Designing Decisions Rules for Transnational Infrastructure Projects

This article discusses the implications of decision rules in the governance structures of transnational infrastructure projects. It stresses that decision rules strongly affect the performance of the partnership and that, consequently, attention should be given to their design at the initial stage. The article also stresses the fact that partners must not only agree on how to make ordinary decisions, but also special ones such as, for example, changing the rules along the way or making changes to the membership of the group. This paper makes the following specific points. First, the choice of partners is a key variable, which affects the choice of decision rules and, in turn, is influenced by the conditions for new entrants. Second, the choice of decision rules can crucially affect the degree of confidence and the level of cooperation among partners, as well as the speed at which the partnership adopts new decisions. Third, agreements on how to eventually change the initial set of rules and partners should be part of the design of a well established decision system.