Institutional roots of post-privatisation regulatory outcomes

Abstract

In Levy and Spiller (Regulations, Institutions, and Commitment: Comparative Studies In Telecommunications, Cambridge University Press, London, 1996), it was observed that nation-specific institutional endowments constrained the choices for regulatory governance and incentives, therefore shaping different performance outcomes across countries. Using the same conceptual approach, we examined regulatory outcomes in a single country (the Argentine experience throughout the 1990s) but in different sectors and found that some country's institutional characteristics were rather dynamic, determining a variety of government choices for regulatory incentives and producing different regulatory outcomes. Namely, we found that the changing pattern of contending social interests produces variances in the intensity and nature of contractual conflicts. The telecommunication regulatory experience is examined in more detail, and compared with outcomes in other sectors.