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power of the promise of laudable action at the expense of diffusing political pressure over the urgency of substantive action to achieve these goals
which remains both slow and insufficient. Yet he flips this to point out that
target-setting itself is not only performative but can also be regarded as a
form of prefigurative politics, whereby the apparent failure to meet targets
that increasingly come to be seen as desirable can spark another accountability crisis, one that can drive necessary climate mitigation at the urban
scale. The Zero Growth Objective for urban transport in Norway, argues
Haarstad, has resulted in concrete agreements signed by its largest cities in
2016 and 2017 that have not only committed to limit traffic but also
delivered results by way of a reduction in private car traffic during 2018.
Contra the techno-managerial apparatus of the post-political condition
(Swyngedouw 2010) that simply supports the status quo, the carrying
power of numbers may motivate action by working targets into routinised
repertoires.
This case offers a slew of examples of discursive legitimation, starting
with the White Paper on Norwegian Climate Policy from 2006 which
articulated the need for a shift to public and non-motorised transport, the
White Paper on Norwegian Climate Policy from 2012 which formulated
this as a ‘goal’ or target, and the very statement of the Zero Growth
Objective. This posits that all growth in personal traffic in Norway’s largest cities must be covered by public or non-motorised transport.
Bureaucratic legitimation is also at play given that these and other government policies (such as the Climate Accord of 2008 in the Norwegian parliament) consistently reference a 2 °C target to limit global warming and
have worked this into a broad range of national policy documents and
strategies, including for urban transport in this specific case. The use of
technocratic practices of legitimation is evident in the National Transport
Plan Working Group’s reasoning that ‘zero’ is a very easy target to measure and thus useful in holding cities to account, and the subsequent
agreements signed by the country’s largest cities with specific indicators to
measure performance on urban car traffic. Crucially, financial legitimation
accompanies the Zero Growth Objective through these Urban
Environment Agreements, which tie the amount of central funding allocated to cities for local transport infrastructure with their prowess in meeting the target.
Haarstad thus constructs the use of metrics as more than simply a
bureaucratic apparatus of governance that perpetuates accountability crises in the shiny guise of new mitigation targets. He argues that targets
9 PRACTICES OF LEGITIMATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY CRISES…
power of the promise of laudable action at the expense of diffusing political pressure over the urgency of substantive action to achieve these goals
which remains both slow and insufficient. Yet he flips this to point out that
target-setting itself is not only performative but can also be regarded as a
form of prefigurative politics, whereby the apparent failure to meet targets
that increasingly come to be seen as desirable can spark another accountability crisis, one that can drive necessary climate mitigation at the urban
scale. The Zero Growth Objective for urban transport in Norway, argues
Haarstad, has resulted in concrete agreements signed by its largest cities in
2016 and 2017 that have not only committed to limit traffic but also
delivered results by way of a reduction in private car traffic during 2018.
Contra the techno-managerial apparatus of the post-political condition
(Swyngedouw 2010) that simply supports the status quo, the carrying
power of numbers may motivate action by working targets into routinised
repertoires.
This case offers a slew of examples of discursive legitimation, starting
with the White Paper on Norwegian Climate Policy from 2006 which
articulated the need for a shift to public and non-motorised transport, the
White Paper on Norwegian Climate Policy from 2012 which formulated
this as a ‘goal’ or target, and the very statement of the Zero Growth
Objective. This posits that all growth in personal traffic in Norway’s largest cities must be covered by public or non-motorised transport.
Bureaucratic legitimation is also at play given that these and other government policies (such as the Climate Accord of 2008 in the Norwegian parliament) consistently reference a 2 °C target to limit global warming and
have worked this into a broad range of national policy documents and
strategies, including for urban transport in this specific case. The use of
technocratic practices of legitimation is evident in the National Transport
Plan Working Group’s reasoning that ‘zero’ is a very easy target to measure and thus useful in holding cities to account, and the subsequent
agreements signed by the country’s largest cities with specific indicators to
measure performance on urban car traffic. Crucially, financial legitimation
accompanies the Zero Growth Objective through these Urban
Environment Agreements, which tie the amount of central funding allocated to cities for local transport infrastructure with their prowess in meeting the target.
Haarstad thus constructs the use of metrics as more than simply a
bureaucratic apparatus of governance that perpetuates accountability crises in the shiny guise of new mitigation targets. He argues that targets
9 PRACTICES OF LEGITIMATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY CRISES…