Global Markets and Government Regulation in Telecommunications

Rodine-Hardy shows how globalization has led to the spread of liberal reforms in the telecommunications sector around the world.

Kirsten Rodine-Hardy (Author)

9781107022607, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 March 2013

226 pages, 2 b/w illus. 6 tables
22.2 x 14.3 x 1.7 cm, 0.37 kg

“Kirsten Rodine-Hardy provides a compelling and sophisticated understanding of global policy diffusion, which resulted in the liberalization of telecommunications sectors. The empirical evidence is excellent and brings in mixed methods approaches to explain the timing, scope, and comparative differences in telecommunications regulation and policies. The theoretical, empirical, and methodological claims in the book will persuade scholars to apply similar insights to other important political economy issues.” – J. P. Singh, George Mason University

In recent years, liberalization, privatization and deregulation have become commonplace in sectors once dominated by government-owned monopolies. In telecommunications, for example, during the 1990s, more than 129 countries established independent regulatory agencies and more than 100 countries privatized the state-owned telecom operator. Why did so many countries liberalize in such a short period of time? For example, why did both Denmark and Burundi, nations different along so many relevant dimensions, liberalize their telecom sectors around the same time? Kirsten L. Rodine-Hardy argues that international organizations – not national governments or market forces – are the primary drivers of policy convergence in the important arena of telecommunications regulation: they create and shape preferences for reform and provide forums for expert discussions and the emergence of policy standards. Yet she also shows that international convergence leaves room for substantial variation among countries, using both econometric analysis and controlled case comparisons of eight European countries.

1. Understanding global regulatory reform in telecommunications – a paradigm shift
2. Why change the rules? Explaining liberal telecom reform
3. When and how do countries change the rules? Econometric analysis of the timing of establishing separate regulators and privatizing telecom incumbents
4. Regulatory reform in central Europe – freer markets, European rules
5. Northern European regulatory reform – liberal reform northern-style – 'regulation-lite'
6. Conclusion: explaining change in a globalized world.

Subject Areas: Postal & telecommunications industries [KNTT], Media, information & communication industries [KNT], Political economy [KCP], International relations [JPS]