Graduation Year
2025
Date of Submission
5-2025
Document Type
Campus Only Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
International Relations
Reader 1
Jennifer Taw
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Rights Information
© 2025 Adam Z Terenyi
Abstract
This thesis examines the international politics of bicycle governance. It surveys the field of scholarship on policies in motion and critiques what it identifies as the two dominant strands—positivist and constructivist approaches. Finding a thinning divide between the approaches, it posits a new concept, calling it policy movement, that integrates multilevel analysis and combines positivist and constructivist strands into a dialectic. It defines policy movement as the phenomenon of policies and ideas traveling between and among places, people, and times, as well as the collection of agents and institutions involved in, coding, and characterizing this process. Using policy movement’s dialectical and multilevel toolkit, it traces key points in the Netherlands’ and United States’ cycling histories to explain their divergent cycling governance trajectories during the 20th century. It then closely examines the United States’ current state of cycling governance, using gray literature, secondary sources, and 22 interviews to build a topology of actors in cycling politics. Finally, it applies policy movement to explain recent cases where bicycle policies saw innovation. The topology and cases demonstrate a convergence towards Dutch principles, albeit in an American style, while reinforcing the use of policy movement. Ultimately, future research can expand on this thesis’ bicycle governance topology and concept of policy movement.
Recommended Citation
Terenyi, Adam Z., "Macromobile Micromobility: Policy Movement and the International Politics of Bicycle Governance" (2025). CMC Senior Theses. 4035.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/4035
This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.
