Powering development: understanding how electric utility firms operate as growth machine actors

• In Event: Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13: Urban Services

Abstract

Electric utility firms are leading figures in local growth coalitions. Despite the centrality of these firms to the local growth machine, sociological research has yet to interrogate precisely how these firms operate as growth machine actors. In this paper, I address this gap through case studies of the electric utility sectors in South Carolina and Georgia. Drawing on archival data and expert interviews, I identify strategies that electric utilities deploy to facilitate new development within their service areas. Through an individualizing comparison, I show that these strategies are not universal across spatial contexts, but rather are structured by state-level policies governing the rules of competition between electric utilities. These state-level policies shape the degree to which utilities are strictly local growth machine actors, concerned exclusively with local development. Utilities deploy distinct growth strategies across state lines, ranging from competitive, highly local economic development strategies to collaborative, statewide economic development efforts. I conclude that understanding how electric utilities operate as growth machine actors is important for understanding the growth machine more broadly, with implications for how new development is sought out, facilitated, and accomplished.

Author

• Taylor Harris Braswell, NC State University