Is American Energy Politics Ideological?

Eric Uslaner ()

The Energy Journal, 1989, vol. Volume 10, issue Number 1, 55-75

Abstract: When we think of energy issues, we generally conjure up ideas of conflicts between producers and consumers. These translate into visions of grand ideological conflicts between the left and the right. Wildavsky and Tennenbaum (1981) speak of battles between "preservationists" and "industrialists." Kalt (1981) argues that "[tihe domestic energy 'crisis' is, far more than anything else, a quarrel over income distribution." Ideological straight fights are marked by a single dimension of conflict. In particular, ideological politics, as opposed to religious or eth-nic cleavages, suggests a battle between left and right--or, producers and consumers in the case of energy battles. When there are only two contestants, one is sure to win if the group decision is made by majority rule. Even in the United States Congress, where complex rules often frustrate coherent policy formation, strongly-held positions can prevail over obstructionists if they are determined enough. Yet, during the 1970s many attempts to form a "national energy policy" failed. In the 1980s Congress again stumbled in making natural gas policy as it defeated both decontrol and recontrol proposals.

JEL-codes: F0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1989
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=1920 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.

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:aen:journl:1989v10-01-a06

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejsearch.aspx

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Energy Journal from International Association for Energy Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by David Williams ().