-states 63 00:05:44,009 --> 00:05:48,200 since they connect people and this will create mutual understanding, 64 00:05:48,200 --> 00:05:50,800 cooperation and peace. 65 00:05:50,800 --> 00:05:55,800 Infrastructures are public utilities to serve the people. 66 00:05:55,800 --> 00:06:02,900 Third, infrastructures should be developed by experts, not by politicians. 67 00:06:02,900 --> 00:06:09,319 The political and technical should be treated as completely separate spheres, 68 00:06:09,319 --> 00:06:15,400 and as much power as possible should be delegated to experts, not to the politicians. 69 00:06:15,419 --> 00:06:19,539 This will automatically lead to the best results. 70 00:06:19,539 --> 00:06:26,539 Supposedly ideological neutral engineers will find and implement optimal solutions both 71 00:06:27,219 --> 00:06:32,000 on the national and international level and be able to harmonize national 72 00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:35,900 and international developments, because they work on both levels. 73 00:06:35,900 --> 00:06:42,319 In short, infrastructures should be left to experts. 74 00:06:42,319 --> 00:06:51,300 They should decide how the train will go from Amsterdam to Paris and where it should stop. 75 00:06:51,500 --> 00:06:54,159 Needless to say that experts were far from neutral. 76 00:06:54,159 --> 00:07:00,300 On the contrary they often stood behind specific political and nationalistic aims. 77 00:07:00,300 --> 00:07:09,000 Yet, it is true that technification of problems might create a basis for negotiation and conflict resolution 78 00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:12,900 and it did in the twentieth century. 79 00:07:13,900 --> 00:07:21,900 The model of delegation of negotiation to experts had two path-dependent 80 00:07:21,900 --> 00:07:26,680 impacts on the governance of the infrastructure industry. 81 00:07:26,680 --> 00:07:29,000 I want to highlight two impacts: 82 00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:39,700 First, infrastructure became an expert driven business and a national industry, with high ideals embodied in it. 83 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:43,430 Infrastructures became public utilities. 84 00:07:43,430 --> 00:07:49,089 The experts wanted their systems to serve the people but without any explicit involvement 85 00:07:49,089 --> 00:07:53,460 of the public; they wanted to make the decisions for the public. 86 00:07:53,460 --> 00:08:02,400 Second, it became an industry dominated by national systems which were connected internationally. 87 00:08:02,800 --> 00:08:06,309 Experts controlled both the national and international level, 88 00:08:06,309 --> 00:08:11,889 and this made it possible for them to create interoperability. 89 00:08:11,889 --> 00:08:19,500 They among themselves agreed on voluntary standards, which they could implement then nationally. 90 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:29,039 When the European Economic Community was set up during the 1950s it wanted to develop a 91 00:08:29,039 --> 00:08:34,880 new European infrastructure policy in which nation-states would transfer their power over 92 00:08:34,880 --> 00:08:41,400 national infrastructure development to the Community and the EU would create 93 00:08:41,400 --> 00:08:45,360 one big liberalized market, also for communication, 94 00:08:45,360 --> 00:08:48,000 transport and energy services. 95 00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:53,900 On the picture we see the celebration of the opening of the common market for coal and steel, 96 00:08:53,900 --> 00:08:57,980 symbolized by a train and 6 national flags. 97 00:08:57,980 --> 00:09:06,240 The EEC promoters also embraced the working methods of technocratic internationalism, 98 00:09:06,240 --> 00:09:14,800 in particular delegation to experts, but they wanted these experts to serve a new political project: 99 00:09:14,800 --> 00:09:20,880 the integration of a new liberalized Europe. 100 00:09:21,160 --> 00:09:28,900 This did not happen because experts in the industry did not want to work 101 00:09:28,900 --> 00:09:32,269 with the European Economic Community. 102 00:09:32,269 --> 00:09:33,459 Why not? 103 00:09:33,459 --> 00:09:39,160 After all, also the Community preferred an expert driven model, 104 00:09:39,160 --> 00:09:48,100 yet one in which experts would have to celebrate European Union ideals and not national ones. 105 00:09:48,200 --> 00:09:55,209 They therefore perceived it as a political project and a technical suboptimal one. 106 00:09:55,209 --> 00:09:59,900 Because the Community only consisted of six nation-states: 107 00:09:59,900 --> 00:10:04,300 Italy, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Belgium. 108 00:10:04,300 --> 00:10:08,209 see the 6 flags on the picture. 109 00:10:08,209 --> 00:10:15,200 How could this be a rational basis for expert driven decision-making about infrastructure development? 110 00:10:15,220 --> 00:10:21,649 Why should only experts of these countries be involved and not others? 111 00:10:21,649 --> 00:10:28,649 In addition they did not believe in liberalism, but in national public service and national 112 00:10:28,880 --> 00:10:32,959 monopolies for energy, transport and communication provision. 113 00:10:32,959 --> 00:10:39,900 And they thought 'we do not need a new actor such as the European Economic Community', 114 00:10:39,900 --> 00:10:43,360 which later became the European Union. 115 00:10:43,360 --> 00:10:45,560 They had an alternative. 116 00:10:45,560 --> 00:10:51,800 They could build European networks themselves, through their own expert-led organizations. 117 00:10:52,100 --> 00:10:59,160 They perceived the new Community as a direct competitor. 118 00:11:00,089 --> 00:11:04,069 In the 1980s the EU had gained a lot of power. 119 00:11:04,069 --> 00:11:11,069 It was enlarged and it had become clear that the enormous internal growth of trade, 120 00:11:11,350 --> 00:11:19,300 was made possible by the infrastructures provided by the experts 121 00:11:19,300 --> 00:11:24,600 But also that the infrastructure development could not handle anymore all the problems. 122 00:11:24,600 --> 00:11:33,000 If you look at the picture, at the UK, we can see, since they entered the EU in 1973, 123 00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:42,000 there was a enormous growth of trade, so the UK redirected the trade from the world to European trade 124 00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:46,540 and as a consequence, the system got jammed. 125 00:11:46,540 --> 00:11:49,380 New solutions were necessary. 126 00:11:49,380 --> 00:11:56,800 This paved the way for a new initiative called 'the Trans-European Network Initiative'. 127 00:11:56,800 --> 00:11:59,800 Let's now look at the video. 128 00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:14,000 In the 1980s the European integration process got traction again, 129 00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:19,000 now under the banner of the completion of the internal market. 130 00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:23,200 The idea was, among other things, we have to reduce all barriers 131 00:14:23,200 --> 00:14:30,200 connected to lack of operability of infrastructure networks, and construct new missing links, 132 00:14:30,200 --> 00:14:34,200 as is visible on the map here. 133 00:14:35,200 --> 00:14:39,900 This time infrastructure experts aligned themselves with the EU, 134 00:14:39,900 --> 00:14:44,200 The EU delegated the choice of new projects to experts, 135 00:14:44,200 --> 00:14:49,200 without much involvement of stakeholders and in particular the broader public. 136 00:14:49,200 --> 00:14:55,200 In this sense the EU followed the technocratic internationalist work methods. 137 00:14:55,200 --> 00:15:02,200 Experts however, had their doubts about the EU political project of integration, 138 00:15:02,200 --> 00:15:06,250 in particular its liberal face. 139 00:15:06,250 --> 00:15:10,759 The projects they propose were in principle national projects, 140 00:15:10,759 --> 00:15:16,769 which they relabelled as European, and they resisted full liberalization of European 141 00:15:16,769 --> 00:15:18,939 infrastructure markets. 142 00:15:18,939 --> 00:15:25,900 The future of the Trans-European Network Initiatives is still open. 143 00:15:25,900 --> 00:15:31,600 Because old dilemmas are haunting its further development. 144 00:15:31,600 --> 00:15:33,689 I want to highlight two: 145 00:15:33,689 --> 00:15:39,800 1. Nation states want to keep control of their infrastructures. 146 00:15:39,800 --> 00:15:44,480 and experts often act on behalf of the nation state. 147 00:15:44,480 --> 00:15:50,160 Yet it is also clear that globalization is demanding governance of infrastructure to 148 00:15:50,160 --> 00:15:56,100 move to a European and perhaps even a global level. 149 00:15:56,100 --> 00:16:05,110 2. Technocratic internationalism sits uncomfortable with the clear wish for stronger public participation 150 00:16:05,110 --> 00:16:09,850 and control over infrastructure development. 151 00:16:09,850 --> 00:16:15,420 The dilemma is how to combine technocracy and democracy. 152 00:16:15,420 --> 00:16:21,509 Many European citizens do not want experts to design new infrastructures without any 153 00:16:21,509 --> 00:16:24,160 direct public involvement. 154 00:16:24,160 --> 00:16:33,100 Yet it is unclear how to organize this involvement, and combine it with the necessary expert knowledge. 155 00:16:33,100 --> 00:16:36,100 Thank you for your attention.