Policy bureaucrats have the potential to play central roles in policy transformations. Little is however known about the environments that would encourage them to do so. For the example of the German transport transformation, the preparation of the federal transport infrastructure network plan presents an opportunity to study this question. On the basis of expert interviews in the sub-national transport ministries, the plausibility of influences from political, capacity and urgency perspectives is assessed. Neither capacity nor party-political relations between the two levels play out as expected. Instead, the hypothesis is put forward, that problem urgency and deliberate protest are drivers of transformation-friendly planning.
