Concorde and Dissent:Explaining High Technology Project Failures in Britain and France

This book is a study of the joint British and French construction of Concorde, and their separate projects to build new international airports in London (the repeatedly abandoned third airport) and Paris (Charles de Gaulle). Conventional explanations of these projects, all of which can be seen as 'failures' in some sense, contrast French professional and rational planning expertise with the amateurishness of the British. Professor Feldman challenges such stereotypes, arguing instead that policy failures in the two countries can be explained in terms of political instability. His book is unique in developing such detailed, controlled case studies for the comparison of political systems, and offers new insights into public policy-making in Britain and France.