  In the pre-divestiture era, the regulatory environment in the U.S. was fairly
uniform and harmonious with the FCC setting the course and the accommodative
state PUCs making corresponding changes in their own policies. The divestiture
fractured this monolithic system as it forced the PUCs to respond to new forces
unleashed in their own backyards. Soon there was great diversity in the overall
regulatory landscape. Within this new environment, there is considerable
disparity among the PUCs in terms of their ability to implement new ideas. This
paper seeks to understand the structural factors that influence the latitude of
regulatory action by PUCs via a comparative study of local telephone
competition policy making in Arkansas and New York. The analysis suggests that
the presence or absence of countervailing forces determines the relative
autonomy the PUCs enjoy and thereby their ability to introduce new ideas into
their states.
