Regulatory capture in the first Spanish Nuclear Program (c.1951-64)?

Abstract

Countries adopted the commercial use of nuclear electricity in different forms, with varying corporate strategies and structures. In Spain, the transition from an autarchic to a liberal model of nuclear management consolidated the vested interests of the national electric oligopoly. This article explains this process using a mesoeconomic perspective (inter-institutional dialectic). While the commonly accepted general idea is that reciprocal instrumentation between political and economic interests explains the transition from Franco’s autarky to developmentalism, we conclude that the theory of regulatory capture is a more accurate explanation, at least in the first phase of development of the Spanish nuclear program. In fact, the banking electricity oligopoly’s capture of the Spanish state was a distinct variety of its energy policy in international comparative terms.