Abstract
Policies transferred from elsewhere can when planted in alien soil, encounter different legal and cultural traditions that may sometimes render them ineffective or even counter-productive. But what happens if policies are transferred between two countries that are part of the same family of nations (Castles, 1993)? Then, at least, legal and cultural differences can be dispensed with. This facilitates exchange of information dramatically and policy borrowers can be forewarned against possible pitfalls. One finds similar situations described in the retail planning chapter of this book (from France to Spain) and the privatisation programme in New Zealand, which was based on mixed Anglo-American sources. Circumstances surrounding a successful transplant appear to be even more ideal when the person who was responsible for developing the original gets the unique chance to copy his own success in another country, which is deemed culturally similar. Such the situation will be described in this chapter, when Robert Kiley, the man responsible for getting the New York Subway back on track in the 1980s after years of disinvestment, neglect, low quality service and safety problems, was asked to take on the London Underground system and turn it around. His particular managerial and financial-economic recipe, used in New York, seemed also particularly appropriate in the British context ten years later. The London Underground, New York Subway’s British counterpart, suffered from comparable problems which apparently begged for comparable medicines to cure its ills. This was what London’s new Mayor, Ken Livingstone, elected on the basis of his plans to improve the performance of the ‘Tube’ among other things, had in mind when he hired Kiley to be his commissioner for Transport for London, that is to head London’s metropolitan body for transport planning and management. It did not work out. In this chapter, we give an account of the problems that occurred when Kiley attempted to repeat his successful New York trick in the supposedly friendly soils of London.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Banister, D. (1994). Transport planning in the UK, USA and Europe. London: E&FN Spon.
Castles, F.G. (Ed.) (1993). Families of nations: Patterns of public policy in Western democracies. Aldershot: Dartmouth.
Damaska, M. (1986). The faces of justice and state authority; A comparative approach to the legal process. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
David, R., & Jauffret-Spinosi, C. (1992). Les grands systèmes de droit contemporains. 10e édition, Paris: Editions Dalloz.
De Jong, W.M. (1999). Institutional transplantation; how to adopt good transport infrastructure decision making ideas from other countries? Delft: Eburon Publishers.
Dente, B., & Kjellberg, F. (1988). The dynamics of institutional change; Local government reorganization in Western democracies. London: Sage Publications.
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (2001). London Underground: Public private partnership;the offer to Londoners. <www.localtransport.dtlr.gov.uk/pppoffer>.
Dolowitz, D.P. (1999). Policy transfer and British social policy: Learning from the USA, Buckingham/Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Esping Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Faludi, A. (1994). Rule and order: Dutch planning doctrine in the twentieth century. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Feinman, M.S. (1999). The history of the independent subway (1921-1940) and the IND Division (1940 to the present). <http://www.nycsubway.org.>
Hall, P. (1986). Governing the economy; the politics of state intervention in Britain and France, New York: Oxford University Press.
Hampden-Turner, C. & Trompenaars, A. (1992). The seven cultures of capitalism; Value systems for creating wealth in the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands, New York: Doubleday.
Harris, P.R., & Moran, R.T. (1996). Managing cultural differences; Leadership strategies for a new world of business, Fourth Edition. Houston/London: Gulf Publishing Company.
Hofstede, G. (1997). Cultures and organizations; Software of the mind, New York: McGraw Hill.
Lijphart, A. (1999). Patterns of democracy; Government forms and performance in thirty-six countries. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Marshall, P.J. (1996). Cambridge illustrated history of the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mény, Y., & Wright, V. (Eds.) (1985). Centre periphery relations in Western Europe. London: Sage.
Page, E.C., &. Goldsmith, M.J. (1987). Central and local government relations. London: Sage.
Pucher, J., & Hirschman, I. (1993). Public transport in the United States: Recent developments and policy perspectives. Public Transport International, 42(3), 12–25.
Salet, W.G.M. (1994). Gegrond bestuur; een internationale ijking van bestuurlijke betrekkingen. Delft: Technische Universiteit Delft.
Toonen, Th. A. J. (1990). Internationalisering en het openbaar bestuur als institutioneel ensemble, naar een zelfbestuurskunde, ’s-Gravenhage: VUGA.
Zweigert, K., & Kötz, H. (1998). An introduction to comparative law, 2nd edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
De Jong, M., Haran, N. (2002). An American in London. In: De Jong, M., Lalenis, K., Mamadouh, V. (eds) The Theory and Practice of Institutional Transplantation. The GeoJournal Library, vol 74. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0001-4_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0001-4_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-1108-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-0001-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive