Lessons from the Criticality of the Spanish High Capacity Road Network on Direct, Representative Democracies and Technocracies

This paper aims to shed some light on an issue that has not been analyzed enough in previous studies on complex transportation networks. The financial crisis and disrupting events like the COVID-19 pandemic episode are affecting how governments make crucial decisions regarding policymaking paying more attention to experts’ opinions. The impacts of disruptive events that could affect each road section will be analyzed using the criticality of the high capacity road network in Spain under different policymaking scenarios, such as direct democracy based on pure provincial decentralization (federal or cantonal vision), representative democracy in which decisions are taken by the National Parliament, and the governance based on technocracy stimulated by ‘what matters is what works’ (Southern Local Economy, 16(4), 264-271, 2001) using an Evidence-Based Policy Making (EBPM) case study based on a Data Envelopment Analysis applied to four accessibility indicators. We will complement our analysis with the different results obtained by the different national parties that were represented in the past election (November, 2019): PSOE, PP, VOX, Unidas Podemos, Ezquerra Republicana de Catalunya, Ciudadanos, Junts per Catalunya, Partido Nacionalista Vasco and Euskal Herria Bildu, exploring in-depth the obtained differences between the technocrat solution and the direct and representative democracy results. Important insights and lessons for the future will be obtained from the different party visions observed among the regionalist (nationalist) and the state-wide parties. The spillover effects created by the networks are so important that the room for federalist solutions might be very limited. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12061-022-09451-5.