No abstract

No abstract

insight on the value of a monograph. Eric, Luci and Elise were irreplaceable questioners, first readers, initial audience members, and technical advisors. Finally, I would not have accomplished this without the inspiration of two fierce women -Becky Lenhart and Sally Maison.Funding for my graduate education and research has come from the National Science Foundation SES #1261867 and a Burk Scholarship. In closing, I would like to acknowledge the incredibly dedicated and creative people who are working to transform vi the electricity system in the West, many of whom generously answered my questions and offered their unique insights.vii ABSTRACT In response to energy policies and technological innovation, electricity systems are becoming more integrated and interdependent. In the Western United States, the creation of an energy imbalance market (EIM) is a significant move towards electricity grid integration. The question of how to govern this newly forming market has been deliberated in multiple decision-making venues. Through these deliberations, stakeholders engaged in the process of policy implementation and shaped the structure of the EIM as a policy intervention. To understand how this initiative unfolded and why this effort succeeded where others failed, this research explores policy implementation as the outcome of the social negotiation of authority. To accomplish this, this research combines policy implementation, boundary work, and field theories and develops an empirical investigation of how actors reconciled multiple and often conflicting authorities to enact policy change. This study asks how actors, using social practices and strategies, created and legitimated sources of authority to establish a governing body for this new market service. This case study relied on qualitative methods, including document review, participant interviews, systematic observation of decision-making in context, detailed observation fieldnotes, and the self-reflexive awareness of the role of the researcher. The dissertation demonstrates that: 1) dominant yet deficient narratives provided a rationale for ongoing resistance to regional governance in the West and prevented collaboration; 2) actors overcame and transformed deficient sources of authority by enacting social strategies that allowed alternative interpretations of the EIM construct and enabled viii organizations to begin collaboration; 3) actors using social negotiation interpreted and adjusted the EIM policy intervention and co-created emergent forms of authority that are flexible and dynamic; and 4) field interdependencies surfaced taken-for-granted assumptions and provided critical resources for innovative forms of collective action. The implications of these findings highlight the importance of the social negotiation of authority in energy policy implementation. Specifically, the research makes several theoretical and practical contributions: 1) multi-organizational policy implementation is a social process of transforming, negotiating, and co-creating authority...

Highly technical rules for regional electricity markets shape opportunities for new technologies and the pace of transition to a cleaner and more distributed power system. We compare three case studies of regional transmission organizations and identify common mechanisms that describe the relationship between institutional design and administrative policy decisions. We compare industry actors, old and new, across these case studies to better understand structural power and institutional stability through four mechanisms drawn from the literature: (1) self-reinforcing interests, (2) participation in and position of groups, (3) influence over communication and information, and (4) control over problem framing and pace of decisions. A focus on the mechanisms that operate within RTO governance provides insight into needed RTO governance reform.

No abstract