Aleksandra Conevska (APRW)

Speaker & Title

 Aleksandra Conevska (Harvard), "Do Grassroots Organizations Trade Mission for Influence? Regulator Selection and the Energy Transition"

Abstract

Existing research indicates that regulators’ influence over outcomes depends on how they are selected, with elections yielding more consumer-oriented policies. I study regulator selection in a more complex world that better characterizes economies today. Industrial change creates new interest group alliances, shifting regulator incentives. Focusing on the electricity sector, I argue that electoral accountability makes regulators less likely to support renewable energy and show that in the US, elected regulators generate significantly less electricity from renewables. Examining regulatory lobbying from 2000 to 2024, I show this is because green NGOs lobby far more productively than they campaign, allowing them greater influence when regulators are insulated from voters. Despite their grassroots nature, they also devote substantially more resources to lobbying than campaigning. When green NGOs do campaign, their largest sums have gone toward converting elected commissions into appointed ones, as in New Mexico in 2020. Individual-level voter evidence highlights the electoral constraint: support for costly renewable ballot measures trails support for other costly measures, even among the most Democratic voters. Elections may therefore fail to produce the best outcomes for consumers when policy involves complex temporal trade-offs. Green NGOs in turn shift from citizens toward more insulated channels.