Creating a Market Bureaucracy: The Case of a Railway Market

The EU expects European governments to abolish their old state railway monopolies and establish a market, with private companies competing for customers. We analyse the long process through which the Swedish state constructed a market for railway traffic in Sweden, by shaping such market elements as market actors; supply and demand; and the process of exchange, competition, and products. We identify extensive attempts at constructing and shaping market actors and organizing markets connected to the train transport market, such as the markets for maintenance and vehicles. The resulting market is similar to an elaborate bureaucracy, with a great number of organizational elements in the form of rules, hierarchy, membership, monitoring, and sanctions, in which the degree of organization is probably greater than in the former state monopoly firm.