Measuring Stakeholder Voting Coalition Stability in Regional Transmission Organizations

We use network analysis to probe votes taken at the top-level committees in three RTOs: the New England Independent System Operator, the New York Independent System Operator, and PJM. Whereas CAISO, MISO, and PJM were chosen because of the diversity in their stakeholder processes, ISO-NE, NYISO, and PJM were chosen because of their similarities, particularly their hierarchical voting structure and divisions of stakeholders into similar classes (i.e generators, transmission owners, end-use customers, and so on). This network approach allows us to look at how political power structures vary across the three RTOs based on the unique differences in the voting structures between the RTOs. We address three questions based on this network analysis: Whether specific constituencies can be identified; whether these constituencies are stable over different voting issues; and whether they are stable over time.