The development of transport policies at a national level is affected by the institutional settings prevalent in the national transport sector. The broadening objectives of transport policy and the increase of constraints and externalities that must be considered in the policy-making process have led to an increase in the number of actors involved in transport policy making. In turn, this has exacerbated the complexity of transport institutional settings and has slowed the policy-making process. The increasing complexity is also an important obstacle in comparative policy assessment across countries or transport modes. One way of dealing with these difficulties is to develop a systematic approach for classifying and analyzing transport institutional settings. This paper presents a methodological framework for analyzing institutional settings in transport policy making on the basis of key dimensions and features that characterize the process. The framework aims not only at describing the organizational structure of transport systems (i.e., actors, roles, and relationships) but also at examining the inherent qualitative elements of the institutional setting that can positively or negatively influence the outcome of the policy-making process. The application of the framework to the analysis of transport institutional settings of four European countries (Finland, Germany, Greece, and the United Kingdom) and the ensuing classification and analysis of their characteristics have highlighted similarities and differences in the policy-making structure and process across countries.
The results can be useful to authorities charged with the design of supranational European transport policy.