# Appendix B: Political economy of energy access

This appendix summarizes select studies on the broader political economy of energy access, further to the discussion in Section 4.2 with reference to the political economy of 1990s market reforms. For an overarching literature review on the political economy of electricity access, see Barnett & others (2018).

**Understanding the political dimensions of electricity access is vital to achieving universal access.** A fifth of the world’s population, or some 1.3 billion people, lack access to electricity.<sup>72</sup> A significant body of literature shows how decisions about grid and off-grid services have long been the subject of politics, as much an active tool of politics, wielded for one cause or another. Political leaders can take advantage of electricity’s mixed public-private characteristics, with what Min (2015) describes as a ‘veneer of universalism’. On one hand, the public may support a politician’s proposal to connect more communities to electricity. In practice, the same politician might prioritize connections to some users over others, based on a political agenda. Shamir (2013) documents how early electrification efforts can often widen the gap between rich and poor, and between urban and rural. For example, electricity added to the privilege of white settlers to the exclusion of Africans in colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). In UK-ruled Palestine in the 1920s, electrification created and maintained social, political and economic differences between Arabs and Jews. In the Madras Presidency of colonial India, language-based political boundaries led to the creation of two separate grids. In other words, the electricity grid is a “maker of groups and a generator of political and economic difference among groups and individuals” (Shamir 2013: 6).

**Robust evidence shows electricity access is greater under democratic forms of governance, though**

**high access rates are possible under committed non-democratic governments.** Min (2015) finds a country with a long history of democracy provides electricity to 10% more citizens than a comparable country with a long history of non-democracy. The spatial distribution of electricity in poor parts of developing democracies “appears to reflect a conscious effort to target areas with many voters” (Min 2015: 13). In China, despite near universal electricity access, electricity provision to the poor is worse than in India when measured by _infant mortality rates_ , but slightly better in China than India when measured by _per capita income_ . On this basis, Min (p.109) suggests that India has done “as well, and maybe even better, than China, at providing electricity to its poorest citizens”.<sup>73</sup> These recent studies confirm Brown & Mobarak’s (2009) finding that households’ share of electricity consumption increases relative to industrial consumers in poor countries that become more democratic. They found that households are charged less for electricity relative to industry in democracies than in non-democracies. To explain this, they contend that democracy compels politicians to favor wide segments of the population at the expense of narrower interests, even those with more financial ‘clout’.

## **Examples of access reversal highlight the political costs of infrastructure maintenance, with ties to**

**electoral cycles.** In India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, Min (2015) observes that dark villages light

> 72 See www.se4all.org

> 73 Min’s (2015) analysis of the relationship between access and regime type is based on two decades of high-resolution global nighttime satellite imagery to village level, alongside other country data. He provides compelling evidence that satellite imagery reliably reveals spatial distribution of electricity access and use. The correlation results hold across countries with different income levels, population densities, and levels of state capacity. Trotter (2016) finds a similarly strong association between democracy and rural electrification, including greater equality between rural and urban electrification, in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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