Abstract:
This thesis examines New Zealand's electricity reforms from 1984 to 2009 as a case study for considering whether French Regulation Theory needs to be modified in light of neoliberal ideology and neoliberalization. The general conclusions are that neoliberalization acts as a catalyst to capitalisms' acquisition and accumulation of capital infrastructure, and so Regulation Theory needs to be revised to recognise how assets transfer across different forms of ownership during periods of crisis, with consolidation of the modes of social regulation and accumulation of transferred assets within the same form of ownership in the more stable regimes of accumulation between crises. Regulation Theory's crises can be seen as a process that enables assets controlled by one form of ownership to be transferred to another form of ownership. Because there is a mismatch between the scales at which public and private forms of ownership operate, an essential part of this process involves either the down-scaling or up-scaling of the assets. This has been demonstrated in the electricity industry with the splitting of state-owned generation assets into four smaller companies and at the other end, the merging of some locally-held assets into one large company operating at a regional or subnational scale to facilitate their sale to private transnational companies. While capitalisms are the current hegemonic forms of asset ownership and control, this thesis demonstrates in its examination of ownership structures in the electricity sector that they are not the only processes or forms operating within the market. Basic capital structures which defined the electricity sector in its development through to maturity have continued to exist at various scales despite that a key aspect of the neoliberal crisis is capitalisms' attempts to acquire these assets. The continuation of and comparable levels of cost efficiency shown by communityowned distribution companies indicate that basic capital structures play an important role in the market including as a means of smoothing uneven development and as a means of creating assets for capitalist firms to acquire. The possibility is raised that basic capital structures act as the 'nurseries' of economic activity in economies.