Article ID: CBB566015973

Expertise and policy-making: Main actors, debates and outcomes in the making of the Portuguese railway network (1850–90) (June 2021)

unapi

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Portugal built the main branches of its railway system. In this paper, I will use technical and military reports, parliamentary debates and sundry bibliography to analyse the influence of the different stakeholders. I investigated the expectations, priorities and agendas of engineers, army officers, policymakers and lobbyists in the design of the Portuguese railway network. I argue that historiography about Portuguese railways usually considers the rationale behind their discussion as entirely technological and focuses mainly on their outputs, taking railways for granted, or black-boxed. However, the planification of large transportation systems depends on the sociotechnical context and on hierarchies of power of their time. I will show that experts (mostly engineers) played a decisive role in the planning of the network, but a large part of its design was due to non-technical issues, including political machinations, budgetary constraints and corporative lobbying.

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Authors & Contributors
Pereira, Hugo Silveira
Lee, Robert S.
Jonathan English
Jonathan Michael Feldman
Bruno J. Navarro
Frank N. Wilner
Concepts
Land transportation
Railroads
Technology
Technology and society
Public policy
Expertise
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
21st century
20th century, early
Places
United States
Portugal
Australia
Sweden
Russia
Germany
Institutions
Amtrak
Budd Company
New Deal (1933-1939)
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