Ideology and Professionalism

Abstract

Scholars have prepared few quantitative analyses of long-term political influence over policy choices, particularly those involving simultaneous decisions in the American states. We analyze both the politics of state electricity rate making in the two decades after the energy crisis of 1973 and the politics behind the policy change of state electricity deregulation in the late 1990s. By analyzing two separate, but related, electricity policy choices across the states and over time, we are able to better understand the elements of institutional choices in regulatory regimes focused on publicly salient and more explicitly redistributive issues versus those focused on more complex, technical questions. Even in this regulatory arena that is partially insulated from electoral politics, legislative ideology is a central driver of redistributive decisions, and legislative and bureaucratic professionalism are associated with more technical policy choices.