Does Privatization Matter? Liberalization and regulation: The case of European electricity

Traditional hypotheses on privatization are often unable to explain the current developments in the sectors of network industries such as electricity, telecommunications, railways and postal services. Through the building of an approach focused on the re-regulation issues in the electricity sector in Europe this article contributes to a first exploratory study of privatization and the constitution of complementary hypotheses on the necessity to privatize or not State Owned Enterprises in liberalized contexts. The empirical study of Norway, France, England and Wales, Germany and Switzerland electricity liberalization shows that institutional diversity is important in terms of regulatory institutions design. Although privatization does not appear to be the logical consequence of liberalization the existence of State Owned Enterprises does however represent one of the crucial issues of the regulatory framework design process of liberalized network industries sectors.