Energy, Ideas and Institutions: a Contextual Analysis of UK Energy Policy 1998-2008.

This paper will analyze, using policy paradigm theory the evolution of a market oriented energy policy paradigm in the United Kingdom with some analysis of how this effects UK energy foreign policy toward Russia. Policy paradigm theory, based in the work of Peter Hall (1993) but further developed by Colin Hay, among others, will be applied to each country's energy policy making process. This paper will argue that the market oriented approach to energy policymaking in the UK has its roots in a conceptualization of energy as a sub-sector of the economy and that the way in which policy is devised and carried out, is firmly embedded within and facilitated by distinct local institutional arrangements, norms and ideas. This theory will be empirically tested using UK official energy policy documentation alongside a limited number of interviews. Lastly, this paper will point towards some of the normative implications of the adoption of this paradigm and towards some of the contradictions and change which have most recently been occuring. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]