Disentangling the nexus of global intermediaries: the case of bus rapid transit

Abstract

Abstract Building upon the debates around travelling policy and precipitous imitation of bus rapid transit worldwide, this paper commits to disentangling the nexus of global intermediaries – that is, the advocacy organizations, engineering consultancies and international banks furthering the economy of policy translation. These associations promote their particular policy package by providing training manuals, funding for study tours and a never-ending stream of architects, engineers and planners with topical expertise and skills. This paper unravels the multiple and overlapping roles intermediaries play first by introducing the policy to relevant policymakers, providing technical expertise and financing, and later serving as critic of the translation process, drafting formative reports and measuring the merits as compared to the model. The economy of policy translation is to maintain these entanglements, to complicate the transfer of knowledge and to ensure that localities remain dependent on the nexus of global intermediaries. As such, these global intermediaries create and sustain a process whereby learning is deliberate and methodical but never-ending and unhurried. Such analysis contributes to policy mobilities discussions by identifying a wider process of peripatetic policymaking and politics, and in so doing, explains how and why certain best practices are elevated and esteemed while others are discounted.