Neoliberal Structural Change and the Electricity Sector

This book presents an unparalleled account of the drivers and outcomes of electricity sector liberalisation, and argues that this industrial restructuring has created pervasive threats to long-term economic growth, financial market stability, environmental degradation and society’s well-being.

The hegemony of neoliberalism has led to the radical restructuring of industry sectors of which electricity is a very prominent example. Australia has been at the forefront of this restructuring with a more liberalised electricity sector than the UK, the European Union or the US. Electricity sector restructuring is generally treated as synonymous with regulatory change and the creation of electricity trading markets. Using the Australian electricity sector as a case study, this book strongly demonstrates that the transformation of all electricity sectors has been driven by a much wider range of forces.

This book, however, goes beyond the drivers of electricity sector liberalisation which provide the context for the book’s three fundamental objectives. First, the book aims to present a cogent analysis of the immediate and short-term outcomes of this global restructuring. Secondly, it reveals the more widespread and insidious longer-term consequences of this industry restructuring and proposes policy solutions to prevent them becoming hallmarks of 21st century capitalism. Finally, the book seeks to demonstrate the strengths of a régulationist analysis to explain structural change; it sets it against mainstream neoclassical economics, which is limited to the economic and quantitative. By examining the real, complex and often contradictory nature of change this book provides both a contribution to the evolution of régulation theory and important new insights into neoliberal electricity sector restructuring.