Institutional Change and Electric Power in the City of Chicago
depended on a privately owned utility for electricity. The utility, Commonwealth Edison (Edison), operates under a franchise from the city that grants it the right to provide power to Chicago. This particular institutional arrangement for the provision of electric power is, of course, common throughout the United States. But in recent years, Chicago and a number of other cities have begun to explore alternative arrangements as their franchises with the private utilities expire [Rudolph and Ridley 1986; Romo 1989]. These alternative institutional arrangements under consideration have included municipalization of the local distribution system with city purchase of electric power from several utilities on the wholesale market, municipalization of all the utility's operations in the city and acquisition of sufficient generating capacity to serve the city's needs, introduction of competition in electric supply by permitting more than one utility to place its facilities on public property or rights of way within the city, opening up the franchise to competitive bidding instead of simply negotiating with the existing supplier, or simply extraction of concessions from the utility as a condition for franchise renewal.