The political economy of infrastructure failure

Infrastructure has become a key driving force in development globally with an assumed efficient and fluid route from initiation to delivery. However, many infrastructure projects will fail; an understudied real-world outcome with enormous implications for our societies and natural environment. This Special Issue (SI) investigates the political economy of infrastructure failure not as an inferior counterpart to ‘success’ but as a daily lived experience. The present article provides a framework for investigating infrastructure failure, concentrating on its spatiality and temporality. Subsequently, across a range of scholarly fields and geographical spaces, the remaining seven articles in the SI analyse infrastructure failure through nuanced studies to help us better understand what infrastructure failure means. What are the temporal and spatial aspects of these failures? What can we learn from them as political economists? How can we measure infrastructure failure? Whom does infrastructure failure benefit? We anticipate this SI will offer a benchmark for studying infrastructure failure within the fields of anthropology, IPE, human geography, sociology, and infrastructure/urban studies.