The breakdown nicely illustrates the inherent tensions in tightly coupled, interactive systems that require decentralization as well as centralization but cannot have both. It is also revealing for the mismatch between objective performance and subjective expectations, or, to be precise, between the operator’s idea of routine behaviour during a delay and that of many passengers. For it was the number of people pressing alarm-plungers that created the domino-effect of a technical fault tuning into serious delays and overcrowding. The immediate response of the transport operator was to blame passengers for the inappropriate use of the alarm-plungers, which had been designed for serious emergency use only. The railway expert in charge of the inquiry gave the HMTR a clean sheet of health. The system’s safety and reliability were as high as possible, he found. The system broke down because so many alarms were set off – 109 in total – ‘petty actions by disgruntled passengers’. The public was outraged. The delay was unacceptable, a sign of inefficiency and incompetency. Newspapers attacked the subway system as ‘suited to a Third World backwater’, ‘flabby and frayed around the edges’ (Ellis 1998).
What these cases point to is a dilemma of vulnerability. Groups that view disruptions and disasters as ‘normal’, acts of God or things that ‘just happen’ are less likely to challenge authorities, demand redress or radically alter their habits. This can defuse potentially conflictual situations; one reason why there was not more anger during the 2001 blackout in Stockholm, it has been argued, was that the district most affected had a high percentage of immigrants used to power shortages (Deverell 2003). But this also leaves groups disproportionally vulnerable to disruptions that are of a more extreme force or of a different kind than the ‘normal’ one. By contrast, groups with a low threshold of tolerance will place much higher demands on social and technological systems to run smoothly. This makes political authorities and social organizations more vulnerable to frustration and may create unrealistic expectations of a normality without breakdowns.
How people respond to breakdowns is further shaped by political economy. It is not that in capitalist societies things do not break down. Consumer movements in the 1960s and 1970s fought many battles over cars that would not start or exploded on impact. Notwithstanding decades of improved standards, people continue to complain about faulty products and services, especially computers, public services, electrical goods and car repairs; in Australia, 73 per cent of households complain about these an average 3.4 times per year, to be precise (SOCAP 1994). Rather, the difference lies in the ways in which frustration with breakdown is channelled. In market societies, complaints are directed at particular companies, not the government or the market system as such. Frustrations, accountability and influence are diffused, whereas they were bundled and laid at the door of the regime in socialist societies.
The question is how these structural traits have played themselves out historically. Have they enabled market-based societies to live with disruptions more or less well? How do societies perform that depend more on familial and social networks in absorbing the pressure of breakdowns and repair than others? When are breakdowns accepted in silence, when do they feed back information that might improve the performance of systems? There are parallels here to Hirschman’s distinction between exit and voice (Hirschman 1970). The complexity of modern technological systems adds further to the dilemma of mobilizing voice. In a society where disruptions are accepted as relatively normal, what are the incentives to make life run more smoothly? Making people more demanding, giving them more outlets to vent their frustration (complaints management) and posting performance targets creates higher pressures for accountability and performance. But it may also initiate a vicious cycle of ever-higher expectations of perfect functionality. In a competitive marketplace, a company might put customer service to good use to gain an edge over rivals: fly with us, we have fewer delays and do not lose as many bags. However, in the world of public transport, motorways, energy and other natural monopolies where there is no choice but through which so many rhythms of everyday life are coordinated in the first place, this force is much weaker.
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• Frank Trentmann