International Coercion, Emulation and Policy Diffusion: Market-Oriented Infrastructure Reforms, 1977-1999

Witold Henisz (), Bennet A. Zelner () and Mauro F. Guillen ()

William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series from William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Abstract: Why do some countries adopt market-oriented reforms such as deregulation, privatization and liberalization of competition in their infrastructure industries while others do not? Why did the pace of adoption accelerate in the 1990s? Building on neo-institutional theory in sociology, we argue that the domestic adoption of market-oriented reforms is strongly influenced by international pressures of coercion and emulation. We find robust support for these arguments with an event-history analysis of the determinants of reform in the telecommunications and electricity sectors of as many as 205 countries and territories between 1977 and 1999. Our results also suggest that the coercive effect of multilateral lending from the IMF, the World Bank or Regional Development Banks is increasing over time, a finding that is consistent with anecdotal evidence that multilateral organizations have broadened the scope of the “conditionality” terms specifying market-oriented reforms imposed on borrowing countries. We discuss the possibility that, by pressuring countries into policy reform, cross-national coercion and emulation may not produce ideal outcomes.

Keywords: Privatization; deregulation; liberalization; infrastructure; International Monetary Fund (IMF); World Bank; Multileral Institutions; Development; Reform; Globalization; Adoption; International (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C41 F02 F42 H11 L33 L94 L96 N70 O19 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 74 pages
Date: 2004-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-pbe and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.wdi.umich.edu/files/Publications/WorkingPapers/wp713.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.wdi.umich.edu/files/Publications/WorkingPapers/wp713.pdf [302 Found]--> https://wdi.umich.edu/files/Publications/WorkingPapers/wp713.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wdi:papers:2004-713

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series from William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan 724 E. University Ave, Wyly Hall 1st Flr, Ann Arbor MI 48109. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by WDI ().