Since the mid-1980s, power sector liberalization has been embraced at various levels across the world. The dominant rationale underlying such a move is that of efficiency improvement to be purportedly achieved by substituting private for public ownership and markets for regulations. However, the evidence of market-oriented power sector reform has shown environmental unsustainability, economic instability, and centralized technocracy. It is argued here that these problems are due to the continued commitment to the conventional energy paradigm, rather than being the results of operational mismanagement. This dissertation will challenge the adequacy of the efficiency discourse that has been predominant in power sector reform by broadening the scope of the energy discourse to socio-political and environmental dimensions. Instead of power liberalization driven by an energy commodity and centralization paradigm, this dissertation contends that power transformation based on an alternative paradigm of energy commons and decentralization is necessary.

Synergistic and neoliberal development of South Korea since the 1960s is critically analyzed using the theoretical framework of energy paradigm. The case study of South Korea attempts to provide an understanding of how the conventional energy paradigm was first established and then expanded, and how it responded to the social, environmental and economic anomalies in a specific political economic context. As an alternative to the power liberalization strategy, this dissertation proposes a local energy regime based on the paradigm of energy commons and decentralization.