INTEREST GROUPS, VETO POINTS AND ELECTRICITY INFRASTRUCTURE DEPLOYMENT

Witold Henisz () and Bennet A. Zelner ()

William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series from William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Abstract: In this paper we examine the effects of interest group pressure and the structure of political institutions on infrastructure deployment by state-owned electric utilities in a panel of 78 countries during the period 1970 – 1994. We consider two factors that jointly influence the rate of infrastructure deployment: (1) the extent to which the consumer base consists of industrial consumers, which are capable of exerting discipline on political actors whose competing incentives are to construct economically inefficient “white elephants” to satisfy the demands of concentrated geographic interests, labor unions and construction firms; and (2) veto points in formal policymaking structures that constrain political actors, thereby reducing these actors’ sensitivity to interest group demands. A higher fraction of industrial customers provides political actors with stronger incentives for discipline, reducing the deployment of white elephants and thus the infrastructure growth rate, ceteris paribus. Veto points reduce political actors’ sensitivity to interest group demands in general and thus moderate the relationship between industrial interest group pressure and the rate of infrastructure deployment.

Keywords: Electricity; Institutional Environment; Investment; Regulation; interest group; state owned enterprise (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F21 L32 L94 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2004-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-ene and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.wdi.umich.edu/files/Publications/WorkingPapers/wp711.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.wdi.umich.edu/files/Publications/WorkingPapers/wp711.pdf [302 Found]--> https://wdi.umich.edu/files/Publications/WorkingPapers/wp711.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Interest Groups, Veto Points, and Electricity Infrastructure Deployment (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wdi:papers:2004-711

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series from William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan 724 E. University Ave, Wyly Hall 1st Flr, Ann Arbor MI 48109. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by WDI ().