Shaping port governance: the territorial trajectories of reform

Journal of Transport Geography xxx (2012) xxx–xxx

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Shaping port governance: the territorial trajectories of reform Jean Debrie a,⇑, Valérie Lavaud-Letilleul b,1, Francesco Parola c,2 a

IFSTTAR–SPLOTT, University of Paris-Est, Bâtiment Le Descartes 2, 2, rue de la Butte Verte, 93166 Noisy-le-Grand Cedex, France University of Montpellier 3, UMR 5281 ART-Dev, Route de Mende, F-34 199 Montpellier Cedex 5, France c University of Naples ‘‘Parthenope’’, Department of Business Studies, Via Medina 40, 80133 Naples, Italy b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Keywords: Port reform Port governance Territorial trajectories Hybridization of models Embeddedness

a b s t r a c t The evolution of public–private relationships has driven many economic sectors to undergo decentralisation and de-regulation. Throughout these transformations, an appreciation of governance is key to understanding the process. In recent years, seaports have undergone dramatic changes in governance as reported in academic and policy literature. The World Bank, for example, outlined a well-known taxonomy of major governance models. However, this literature does not capture of the specificities of local environments, or ‘‘embed’’ the changes in specific institutional and economic contexts. This paper analyses embeddedness in ports and their associated governance structures. We analyse and discuss (i) the complexity and the heterogeneity of the institutional framework, (ii) the multi-layered decisional chain, (iii) the geo-economic dimension, and (iv) the socio-cultural environment of reformed ports. The paper takes a dynamic view of port reform trajectories. We illustrate the theoretical discussion with a comparison of ports in France and Italy. We show the effects of local forces in shaping national port reform schemes, and we examine the relationship between global trends and embeddedness. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction: between path dependence and embeddedness: the territorial paths of port reforms In a context of the changing division of responsibilities between the public and private sectors, the concept of governance has been widely adopted. For academics, governance is a powerful concept suitable for understanding both decentralization and deregulation. For institutional actors, governance represents a frame of reference for recommending change (Gaudin, 2002). In the port domain, the currently dominant governance model (the ‘‘Landlord Port’’), has been privileged and heavily promoted by the World Bank (2007). The Bank’s taxonomy of governance models consists of four forms of port organization, which are distinguishable by the relative levels of private and public ownership and operation. At the two extremes are the public service port and the wholly private port, both characterized by very little sharing of responsibility between public and private actors. In the third category, the tool port, the public sector is dominant as it owns the land, the infrastructure and the equipment, and private sector activity is limited to some operations, most commonly cargo handling performed using equipment owned by the public authority. The fourth category, ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 1 45 92 56 75. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Debrie), [email protected] (V. Lavaud-Letilleul), [email protected] (F. Parola). 1 Tel.: +33 4 11 75 71 00. 2 Tel.: +39 081 547 4845.

the landlord port, is one in which the public authority owns the land and the infrastructure and leases these to private operators as a concession, with equipment and operations in the hands of the private sector. Beyond the Bank’s evident political aim (to recommend changes towards the landlord model in developing countries), the model is widely supported in the academic literature. Scholars have analyzed the political process of devolution (Brooks, 2004) or privatization (Cullinane and Song, 2002; Baird, 2000); others have reflected on the consequences of public action and the challenges for port authorities confronted with the landlord transition (Comtois and Slack, 2003; Notteboom and Winkelmans, 2001); and, more recently, Brooks and Pallis (2008) have examined the link between different types of governance and port performance. While the division between public and private spheres at the core of the Bank’s port governance models do provide some insights and guidance for port organization they remain as all models are, by definition and by construction general and thus decontextualized. Recent national comparisons of actual port reform processes raise questions about the differentiated transposition of homogenous port governance schemes in various institutional contexts (Brooks, 2007; Ng and Pallis, 2010). More specifically, the analyses reveal three major problems: 1. The application of externally generated governance models favors a static approach, which produces studies conceived as a ‘snapshot’ taken in a specific moment of the port

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Please cite this article in press as: Debrie, J., et al. Shaping port governance: the territorial trajectories of reform. J. Transp. Geogr. (2012), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2012.07.007

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history. Yet, taking account of changes over time is essential to understanding the evolution of port governance and to analyzing the relationship between stability and change. 2. In addition, the spatial dimension of the model’s transposition depends on the scales considered by academics in their analyses. Apart from a few contributions (e.g., Sánchez and Wilmsmeier, 2006), most studies examined the models of governance either on ports from the same country (Wang et al., 2004), or on ports from differentiated national contexts (Ng and Pallis, 2010). Yet, it is hard to distinguish what is national or local, without a systematic and multilevel analysis of embeddedness, in relation to the different territorial scales (Hess, 2004). 3. Finally, the differentiated application of these models of governance from one country or one port to another makes it difficult to explain the observed variations from one country or port to another. Most recent explanations give priority to institutional variables, making use of the paradigms of path dependence and embeddedness, focusing on the weight of history and the local character. No matter how interesting institutional variables may be, they need to be made more specific. Our objective in this paper is to understand the various manifestations of port governance reform within specific territorial contexts (country by country or port by port). Thus, an effort must be made to re-evaluate the relevance of temporal and spatial contextualization of port governance. The proposed multi-scalar and multi-variable dynamic reading of port governance aims at giving a better understanding of territorial trajectories by country and by port. This paper is based on the current theoretical discussions around the concepts of governance, port reform, path dependence and embeddedness. To study the process of territorial variation in a systematic way, this paper pursues an intertwined, comparative, multi-scalar approach, inspired by the same assumptions which allowed Wang et al. (2004, p. 238) to define ‘‘the idiosyncrasy of national reform’’ for Chinese ports. To this end, we compare port governance in France and Italy. The comparison is drawn from two research projects3 dealing with private–public relationships in ports. Data was obtained primarily through institutional reports and academic literature as well as 40 indepth semi-structured interviews (conducted between 2007 and 2010) with Port Authority officials, representatives of local, regional, and national governments, and the major stakeholders in the sample ports. Our selection of ports in the two countries (La Spezia, Genoa, Livorno, Naples in Italy, and Marseille, Le Havre, Dunkirk in France) which are part of the same western European geo-cultural zone and which share a similar level of State involvement in port planning and management, has allowed to uncover convergence / divergence in the content and application of national port reforms. In addition, our analysis provides insights on governance, both at the national and port levels. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 contains a literature review, addressing the dynamic dimension of port reform and governance. In Section 3, we outline a conceptual re-drawing of the notion of port governance, focusing on the temporal and spatial contextualization of port reform trajectories. The variables, which are likely to define the elements of context at different scales are taken into account (i.e. the institutional variable, the decisional chain variable, the geo-economic variable and, finally,

3 This publication was made possible by the TRANSPRACT Research Program (2005–2007) from SPLOTT-IFSTTAR and by the GECOPE Research Program (2009– 2011) funded by the French National Research Agency (Agence Nationale pour la Recherche, or ANR). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the IFSTTAR and the ANR.

the geo-cultural and sociological variable). Next the analytical framework, conceived following a multi-scalar approach, is illustrated with the empirical material on port reform in France and Italy (Section 4). Section 5 contains a summary and conclusions. 2. Assessing port reform and port governance: conceptual foundations and methodological approaches Two significant periods are outlined in the academic literature on port institutions (sometimes referred to as stakeholders’ interactions by port planners) (North, 1990; Scott, 2001). Up until the beginning of the 2000s, various scholars (Haralambides et al., 1995; Everett and Robinson, 1998; Ircha, 2001; Van Niekerk, 2005) and members of international organizations (Crooks, 2002; Juhel, 2001; Hoffmann, 2001) have analyzed public port reform policies, activities and actors, as well as the different forms of response to these changes for specific national contexts. Subsequently, the notion of port governance replaced reform. As we argue below, this conceptual turn was not neutral in content. 2.1. Port reform: managing the momentum of change The act of reforming implies the implementation of a public policy designed to change specific actions and coordination structures, most commonly at the national level. Within the broader context of transport liberalization (a separation of ownership and operation) and institutional change (the creation of supranational entities alongside decentralization), most countries have engaged in port reform since the end of the 1980s (Brooks, 2007). As a result, there have been three major changes of public action in the port domain, as in transport in general: a change in objectives, a change in instruments and a change in institutional framework (Hall, 1993). 2.1.1. Factors and timeframes of change The reforms that occurred at the end of the 20th century were the result of a process that started at least two centuries earlier in the context of a contraction of space-time and the emergence of capitalism (Braudel, 1979). In the port domain, without partaking in excessive technological determinism, we note that the context of change primarily depended upon innovations in nautical technology (e.g., steam boats and metal hull in the 19th century; super-bulk freighters in the 1950s; containerization in the 1960s, etc.). As in other transport modes (e.g., rail), it is worth noting that each appearance of new opportunities and new needs for port equipment corresponded, in one way or another, to questioning of present interests, competences, decision-making, finance and port-work organization. The main challenge to analysing reforms comes from the multiplicity of temporalities of change. Technological timeframes carried out with a clean rupture (short term) do not correspond to that of the activity’s organization by the actors (mid term), nor to that of society (long term). Contemporary port reforms provide substantial evidence of the ways these processes of change with different timeframes intersect and how the structuring of the different societal components plays out in particular places. 2.1.2. An ideological convergence around the port reforms The current round of port reforms, which started in the 1980s, represents the most recent step in the historical trend. These reforms can be explained, at the most fundamental level, by the new opportunities offered by containerization, new transport organization as part of the establishment of global supply chains, and the internationalization of transport firms. The reforms developed in a general context of the reorganization of public power, a

Please cite this article in press as: Debrie, J., et al. Shaping port governance: the territorial trajectories of reform. J. Transp. Geogr. (2012), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2012.07.007

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scarcity of governmental resources, and in a port context shaped by the organization of dockworkers, and a growing prominence (especially in wealthier countries) of local interests opposed to port activities (Juhel, 2001). Yet, the evolution of port reforms across most of the world cannot be understood without considering the ideological dimension of social and economic change in the 1980s. Dominant analyses of public policies have characterized these changes as the rise of the neo-liberal paradigm (Müller, 2005). A new dominant discourse imposed itself as the framework of action and thought for political actors: (1) the ideal society is the market society, (2) good market functioning is guaranteed by competition, and (3) the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. In the port domain this translates into three complementary dynamics: (1) the privatization of port services (operations rather ownership itself); (2) tightly shared responsibility between the private (operator) and the public (regulator); and (3) the corporatization of port authorities to encourage a more entrepreneurial culture. Far from being new, port privatization has been practiced since the 19th century in some places. But in the port domain, rather than institutional convergence (see Hall, 2003), what is really noteworthy about the recent period is an ideological convergence, especially around the supposed benefits of privatization (Everett and Robinson, 1998; Sánchez and Wilmsmeier, 2006). For this we must acknowledge the important role of structural adjustment policies imposed by international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union (Crooks, 2002). This analysis, which explores the major changes experienced by port communities since the 1980s, may lead one to assume that port reform entailed an institutional convergence. As we discuss below, this was in fact not the case. 2.1.3. Path dependence: varieties of port reform The evolutionary approach, from which the notion of path dependence arises, is appropriate to analyze the evolution of organizational forms at specific places such as ports (Hall and Jacobs, 2010). In economic or political sciences, an evolutionary analysis reinstates the past into the present, insisting on the importance of the long duration of practices, behaviors, and inherited social facts (Maurel, 2007). Our analysis adheres to the proposition that there is not geographic convergence, but rather complex re-composition and hybridization of models in specific territorial contexts. This analysis, however, is not grounded on the idea of path dependence, a concept that is becoming increasingly controversial among political scientists due to the differentiated character of public policy sectors, the difficulty in understanding the historical bifurcation and the self-reinforcing processes at work, and risk of analyzing within the short term and only at national level (Dobry, 2000). Mainstream writing on port reform reveals that the assumption global institutional convergence must be questioned. The apparently standardized global reform process has to be unpacked to fully understand the multitude of country-specific reform processes. In this regard, the epistemological bridge connecting port reform and port governance also needs further investigation and clarification. 2.2. Port governance: a heterogeneous international landscape Since the 1990s, the analytical lens of scholars has moved from the concept of port reform to that of port governance. In this regard, however, conventional studies predominantly adopt a static view of the question, emphasizing the patterns of public–private interactions. More recently, the recognition of locally specific forms of embeddedness has yielded more dynamic descriptions

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of port reform. In particular, Wang et al. (2004) show the necessity of contextualizing governance choices and reveal the ways in which local factors may explain the notable institutional differences even between ports in proximity.

2.2.1. Port governance: the end of the myth of the ideal model The focus on governance, albeit often vaguely defined, shifts attention from the dynamics of the decentralization of decisionmaking by a unified political agent (government), to multiple sites and actors within a new context of softer regulation based on public–private partnership (Gaudin, 2002). Research has also focused on the status and tasks of port authorities following New Public Management (NPM) streams. From a port governance perspective, some assumptions, especially concerning the efficiency of the private sector have been discredited (Caves et al., 1982; Boardman and Vining, 1989). Brooks (2007) essentially dismantles the notion of the existence of an ideal model of governance, and the assumed linear relationship between the method of governance and port efficiency has been questioned by Brooks and Pallis (2008). Conventional studies of port governance, however, continued to neglect to recognize a conceptual relation between time and space or between different spatial scales. Therefore, the logical nexus between the transformations imposed by waves of port reform and the changes occurring in the governance of specific ports need to be discussed and investigated further. In this regard, the frequent adoption of a typological approach has introduced a certain methodological bias. Carried out from a relatively static angle, or at least as part of the short-term evolution, this method highlights the factors of stability in the context of a synchronic analysis (i.e. a ‘snapshot’ of the situation), rather than in the context of a dynamic analysis (the short and long term evolution). Originally developed as a tool to aid the implementation of reforms by governments from developing countries, the World Bank’s Port Reform Toolkit (2007) is evidence of this. It has become the reference for technocratic work on port governance, describing port authorities’ tasks according to the public/private division.

2.2.2. Case study analysis: embeddedness and hybridization of models More recently, some studies have attempted a pragmatic understanding of port governance by looking for empirical evidence in case studies (Airriess, 2001; Jacobs and Hall, 2007; Hall, 2003; Wang et al., 2004). Each of these studies examine actors’ practices, in order to understand specific port governance arrangements. Several employ the concept of embeddedness as an analytical frame, although the concept has become something of an analytical cover-all. In its formulation by Granovetter (1985), embeddedness involves the idea of a necessary societal contextualization of economic processes, and entails multiple scales as well as local dimensions (Hess, 2004). Various scholars have emphasized different explanatory schemes to depict port governance processes. These include the geo-cultural exception (Lee et al., 2008); the community of practice (Hall, 2003; Jacobs, 2007); ‘‘bargaining power asymmetries within logistics chain, port’s stakeholders and jurisdictional scales’’ (Wang et al., 2004, p. 239); the structure of port provision model (physical–institutional–governance) and local regime politics (Jacobs, 2007); and the combination of network embeddedness and territorial embeddedness (Jacobs and Hall, 2007). However, these temporally dynamic studies do not pay enough attention to questions of scale; they lack a two-tier geographic approach, organized both by country and by port. In the next section, we aim to fill this gap, by applying a common analytical grid to the sample case studies, to identify the impact of local embeddedness factors on port governance settings.

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3. A conceptual re-drawing: temporal and spatial contextualization and the territorial trajectories of port governance 3.1. Time and space in port reform and governance Port reforms are a relevant object of study, though of course not the only one, for observing port dynamics (Brooks and Pallis, 2010; Ng and Pallis, 2010). Their heuristic value is both temporal and spatial because (1) they are organizational responses elaborated by actors facing demands for change at a given moment, and consequently (2) they give indications of the points identified as problematic, the resolutions attempted by actors and the paths of change adopted in specific national and/or local contexts.

3.1.1. Port governance changes as a complex evolutionary process: from the intended reform to realized reform Understanding changes in port governance in their particular time-space contexts, leads us to reflect further on the effectiveness of national reform processes at the local level, as well as the shaping role of local forces. Analogous to the taxonomy applied in the strategic management literature for clarifying the downward process of implementation of corporate strategies within the firm (Ansoff, 1965; Mintzberg and Waters, 1985), we argue that the realized reform – the actual policies that are implemented – are only partly related to that which was intended (see Fig. 1). Even the intended reforms outlined as schemes conceived by policymakers and politicians of the central government, are the result of a process of negotiation, bargaining, and compromise. At the end, the realised reform might be read as a consequence of (and a compromise between) deliberate (top-down) and emerging (bottom-up) factors. The hierarchical approach of traditional top-down reform schemes imposed by national governments expresses a centripetal and sequential rationality in decision-making. The complexity of various port backgrounds actually requires a more decentralised and circular rationality (i.e. a cooperative bottomup approach) for challenging the dynamism and the uncertainty of global markets, as well as new social and territorial requirements.

3.1.2. Port governance as a result of territorial trajectories of reform Starting from the concepts of path dependence (in this instance, the process of port reform) and embeddedness (in this instance, a characteristic of port governance), this paper introduces the notion of territorial trajectory defined as the timeframe of the processes of transformation at work in a territory acted on by agents representing different spatial scales (Maurel, 2007). This concept of trajectory allows us to examine the variability of port reform processes which differ according to timing, content, origin and mode of implementation. The reform process, therefore, should not be understood as a rigid and hierarchical process, but rather as a pathway of change incorporating local context and evolving supranational and national trends. We identify three dimensions of the trajectory: the pathway, the speed and the direction of change. The reform process might follow very different trajectories, not only on a country basis, but also at the level of the individual port. In this regard, some reversals of trends may also emerge. For instance, in Italy there was an effort to reduce the number of port authorities, while in France there was an effort to find a new balance between national and local administrative levels. 3.1.3. Combining global trends and local specificities in the evolution of governance models The territorial trajectories of reform which occur at various scales provoke local reactions (e.g., concession policy, labor issues, etc.) to national and global changes. In this regard, we offer a new port taxonomy based on the effects generated by such interactions on port governance (see Fig. 2): (1) Path follower port. Local forces are weak and the implementation of national changes is fairly easy. For instance, where the local port tradition is fragile, it is much easier to impose national governance changes. (2) Path adaptor port. Local forces impose a local adjustment on the national framework. The national reform cannot be implemented homogenously all across the country, but in the various contexts some adaptation must be allowed. In this case, the local forces act as path adaptors with respect to the national changes imposed by law, generating institutional convergence in the long run.

Sou Fig. 1. Intended (national) and emergent (local) reform processes. Source: authors elaboration from Mintzberg and Waters (1985).

Please cite this article in press as: Debrie, J., et al. Shaping port governance: the territorial trajectories of reform. J. Transp. Geogr. (2012), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2012.07.007

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Source: authors own elaboration. Fig. 2. A taxonomy of port governance evolution in function of the interactions between local and global changes. Source: authors own elaboration.

(3) Path resistant port. Local forces provoke frictions and conflicts, thwarting and slowing down the implementation of national reforms (i.e. lock-in effect: union power, local entrepreneurs’ lobbies, etc.). In this case, such forces often lead to the postponement of the implementation and to local inertia. (4) Path leader/pioneer port. Local forces generate pilot projects as best practices, which go beyond national settings and reform changes by proposing/implementing innovative solutions in port governance, project funding, marketing and inter-port coordination. Therefore, local forces clearly act as frontrunners for the national reform scheme. In types 1 and 2, the top-down process is dominant and leads to the institutional convergence of port governance settings, while types 3 and 4, showing local responses to national transformations, reveal a bottom-up process, leading to the institutional divergence of port governance. 3.2. contextualizing port governance: an analytical framework This conceptual analysis is grounded in a multilayered approach. The following sub-sections outline and discuss some major embeddedness variables influencing port operations and governance: the institutional context; the decisional chain; the geo-economic dimension of port activity; and the role of society and culture (see Table 1). 3.2.1. The institutional context: heterogeneity of actors and regulatory framework 3.2.1.1. Who are the leading public actors involved in port matters?. The models of port governance presented in the Port Reform Toolkit, held to the division of the functions into two categories that were each considered to be homogenous: the private and the public. Yet, this distinction does not acknowledge the heterogeneous character of the public category, and consequently, does not allow us to take into account the presence of autonomy at certain public levels, the logics of organizational hierarchy, or the varying levels of competence (Hooghe and Marks, 2001). It is true that country-based studies of port systems permit the recognition of this public variety (De Langen and Van der Lugt, 2007; Baltazar and Brooks, 2001; Meersman et al., 2007; Pallis, 2007). By studying what has been called the spatial-jurisdictional scales Wang et al. (2004) point out the importance of isolating this variable. They trace the new distribution of institutional compe-

tences resulting from the Port Law of People’s Republic China. However, public sector variety is not a central variable in the general models of governance. In our approach two institutional categories seem particularly important: the analysis of the regulatory authority and the analysis of the status of port authorities (Debrie, 2010). The analysis of different national contexts in Europe, for example, allows identification of variations in regulatory authority, which can be local, regional, mixed local–regional and national. Yet, this general typology does not really show the complexity of each situation. The main German ports have local–regional regulatory authority, which differs from those of the Dutch or Belgian ports that have the same type of port authority, but with a different weight on local regulatory authority. Finally, an examination of each port will allow us to point out these institutional differences. 3.2.1.2. What is the relationship between public and private actors?. As opposed to simplifying diagrams which regroup private/entrepreneurial/network on the one hand (the network embeddedness), and public/political/territorial on the other (the territorial embeddedness) (Hess, 2004; Airriess, 2001), case studies permit a more nuanced understanding of process of change in port governance (Lavaud-Letilleul and Parola, 2011; Jacobs and Notteboom, 2011). For example, the practice of concessioning does not have the same meaning on different continents or even in different countries, but depends rather on the balance of power between port authorities and operators. The difference lies in the strategies of the enterprises and their relationships with other ports. In some countries, port authorities have seen the rise and expansion of local container handling companies, capable of managing a global portfolio of terminals. Examples include PSA in Singapore (Olivier et al., 2007), SIPG in Shanghai and DPW in Dubai (Jacobs and Hall, 2007). In Germany, the Länder of Hamburg and Bremen have also backed the initiatives of successful local companies, which have invested in other European terminals (Parola and Musso, 2007). Things are different when no important local transport actors are involved at an international level. There, concessions to foreign companies may be perceived as Trojan horses. Public actors may become more defensive and attempt to play the role of regulator to preserve local interests. 3.2.2. The decisional chain: who decides, who finances? Decision-making variables are also a strategic issue within port governance settings. First, the attribution of competencies to various public actors represents a major factor in port governance

Please cite this article in press as: Debrie, J., et al. Shaping port governance: the territorial trajectories of reform. J. Transp. Geogr. (2012), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2012.07.007

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Table 1 Major embeddedness variables affecting port governance: an analytical grid. Source: authors own elaboration. Embeddedness variable

Port governance implications

Main authors

1. Institutional context

– Who are the leading public actors involved in port matters? – What is the relationship between public and private actors?

Baltazar and Brooks (2001), Airriess (2001), Hall (2003), Hess (2004), Wang et al. (2004), De Langen and Van der Lugt (2007), Meersman et al. (2007), Pallis (2007), Debrie (2010), Lavaud-Letilleul and Parola (2011), and Jacobs and Notteboom (2011)

2. Decisional chain

– Who does take executive decisions on port management and planning? – Who does finance port running expenses and long-term investments?

Baltazar and Brooks (2001), Hall (2003), De Langen and Van der Lugt (2007), Caballini et al. (2009), and Verhoeven (2010)

3. Geoeconomic dimension

– Are private actors always interested in port exploitation? – Is there monopoly or competition between ports for the servicing of market demand?

Juhel (2001), Hoffmann (2001), Airriess (2001), Wang et al. (2004), Jacobs (2007), Parola and Musso (2007), and Jacobs and Notteboom (2011)

4. Societal and cultural factors

– Does the country/port hold a relevant maritime heritage and background? – Does the maritime and port industry is perceived as a relevant business for the economic development of the overall country?

Lavaud-Letilleul (2002), Wang et al. (2004), Cabantous et al. (2005), Jacobs and Hall (2007), Jessop and Oosterlynck (2008), Caballini et al. (2009), and Ng and Pallis (2010)

(Caballini et al., 2009). The exercise of power can be categorised into two tiers: long-term decisions (i.e. planning and governing land, investing and making new projects, etc.), and short-term, day-to-day management decisions (implying operational involvement in safety, security, administration of current affairs, etc.). Usually, administrative and operational decisions in ports are taken by the port authority and the coast guard. On the contrary, long-term decisions might be dispersed to a variety of actors ranging from the port authority to the central government across various ministries, and passing through local public bodies. The fragmentation of competencies across the vertical chain becomes an extremely critical issue when the port authority is a weak player. This may occur when the port has a large and heterogeneous executive board that is deprived of real decision-making authority. Second, the issue of competencies awarded to public actors is also complicated by spatial factors. Ports have increasingly dispersed hinterlands (Verhoeven, 2010); in order to be competitive, they must effectively interact within their own territory. This includes building transport infrastructure, coordinating actors and cargo flows, establishing long-term on-shore relationships with private entrepreneurs and local public parties, developing IT platforms, etc. Some port authorities have extensive decision-making competencies even outside the port domain and are proactive; others do not (De Langen and Van der Lugt, 2007). Third, financial issues deserve consideration. The availability of consistent sources of financing for port projects is a sine-qua-non for achieving real autonomy. If the local port authority does not have full financial autonomy, it has to claim its budget from the central government and/or from local or regional public bodies, putting it in competition with other port authorities. This can be regulated in various ways, by for instance, rewarding the best performing port authorities by assigning them resources. 3.2.3. The geo-economic dimension of port activity 3.2.3.1. Port geo-economy: are private actors always interested in port operation?. Since the 1980s, neo-liberal discourses about port reform have been based on the assumption that the private sector is interested in taking over the entire port operation. Yet, private investment happens only when risk is limited in relation to the expected profit. There are countries, ports or port terminals, which do not attract private interests, for example, small multipurpose ports. For this reason Juhel (2001) has argued that landlord port models apply to the biggest ports only, tool ports to medium size ports, and service ports to the smallest ports. Even a large and dynamic

port may include terminals as well as services, which cannot be privatized. It is also the case in countries with great political or economic instability, that only the State or an international body, can absorb the risks of operating a port. In each of these scenarios, public power is required to cover the lack of private investment. 3.2.3.2. Geo-economy of port systems: is there monopoly or competition between ports for the servicing of market demand?. The relationship between the port authority and transport operators often depends on the services offered by the port. In Europe, the container market is extremely competitive (Parola and Musso, 2007; Jacobs and Notteboom, 2011). France and Italy have three and two seaboards respectively and are surrounded by other countries competing to service the market situated in the center of the continent. This contrasts with the situation elsewhere, especially in the developing world, when a port may be in a situation of a monopoly (Airriess, 2001). In these latter circumstances, the port authority may be able to impose conditions on the transport operators (Hoffmann, 2001; Jacobs and Hall, 2007). 3.2.4. The crucial role of society and culture Finally, port reforms and governance benefit greatly by being re-read in the light of the realities of a country’s or port’s engagement in maritime activity. Maritime-port interest and culture constitute an essential aspect of a country’s capacity to develop a viable port project. However, the evolution of this interest and culture is much slower than port reform per se because the former depend on semiotic representations or constructions forged over a long period (Jessop and Oosterlynck, 2008). In Japan, for example, maritime activity is related to the living space, where the port is conceived as the heart of an artificial development of the coast and marine space. In the Netherlands, national strategy choices are guided by the concept of ‘entrance gates’ which elevate the status of the two mainports, namely Rotterdam harbor and Schiphol airport. In France, emphasis is placed on the heritage aspects of the living environment. Thus, port activity may be perceived as a spoiler for tourism (Cabantous et al., 2005). Local port cultures with long histories also exist. Antwerp, which has half the traffic of Rotterdam, appears to greatly value its economic fabric of traders and forwarders which originates from the ancient Naties since the golden age in the 16th century. The Rotterdam port did not develop until the end of the 19th century, and originally only as a transshipment port for iron for the steel industries of the Ruhr. Local actors lacked this commercial culture, which led the port authority in the 1990s to develop a

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completely new and very intentional policy to promote containerized goods (Lavaud-Letilleul, 2002). To conclude, it is worth noting that the four embeddedness variables are somewhat asynchronous with each other. As will be demonstrated in the next section with the comparison between France and Italy, informal rules and institutions appear as factors profoundly embedded in the port context and they often contribute to an unwillingness to accept governance changes. 4. A comparative analysis of the territorial trajectories of port governance: French and Italian case studies 4.1. The national spirit of French and Italian port reforms 4.1.1. An evolution in compliance with the ongoing path disruption France and Italy are unitary republics each with a population of over 60 million people. Both countries have free market economies characterized by high per capita GDP, low unemployment rates, and are among the richest economies in the world. Italy is institutionally based on strong local power awarded to many (over 8000) small and medium sized municipalities. Such entities are grouped into provinces (110) and then regions (20), both under central government control. France has an even more multi-level hierarchical structure, organized into regions (27), departments (101), districts (arrondissements), cantons and municipalities (over 36,000). Comparative analysis of the trajectories of port reform in each nation since the 1990’s provides a means to explore two dimensions of change. On the one hand, changes underlying port organization (path disruption), in particular in the domain of containerization, have generally converged towards the landlord port model. On the other hand, the ever-present particularities of each country (national embeddedness) provide explanations for the differences between the two countries in terms of content, modalities and results of the reforms. 4.1.2. Differences of port reform spirit, modalities and timeframes It is important to distinguish between port reforms that follow the letter of the law, from those which follow the spirit of policymakers’ intent, the broader purposes of the reform, and how these are consonant with the country’s societal reality (Oppetit, 1992). In 1994, Italian ports were in a financial crisis, which included a deficit of nearly 7.5 billion Euros. This financial problem was deemed to have been caused by the existing public port bodies, and thus allowed the enactment of a new national port law which created public entities with reduced staff, limited executive power, and no financial independence. Similar to the policies of Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain in the urban domain (inter alia through the creation of Urban Development Corporations), the Italian reform favored the liberalization of port exploitation within a centralized institutional framework. In Italy in 1994, the spirit of port reform was clearly of a financial and commercial nature (law no. 84/1994; see Table 2). A primary goal of the reform was to audit the accounts of the port authority as well as to attract private operators, especially foreign ones, in order to increase container traffic. These defined the unique and multi-thematic character of the 1994 reforms that sought to improve customer service by concessions (Parola et al., 2012) and labor reforms. Concessionaires can now employ their own workers, employing dockworkers only during operational peaks. These changes were made possible in part by the unitary nature of the Italian port system under the central government’s authority. In France, despite similar desire to increase port efficiency, the five port reforms implemented between 1992 and 2008 (see Table 2) were very different, of a more social and political–administrative than financial and commercial nature. Port reforms matched

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the then current issues on the national agenda, namely the social question of employment marked by powerful unions and tense relations between employers and employees, and the devolution of responsibilities and competencies without adequate financial resources. Thus, in contrast to the situation in Italy, port reform in France was highly fragmented with two laws on port labor, two laws on the status of port trade, and so on. The process was also less market-oriented. For example, French lawmakers have paid greater attention to the institutional reconfiguration of public ports by establishing a clear administrative hierarchy for the port authority. The central state relinquished its control over secondary ports, which were transferred to regional or local authorities (2004 decentralization reform), and concentrated its authority on the seven Great French Maritime Ports (2008 port reform). In the end, the French reforms focused more on the administrative–institutional structuring of commercial ports than on the functional and commercial dimension. 4.1.3. Diverging reform results Following the 1994 reform, Italian ports were able to benefit from the first wave of containerization, as visible in the growth of their traffic throughput the 1990s. Despite a recent loss of traffic, Italy’s advantage over France in container handling is still substantial. Since the 2000s, the main French ports have caught up by being part of the second wave of containerization. However, until recently, greater effort was devoted in France to the construction of new infrastructure (Port 2000 terminals in Le Havre and Fos 2XL in Fos). Differential outcomes exist at the organizational level as well as in day-to-day port management. Although dockworker labor has not been an issue in Italy for some years because of the 1994 reform, in France, due to an uneven and incomplete implementation of the 1992 dock work reform, labor relations remain a source of conflict. The 2008 reforms sought to solve the problem with respect to crane operators. At the same time, while all the major Italian port facilities have been taken over by private operators, many of them foreign, distribution of terminal operating licenses by concession is not well developed in France despite the provisions in the 2008 reforms which offered incumbent operators advantages in the agreement negotiation process. The most controversial aspect of the Italian port policy is the lack of financial independence of port authorities which cannot negotiate their own port fees. These issues have provoked reactions from some Italian port authorities, who have demanded greater financial autonomy and executive power. 4.2. Discussion: local transpositions of port reforms in France and Italy 4.2.1. A second reading of public actors The analysis of port reforms and their local transposition in France and Italy shows the diversity and heterogeneity of public action, as well as the power struggles that are inherent in this action. In Italy, the central government dominated the implementation of reform and the restructuring of port authorities. Local and regional public bodies have tried to expand and strengthen their authority and to promote coordination within regional port systems (Liguria, Campania). The ongoing discussion about ‘Port Reform 2’ is, in part, about regional legislative competences and the consolidation of relationships between local public authorities. In France, implementation of the 2008 reforms displayed the power of the central State. Examples include the State’s rejection of the Nantes-Saint-Nazaire strategy plan and its veto of terminal development projects in Le Verdon-Bordeaux. In the case of the former, the State Secretariat for Transport refused to approve a locally negotiated labor agreement for handling operations, leading to the resignation of the president of the Port Authority and the mass

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Table 2 Port reforms in France and Italy from the 20th century until today. Source: authors own elaborations. Year

Regulations

Content

Italy 1994

Law no. 84/1994

2010–2011

Project of Law under discussion. . .

Establishment of Port authorities – introduction of the concessioning regime – no financial independence (PA are mostly state funded) – end of the dockworkers monopoly – regulation of port services Demand for financial autonomy – development of intermodality

France 1947 1965 1983 1992 1994 1999 2004

2008

Intermittent work for dockworkers (Carte G) Creation of Autonomous Ports (Dunkerque, Rouen, Le Havre, Nantes-Saint Nazaire, Bordeaux, Marseille) Handing over of 400 ports to collectivities Monthly payment of dockworkers (law from 9 June 1992 – Le Drian) Real rights over public domain Terminal exploitation (licensing) Decentralization of the 18 ports of national interest (law from 13 August 2004 concerning local freedoms and responsibilities) Reform creating the Grands Ports Maritimes (6 maritime autonomous ports + La Rochelle)

resignation of local and regional politicians from councils for port management and port development. The absence of actual local power remains a salient characteristic of French port governance. 4.2.2. A second reading of public–private relationships The relationship between public–private actors, as part of a legislative framework, differs depending on the national and local contexts. In Italy, the entry of global maritime operators (ship owners, terminal operators, international forwarders, maritime agents) was premature and consequently part of a broader implementation of terminal concessions to suppress the dockworkers’ labor monopoly (Caballini et al., 2009). Despite a long history of entrepreneurialism in Italian ports, the introduction of foreign companies has often been perceived as a form of colonization and has aroused opposition. In France, global operators (APM Terminals, MSC, CMA-CGM) entered only some ports, and rather belatedly, during the second phase of containerization (from 2000). Nonetheless, terminal occupation agreements were established in the main multifunctional ports (Le Havre, Marseille, Dunkirk) prior to the 2008 reform because of large infrastructure projects and containerization (Port 2000, Fos 2XL). Moreover, the French port reforms have not brought competition between terminal operators for existing terminals. The main objective of the 2008 port reform was to broaden the existing concession policies, while maintaining balance at the local level through mutual agreement policies. Yet, in some ports with the largest and the most profitable markets, competition and the introduction of large ship owners and multinational maintenance companies did occur. 4.2.3. A second reading of port activities Economic variables, including the size, profile, specialization and profitability of port activities, contributed to the differentiation of local profiles and governance in both Italy and France. For container terminals, for example, such as in Genoa, La Spezia, Le Havre, Marseille, local governance converged towards the general model envisaged by national law, including operation and ownership of private infrastructure and changes in labor, even though the process of reform differed in the two countries. Yet, smaller ports (Bordeaux, Salerno, etc.), have not always been successful in attracting private operators because of low volumes and the existence of multi-functional terminals. Here, different approaches were implemented, allowing public–private partnerships or even

Dockworkers Supervising authority – relative decisional autonomy – limited financial autonomy Management decentralization Terminal exploitation by private companies of dockworkers (except crane drivers) Terminal exploitation Terminal exploitation Ownership – supervisory authority – executive decisions – finances

Ownership – terminal exploitation by private companies (crane drivers) – new governance structures –– strategic planning – inter-port cooperation – intermodality

maintaining public terminal operations. Reform or not, economic realities impose local variation to the general model. 4.2.4. A second reading of the socio-cultural dimension Individual port governance can also be explained from a local socio-cultural perspective. In certain ports, local activity has evolved outside the above mentioned reforms, making some ports true pioneers, more or less inspiring reforms at the national level. From this point of view, the big ports are not always the most innovative. In Italy, a port like La Spezia, with a weak commercial heritage was able to anticipate the wave of port reforms and make quick changes starting from the 1980s (terminal contracts, private exploitation), because it possessed less entrenched interests (union organizations, historical compromise between employers and unions, etc.). In France, Dunkirk, because of its local dynamics and imitation of nearby Flemish ports, is considered a laboratory for port reform (Fremont and Lavaud-Letilleul, 2009). Dunkirk quickly and scrupulously implemented all the reforms (for the 1992 dock work reform, a new trade union was created based on social dialogue between employers and dockworkers), and even anticipated reforms by proposing, in 1999, the first integrated terminals in France, where operators became entirely responsible for their commercial and tariff policies. A second reading of these dimensions shows that institutional variables (intra-public relationships, public–private relationships), economic variables (port profile) and socio-cultural variables (maritime and port contexts) can locally reshape the model of governance reform. 5. Conclusion: port governance settings as a result of territorial trajectories of reforms This paper challenges traditional models of port governance reform, and calls for a deeper contextualization of port governance schemes in different territorial contexts. Conventional studies tend to propose de-contextualized models, which ignore the embeddedness of ports in specific institutional and economic domains. This paper analyses the major variables related to the notion of embeddedness in ports and their governance settings, discussing (i) the complexity and heterogeneity of the institutional framework, (ii) the multi-layered decisional chain (iii), the geo-economic dimension, and (iv) the socio-cultural environment.

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Addressing port reform pathways, the paper demonstrates the need to consider port governance in a dynamic manner. This study emphasizes the need to understand port reforms in their specific temporal and spatial contexts. Drawing on the widely used insights of Mintzberg and Waters (1985) on strategic management, this paper treats port governance changes as complex evolutionary processes and differentiates between the actual policies that are implemented in practice (realized reform), from the policies that were intended by the legislator (intended reform). The realized reform may be only partly related to the latter. The territorial trajectories of reform occuring at various scales provoke local reactions to national and global changes. Our theoretical discussion has been enriched and supported by the comparison of France and Italy, which reveals the effects of local forces in shaping general national port reform schemes. Four types of territorial trajectories of port reform were identified: (1) Path follower port, where weak local forces are simply followers of the national framework, especially when the local port tradition is fragile, (2) Path adaptor port, where local forces impose a local adjustment to the national framework, (3) Path resistant port, where local forces provoke friction and conflict, leading to the postponement of reform implementation, and (4) Path leader/pioneer port, where local forces clearly act as frontrunners of the national reform scheme. In types 1 and 2, the top-down process is dominant and it leads to the institutional convergence of port governance settings, while types 3 and 4, showing local responses to national transformations, reveal a bottom-up process, leading to the institutional divergence of port governance settings. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to Dr. Pamela Stern and Dr. Peter Hall of the Simon Fraser University (Canada) for their useful comments and suggestions during the writing of the paper. References Airriess, C.A., 2001. The regionalization of Hutchison port holdings in mainland China. Journal of Transport Geography 9, 267–278. Ansoff, I., 1965. Corporate Strategy: An Analytic Approach to Business Policy for Growth and Expansion. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, p. 241. Baird, A., 2000. Port privatisation: objectives, extent, process and the UK experience. International Journal of Maritime Economics 2, 177–194. Baltazar, R., Brooks, M.R., 2001. The governance of port devolution: a tale of two countries. In: Proceedings of the 9th World Conference on Transport Research, Seoul, July. Boardman, A.E., Vining, A.R., 1989. Ownership and performance in competitive environments: a comparison of the performance of private, mixed and state owned enterprises. Journal of Law and Economics 32, 3–33. Braudel, F., 1979. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Centuries. University of California Press, CA. Brooks, M.R., 2004. The governance structure of ports. Review of Network Economics 3, 168–183. Brooks, M.R., 2007. Port devolution and governance in Canada. In: Brooks, M.R., Cullinane, K. (Eds.), Devolution, Port Governance and Port Performance, Research in Transportation Economics, vol. 17, no. 1. Elsevier, London, UK, pp. 237–257. Brooks, M.R., Pallis, A.A., 2008. Assessing port governance models: process and performance components. Maritime Policy & Management 35 (4), 411–432. Brooks, M.R., Pallis, A.A., 2010. In: Talley, W.T. (Ed.), Port Governance. Maritime Economics. A Blackwell Companion, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (Chapter 26). Caballini, C., Carpaneto, L., Parola, F., 2009. Italian port authorities approaching the post-reform: the Ligurian case. In: Notteboom, T., de Langen, P., Ducruet, C. (Eds.), Ports in Proximity: Competition and Coordination Among Adjacent Seaports. Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, pp. 191–208. Cabantous, A., Lespagnol, A., Peron, F., 2005. Les Français, la terre et la mer XIIIXXèmes siècles. Fayard, Paris, p. 902. Caves, D.W., Christensen, L.R., Swanson, J.A., Tretheway, M.W., 1982. Economic performance of U.S. and Canadian railroads: the significance of ownership and the regulatory environment. In: Stanbury, W.T., Thompson, F. (Eds.), Managing Public Enterprises. Praeger Publishers, New York, NY, pp. 123–151. Comtois, C., Slack, B., 2003. Innover l’autorité portuaire au 21ème siècle: un nouvel agenda de gouvernance. Les Cahiers Scientifiques du Transport 44, 11–24. Crooks, G., 2002. Revolution of institutional framework and port reforms. Ports and Harbors 47 (2), 24–28.

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