Lexington Books
Pages: 242
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-4985-2405-6 • Hardback • November 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)
978-1-4985-2406-3 • eBook • November 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
Michael J. DeLor is lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
1. Study Overview
2. Theoretical Framework and Research Design
3. OPEC Oil Embargo Findings
4. Gulf War of 1990 to 1991 Findings
5. California Electricity Crisis Findings
6. Policy Making in a Complex and Contentious Policy Environment
. . . Using a series of narrative case studies—the OPEC oil embargoes of the 1970s, the Gulf War (1990–91), and the California electricity crisis (2000–01)—DeLor (political science, Univ. of Texas, Rio Grande Valley) provides a very detailed, area-specific study of the regulation of private electric utilities. The book is well sourced and will provide scholars in this area of research with a new way of looking at and explaining the policy process. . . DeLor has taken on a difficult task, and he carves out new theoretical space. Summing Up: Recommended. Researchers, faculty, professionals.
— Choice Reviews
In Inside a Public Policy Black Box, DeLor skillfully guides readers through the complex, contentious, and volatile policy dynamics that surround federal regulation of private utilities in the United States, traversing rolling blackouts, soaring electric bills, pitched congressional debates, and a regulatory agency often caught in the middle. Along the way, he spotlights ongoing conflict between “free-market conservatives” and “environmental movement liberals” as they shift between policy stasis and efforts to address sporadic crises in the operation and regulation of an industry that provides almost three-quarters of U.S. electric generating capacity. Grounded in diverse scholarship and rich empirical detail, Inside a Public Policy Black Box introduces a theory of punctuated entropy to help explain when and how Congress responded to focal crises. Punctuated entropy accounts as well for the frequent inadequacy of those responses in a complex and controversial policy arena that utilities and governments struggle to oversee, manage, and operate.— Karen M. Hult, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Dr. DeLor’s Public Policy Black Box offers an insightful and timely consideration of the inner mechanics of America’s electric utility regulatory structure. It persuasively identifies why we have only seen spurts of federal regulatory reform and how FERC has operated within the political tensions that oversees its operations. — Adam Fremeth, Ivey Business School