IBS Speaker Series: Following in Footsteps or Marching Alone? How Institutional Differences Influence Renewable Energy Policy

Zoom link: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/98382278178 – email ibs-contact@colorado.edu for password.

Srinivas “Chinnu” Parinandi

Abstract: In this book project, I revisit the long and important literature on policy diffusion in the American states and determine why states would invent novel policy rather than borrowing existing policy from other states. To do this, I focus on a detailed examination of renewable energy regulatory policy in the United States. I investigate how factors motivating invention and borrowing decisions differ based on institutional discretion (looking at legislatures and public utilities regulators) and gives suggestions about where the public should concentrate in trying to build an ambitious renewable energy agenda.

Bio: I am an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I research American political institutions with a focus on two general questions of interest: how the design of regulation influences policy outcomes; and how institutional characteristics condition the spread or diffusion of policy. I primarily study the U.S. states with an emphasis on energy and economic policy.​
My research has been published or is forthcoming at the American Journal of Political Science, Energy Policy, Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy​, Policy Studies Journal​, the Journal of Public Policy, and State Politics and Policy Quarterly. My dissertation was recognized by the American Political Science Association for being the best dissertation in the field of state politics in 2016. A book, entitled ​Following in Footsteps or Marching Alone? How Institutional Differences Influence Renewable Energy Policy, is under development and has been given a contract by University of Michigan Press. http://www.srinivasparinandi.com/