ABSTRACT

This chapter argues the economics-focused discourse on electricity reform. Electricity reform became a global phenomenon in the 1990s, spreading rapidly in both industrialized and developing countries. Privatization is the leading edge of electricity reform. Competition is the Holy Grail of electricity reform. The case for competition often rests on the argument that it will inevitably wring out cost reductions that will benefit the public through lower prices. The three elements of the standard prescription—privatization, competition, and regulation—are far from universally accepted, tested, technical solutions to power sector problems. For understanding electricity as a social project, it requires an examination of how electricity is embedded into social, political and environmental contexts, and its impacts in these domains. Electricity reform holds the possibility for centralization through another avenue— globalizing the scale of control over electricity. The geopolitical linkage to electricity works in the opposite direction: electricity liberalization is an avenue that can bring regional and global actors into domestic politics.