Why political theorists should be interested in transport

One way of defining the role of political theory is to say that it has a descriptive and a normative role. The descriptive role , according to this interpretation of its role, consists in identifying the normative commitments underlying politics, policy and practice. The normative role consists in engaging in reasoned argument regarding which normative commitments ought to inform policy and practice. Policy and practice are often characterized by conflicting normative commitments – conflicts between different policies but also often between a high-level, often more explicit commitment to certain principles on the one hand, and the actual commitments entailed in specific policies and practices. These particularly lend themselves to a political theory analysis in so far as political theorists often at least aspire to identify and resolve inconsistencies. Transport is a rich field for political theorists in this respect because it is a policy area and a set of practices characterized by a number of normative conflicts, in particular by the conflict between a high-level commitment to universal, equal access to transport on the one hand, and the uneven objective access opportunities built into transport systems : those with personal access to a car have significantly better access than those without. Normative inconsistencies regarding access to transport have been analysed and theoretised, and remedies proposed, but by sociologists and transport planners branching out into political philosophy (e.g. Lucas 2012; Lucas, van Wee and Maat 2015; Martens 2017) rather than political theorists. The paper will review this literature and suggest how a political theorists might tackle the task of analysing and remedying normative inconsistencies regarding access to transport.