Call for papers: Regulating and Deregulating the Public Utilities 1830-2010
Publicado el 11-11-09.
From the 1970s, a world-wide “consensus” crystallized amongst many policy-makers and economists on the topic of public utility regulation. It seemed that the traditional economic, military and social reasons to regulate, which emerged unevenly over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - including national monopoly, market failures, economies of scale, defense and the desirability of socially redistributive policies - were increasingly outmoded and obsolete. This trend was fuelled by technological change and new economic and managerial theories about the problems of publicly-owned bureaucracies related to incentives. The new set of policy prescriptions is by now very well known: deregulation, liberalization and privatization. These policies were presented during the 1980s as the panacea by politicians, with the promise that they would guarantee superior performance and deliver better service quality and choice to users. Most discussions and analysis of public utility regulation by economists and policy-makers were ahistorical and oversimplified the original justifications for and specificities of regulation across time, space and sector.
With hindsight, we now know that moves to deregulate, liberalize and privatize met with various degrees of success in different countries and sectors. Utilities, it turned out, were much more complex to reform than had been assumed. What was supposed to be “deregulation” actually turned out to be “re-regulation” due to the numerous independent regulatory agencies that were established. In the electricity sector, while parts have been opened up to competition, other parts are allowed to remain as monopolies due to their being perceived as non-competitive. There were even privatization reversals where the reforms were pioneered, in the case of British railways. In the developing world, a leading World Bank consultant who had promoted utility reform claimed that policy makers had been “humbled” by the lessons learnt (Guasch 2003), while the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development dedicated their World Investment Report to problems of under-investment in developing country infrastructure in the age of privatization (UNCTAD 2008). Meanwhile new forms of terrorism used public infrastructure to organise (mobile phones, internet), and attack (postal services, airlines, metros and buses) citizens. It seems that the lessons of history in infrastructure regulation were overdue. This special issue proposes to rethink regulation of utilities from a long-term perspective with a broad geographical reach. Emphasis is placed on the historical complexities of utility regulation, in terms of instruments and objectives, across sectors and countries, and the lessons of history for appropriate utility regulation.
This special issue of Business History seeks to address these issues by taking a long-term view of the emergence and evolution of various regulatory regimes in different utilities from an international perspective. Contributions are invited therefore which either deal with the empirical regulation of utilities in different national, regional and international contexts, or which address major theoretical issues relating to utility regulation. We encourage contributions from a variety of countries and areas of expertise.
The special issue will be edited by guest editors Judith Clifton, Pierre Lanthier and Harm Schroeter. All articles will be between 6,000 and a maximum of 8,000 words, including notes.
Proposals of not more than 500 words should be sent to the three guest editors preferably by email:
Judith Clifton judith.clifton@unican.es
Pierre Lanthier Pierre.Lanthier@uqtr.ca
Harm Schroeter Harm.Schroter@ahkr.uib.no
If proposers do not have email, correspondence should be sent to Judith Clifton, Departamento de Economía, Universidad de Cantabria, Av. de los Castros S.N., Cantabria, España E39005.
Proposals should give the details of (a) proposed title of article; (b) author names and affiliations; (c) full details of research on which the article is to be based; (d) content of the article.
The timetable for the special issue is as follows:
- 2 November 2009 Issue Call for Papers
- 18 December 2009 Deadline for receipt of Proposals
- 1 January 2010 Articles commissioned
- 30 April 2010 Reminder to authors of approaching deadline for manuscripts
- 25 June 2010 Deadline for receipt of first draft manuscripts
- 15 August 2010 Completion of refereeing process & editorial reports
- 30 September 2010 Deadline for submission of revised drafts
- January 2011 Publication
Guidance Notes
- Articles should be based upon original research and/or innovative analysis.
- The main findings of the research and analysis should not have been published elsewhere.
- Proposals will be welcome from individuals or teams whose empirical research is already at an advanced stage.
- The editors expect articles to be theoretically informed and explicitly to address novel interpretations of history.
- Authors who wish to implement social science or managerial instruments of analysis should consider how to adapt them to historical interpretation, explaining change across time rather than the description of static conditions.
Dr. Judith Clifton
Department of Economics
University of Cantabria
Av de los Castros S.N
Santander
Cantabria
E39005
judith.clifton@unican.es |
