Makten över trafikpolitiken : Korporatism, lobbying och opinionsbildning inför 1998 års transportpolitiska beslut : en bok från PISA-projeket

Sammanfattning: In 1994 the Swedish government decided to begin an investigation to help shape future transportation policy. The most vital part of the investigation was to present suggestions about how transportation policy could be altered to become environmentally sound. The investigation then presented the suggestions for how this could be achieved, but when the government announced its propositions for a new transportation policy the majority of the suggestions had vanished. Even if the proposition mentioned how the policy could be designed to be environmentally friendly the concrete measures that had been suggested had disappeared. The proposition had been preceded by an intense conflict, mainly between, on the one side, railway and environmental interests and, on the other side, road interests, who had the support of industry and some strong trades unions.This decision process is the case that is investigated in this thesis. The purpose of the thesis is to describe how various organised interests try to affect policy process, and also to explain how this affects the political outcome. The author has identified a number of assertions on the subject from previous research, and has tested these by following an extensive decision-making process.The thesis strengthens earlier research results that have shown that Sweden is gradually changing, with regard to interest organisations' roles in public politics, from being a corporative society to one that is, in a higher grade, bearing the mark of pluralism of interest groups. However, from the results of this investigation, it is not possible to maintain that the power of interest organisations has diminished; on the contrary, it is obvious that they have the ability to affect political decision-making. It is also obvious that those organisations that foremost choose to work through the public opinion clearly have greater prerequisites to affect political decision-making than those that foremost choose to follow more formal channels to contact the decision-makers. It is also the case that the organisations that are economically strong have more power than the traditional popular movements.