Social Identities and Programmatic Action as Drivers of Innovation in Sustainable Mobility

Across countries, social identities and programmatic action have shown to be drivers for policy innovation and change (e.g., Davidian 2021, Lee and Huang 2022, Hornung, Schröder, and Bandelow 2023, Vogeler, van den Dool, and Chen 2023). Taking a look at the current ecological transport turn, the German federal government introduced several policy programs and transitions aimed at increasing sustainable mobility. One example for such a policy program is the Nationaler Radverkehrsplan (NRVP, national cycling plan) which was unanimously adopted in 2002 by the German Bundestag. The program comprises a multitude of policies to promote cycling infrastructure and has fostered the implementation and improvement of bicycle paths across the country. Using the perspective of the Programmatic Action Framework (PAF) and the Social Identity Approach (SIA), this paper answers the question of how an initially small group of actors behind the NRVP managed to turn an idea into a decade-long policy that changed the transport sector up to this day. To this end, we conduct an in-depth analysis of the NRVP policy process and the actor networks surrounding the past three editions of the program. The PAF is a specifically valuable approach for this study as it provides explanations for long-term policy change focusing on policy programs and the social group that developed it whose members are hypothesized to have common biographical intersections and social identities. We apply biographic research and network analysis to identify policy actors related to the program, their relationships, forums for communication, and professional trajectories over the years. The paper shows how programmatic groups can foster policy change and have enduring impact on successfully addressing crises. It further contributes to the understanding of the role of policy programs, group dynamics, and social identities in public policy.