‘We’re not the police, but we have to stop them from walking on the tracks.’ Railroad workers and migratory controls in the Basque Country (France)

Like Zeus, the ancient Greek King of the Gods, the public sector changes its shape. Thirty-five years ago, the United Kingdom's public sector included, for instance, water, telecommunications and transport services, but they are all now in the private sector. The trajectory is not, however, one way. Thus at the time of writing, some banks — Northern Rock and Royal Bank of Scotland Group — and rail infrastructure — Network Rail — are in the public sector, having previously been in the private sector. Moreover, central and local governments and the National Health Service (NHS) commission private sector organisations to provide some of their services. Also, just as Zeus's lovers may not always have appreciated who he was, it is sometimes difficult to appreciate what is in the public sector. For instance universities are classified by the Office for National Statistics as private sector organisations, although many a bystander — and even university employees — would consider that they are part of the public sector.1

For many years the South African government has put forward policies and strategies to improve and promote public transport. Despite this, very little has changed over the last 30 years, although projects such as the Gautrain high-speed rail service and a few bus rapid transit routes have been introduced recently. These projects, however, are not integrated in a logical manner into the broader public transport system and are often referred to as stand alone interventions because of a lack of managing public transport in terms of integrated transport plans. The traditional commuter rail, bus and 16-seat taxi industries therefore operate in policy silos and, in the case of the bus and rail industries, are planned and funded independently of each other, leading to a further lack of integration. Policy interventions have been implemented partially or not at all, leaving the public transport sector in a state of flux. The methodology followed in researching this paper was to briefly trace the historical public transport policy developments, with a focus on the commuter bus industry, in order to identify possible impediments to policy implementation and to identify policy interventions for addressing the currently stalled policy implementation programme. The main finding of the paper is that it would be advisable to establish provincial transport authorities between local and provincial governments. That should speed up the development and implementation of integrated transport plans, which ought to lead to integrated public transport systems and a more optimal spend of the available governmental funds aimed at subsidising public transport.

Burgeoning oil and gas production in Texas with the application of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling techniques has dramatically impacted the condition of rural roadway infrastructure. Many rural roadways are now inundated with trucks traveling to and from oil and gas well areas. Recent estimates indicate that each horizontal well requires over 2,000 truckloads for construction, drilling operations, maintenance, and crude oil transport over the life of the well. Rail has been an active partner in oil and gas exploration by shuttling fracking sand and drilling supplies to the oil and gas regions and transporting crude and petroleum products from the regions not served by pipelines. This partnership is restricted by limited rail service points and infrastructure close to the active wells; however, expanding existing rail services and network infrastructure could move rail operations closer to the active production areas. The cost and safety impacts of extreme reduction in pavement life may be offset substantially with increased use of rail transport closer to drilling locations. This paper examines the potential options regarding expanded use of rail transportation to address the growing costs of roadway rehabilitation in energy production areas in order to reduce roadway network impacts. Rail service expansion can be through better use of the existing freight rail network, increasing the number of and better placement of transloading facilities along the rail network, and/or through improved rail capacity from double tracking or extending new rail lines. Both the private and public sectors potentially could play a role. A number of privately developed transloading facilities have sprung up along existing rail lines, attempting to deliver fracking sand, pipe, and other supplies. Additionally, public economic development corporations have been actively pursuing development. Expansion of the railroad network could come through the use of special districts such as Rural Rail Transportation Districts (RRTDs), Regional Mobility Authorities (RMAs), or through reactivation of abandoned rail lines. These trends are also examined.

PurposeThe entire sector of railway transport is in a state of flux in Europe as deregulation and structural changes are affecting the traditional transport mode. Even though the aim has been to increase railway freight competition, markets have changed only slightly, and the market shares of incumbent railway companies are remaining high. Some EU countries have not attracted any new entrants, which is also the current situation in Finland. This paper aims to assess how the Finnish railway freight competition develops and to analyze different views on railway transport policy.Design/methodology/approachThis research work analyses a Delphi questionnaire directed at 52 Finnish experts in this branch. Responses on the questionnaire were gathered during year 2005 (competition in Finland in railway freight started 2007) within two rounds with appropriate amount of response rate. Respondents were from the public and private sectors, actors working closely with railway transports and logistics. With an expert profiling matrix, three different railway transport policy viewpoint groups are identified, and character descriptions for these are constructed.FindingsBased on a qualitative expert profiling analysis, it is argued that there exist three different argument types in Finnish railway transport policy. The authors have constructed character descriptions for each group based on material collected by the Delphi technique. They conclude that the policy definitions have followed the views of the moderate group and the realization of the deregulation process has been slow, even though a great amount of competition was expected.Research limitations/implicationsThe research work is limited to the Finnish railway freight transport market, where development of competition on rails has been sluggish. To further confirm the used methodology, and the identified railway freight competition policy group types, the research work should be repeated in some other country, and particularly in an environment where competition has shown activity immediately after deregulation.Originality/valueThe research represents methodology to foresee the future development of deregulated industries, and especially in the transportation sector. The paper's approach can be used to divide stakeholders into groups and to make policy analysis. The problem with to‐be‐deregulated industry is often lack of competition, new actors and governmental actions, and therefore the used Delphi technique offers potential to gather empirical material before any activity has actually started in the observed industry.

This paper develops Whitehouse's 2003 examination of the creation of Network Rail, a case study of New Labour's attempt to operationalize the ‘third way’. Significant changes have occurred since 2003 which make Network Rail's position as a private company with private sector debt appear increasingly anomalous. These changes include: the reclassification of the debt of another rail company from private to public, and the introduction of‘imputed debt’into public sector debt measurement; new funding arrangements for Network Rail which make it heavily dependent on public support; and important rail regulatory policy changes. The paper analyses these changes, and revisits White‐house's conclusions. In particular, this paper challenges Whitehouse's contention that Network Rail's creation led to the de facto renationalization of the railway infrastructure at a reduced public cost. The paper demonstrates that Network Rail is a very expensive mechanism for channelling public money to private companies, and argues that the Labour government's attempt to maintain the company's private sector status as part of its third way approach is ultimately untenable.

PurposeThe paper aims to examine the role, funding and status of Network Rail, a very significant example of New Labour's attempt to operationalise the “third way”. The analysis of Network Rail is used to critique the “third way” approach to policy‐making in Britain.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines Network Rail, and the significant changes that have occurred since its creation, in the context of the claims originally made for the company by Transport Secretary Byers. It employs critical financial analysis and non‐financial performance indicators to examine the “third way” approach to rail privatisation, drawing on the work of its leading supporter in the UK, Giddens, and its leading critic, Callinicos.FindingsThe paper demonstrates that Network Rail is an expensive mechanism for channelling public money to private companies. It argues that the “third way” is really a smoke screen for the neo‐liberal ideology, behind which there is a continuing transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the private sector.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper focuses on one significant example of the “third way” approach to policy making. It demonstrates the strength of the neo‐liberal ideology, particularly the belief in the value of privatisation, in the UK.Practical implicationsThe findings of the paper have implications for public policy and for those affected by rail privatisation, including employees, passengers and taxpayers.Originality/valueResearchers and practitioners working in the area of public sector management and reforms should find the paper of value.

Purpose This study uses a social exchange theoretical (SET) lens to examine how organizational justice influences employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), through the mediating role of discretionary power, and the moderating role of transformational leadership. The rationale is that public and private sector employees often operate with varying degrees of discretion, which may shape how they respond to fairness cues in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach Study 1 involved a three-wave time-lagged survey of 210 Malaysian public servants, while Study 2 used a scenario-based experimental design to test the model with 240 private sector employees. Findings The findings confirm that organizational justice predicts OCB, with discretionary power serving as a significant mediating mechanism. Moreover, transformational leadership enhances the justice-discretion relationship, though it did not moderate the direct link between organizational justice and OCB. Practical implications Organizations play a central role in shaping perceptions of justice by adopting participatory decision-making, equitable reward systems and transparent performance evaluations. This practical signal of fairness encourages employees to respond with OCB. Enhancing discretionary power can further amplify the effect of justice over their tasks and decisions. Originality/value This study highlights the importance of organizational justice in fostering discretionary power and OCB, especially when supported by transformational leadership. Grounded in SET, the findings demonstrate that when employee perceive fair treatment, they are more likely to reciprocate with OCB. Discretionary power serves as a key mechanism in this exchange, while leadership strengthens justice in supportive environments. Hence, fostering justice through empowering leadership can improve employee performance and effectiveness.

Back to Government?Reregulating British Railways Peter Leyland* (bio) Introduction This article examines questions of constitutional accountability arising from the privatization of British Rail in the mid-1990s, but I would like to declare a personal interest in this issue at the outset since the manifest shortcomings in rail performance have affected me as one of the many thousands of commuters who rely on trains to get to work each day. Rail privatization in the United Kingdom (U.K.) was a complex affair that involved taking a single industry and breaking it up into distinct parts. It also required separate regimes of statutory regulation to oversee the general operation of the railways, the bidding process for franchised routes, and safety. The entire enterprise lacked a clear rationale. Not only did the proposals appear flawed from the outset, but the policy was pursued by an unpopular government in the face of strong opposition from the rail industry and trade unions, opposition parties in Parliament, and the public at large. After a relatively short time it became obvious that standards of service were declining alarmingly on the entire rail network, and later, the cause of serious rail accidents indicated that passenger safety was being compromised through neglect of the system. The difficulties encountered by government in responding to what had rapidly turned into a crisis raise important legal and constitutional questions. This article begins by explaining the constitutional relationship of Parliament and the executive by mentioning the important convention of individual ministerial responsibility. Secondly, it provides a narrative of the British Rail episode that discusses [End Page 435] the main features of nationalization, privatization, and statutory regulation. However, this narrative is narrowly focused in order to concentrate attention on the main institutional failings and successive attempts to repair the damage. It will be suggested that the deep-rooted problems encountered in regulating a fragmented, loss-making railway expose the limits of regulation, and perhaps the limits of the privatization project in the United Kingdom. The Labour government continues to declare its commitment to public/private partnerships and free market principles, but we will see here that in a number of key respects, the levers of control are reverting back to government. I. Political Accountability and Ministerial Responsibility When considering regulation and accountability in this context, it is important to remember that the fundamental underlying issue is the protection of an important public interest which can be identified in distinct ways. This interest can be defined in terms of the preservation of a railway that serves the public and forms an important part of the nation's transport infrastructure. And obviously, the public interest requires the efficient and safe operation of the rail network. In addition, large sums in public subsidy have been and continue to be spent on the railways. Finally, there is a public interest in the control of a monopoly power. In an important sense we are concerned with the capacity of government and of Parliament to safeguard the public interest defined in all these ways.1 In the United Kingdom, the convention of individual ministerial responsibility is the constitutional mechanism for establishing accountability between political decisionmakers and professional civil servants responsible for implementing policy. Further down the policy chain, accountability extends in varying degrees to "next steps" agencies as reconstituted administrative units within the civil service; nondepartmental governmental bodies, including regulators; and to certain aspects of policy to devolved government and local government. In a nation that functions without a codified constitution, individual ministerial responsibility has developed as part of an evolutionary process into an important [End Page 436] constitutional convention.2 A.V. Dicey, writing in the nineteenth century, noted that "the point of defining, scrutinising and controlling public power was not to further responsiveness, representativeness and participation. Rather, the aim was to establish predictability in the exercise of power and to limit the scope of political decisions."3 In essence, a model of the constitution was conceived that sought to accommodate the existence of discretionary public power by the device of ministerial responsibility, and this "complemented harmoniously, without altering in essence, the Dicean concept of the rule of law. While the courts policed the boundaries of ministerial...

Off the rails: The cost performance of infrastructure rail projects

Public interest companies have recently attracted the attention of the British government. These companies are charged with delivering public services in the public interest. Network Rail and foundation hospitals are examples of this policy approach. Many of its advocates believe that these bodies form a third way within public services. This claim has stimulated much controversy. This article asks if public interest companies constitute a third way within the public sector. My main conclusion is that these bodies do generate a third way within public services. This analysis is important for clarifying the nature of a significant set of policy developments as well as shedding light on the attempts by New Labour to create a broader third way beyond state-centred social democracy and free markets.

This article considers some of the risks and challenges raised by the use of algorithm-assisted decision-making and predictive tools by the public sector. Alongside, it reviews a number of long-standing English administrative law rules designed to regulate the discretionary power of the state. The principles of administrative law are concerned with human decisions involved in the exercise of state power and discretion, thus offering a promising avenue for the regulation of the growing number of algorithm-assisted decisions within the public sector. This article attempts to re-frame key rules for the new algorithmic environment and argues that 'old' law-interpreted for a new context-can help guide lawyers, scientists and public sector practitioners alike when considering the development and deployment of new algorithmic tools.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The growing ubiquity of algorithms in society: implications, impacts and innovations'.

Purpose – Effective engineering asset management is essential in delivering public services safely whilst avoiding breakdowns and accidents. The purpose of this paper is to ensure asset safety and sustainability, public sector firms have to adopt new processes and practices. It is the role of supervisors to implement the changes, and as part of the new public management (NPM) public sector reforms, public sector asset managers have more discretionary power to implement further changes related to increased accountability. Design/methodology/approach – The paper explores the impact of management practices on supervisor-employee relationships and employees’ perception of autonomy, employees’ attitudes towards change and their perceptions of organisational culture within Australian public sector engineering asset management organisations, and in the context of NPM reforms and consequent changes in supervisory discretionary power. Social exchange theory provided the theoretical framework and a self-report surv...

This study examines organizational factors of corruption among law enforcement officers in Malaysia, focusing on accountability, internal ‎control, discretionary power, and digitalization. Grounded in agency theory, it emphasizes structural and governance-based solutions, offer-‎ing a broader perspective rather than individually oriented explanations offered by the fraud triangle theory. Data were collected through a ‎survey administered to officers from six enforcement agencies: the Immigration Department of Malaysia (IDM), Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA), National Anti-Drug Agency (NADA), Royal Malaysian Customs Department (RMCD), Royal Malaysia ‎Police (RMP), and Road Transport Department Malaysia (RTDM), which reported the highest number of corruption-related arrests by the ‎Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) between 2019 and 2023. Of the 871 questionnaires distributed, 499 valid responses ‎were obtained, representing a response rate of 57.3%. The findings reveal that accountability and internal control are significantly and negatively associated with corruption, whereas discretionary power and digitalization exhibit no statistically significant effect. These results un‎derscore the central role of formal accountability structures and effective internal control systems in mitigating corruption within law enforcement organisations. While digitalization does not demonstrate a direct anti-corruption effect, it remains relevant as an enabling mecha-‎nism for transparency and operational efficiency when supported by appropriate governance arrangements. Despite limitations related to ‎self-reported data and potential non-response bias, the study provides policy-relevant insights for enforcement agencies and contributes to ‎the literature on organizational governance and integrity in the public sector‎.

Freight transportation systems in many developing countries are highly inadequate and inefficient. First, the physical infrastructure – ports, airports, and road and rail networks – is capacity constrained and poorly maintained. Second, the freight services provided by private and public sector operators tend to be limited in range, poor in quality, and often technologically obsolete. Consequently, industrial firms in these countries operate under a handicap relative to their competitors in advanced industrialized countries. However, neither the magnitude nor nature of this handicap is well understood (see, e.g., Diamond and Spence 1989; World Bank 1994a; Anas, Lee and Murray 1996). To bridge this gap in our understanding, this chapter empirically examines the costs imposed on auto firms by the poor freight transportation system in India and ascertains which of these costs the firms themselves find to be more debilitating.

This article addresses the development of Europe’s foremost high-speed rail (HSR) network, the Spanish AVE (Alta Velocidad Española-Spanish High-Speed Rail). Against the prevalent description of AVE as a project rooted in the consent of the subject population, I argue that it is better understood as a case of dominance without hegemony. I substantiate this claim by turning to two different moments in the history of AVE: its adoption as part of a broader transformation of the transport market; and the struggle against HSR in the Basque Country.