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9. UNDERSTANDING SHIFTS IN THE FORM AND SCOPE OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS GOVERNANCE: CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
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CHAPTER NINE UNDERSTANDING SHIFTS IN THE FORM AND SCOPE OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS GOVERNANCE: CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY STEPHEN D. MCDOWELL INTRODUCTION The telecommunications sector has undergone a number of significant changes in the last decades. These include tremendous growth in business and consumer demand for communications services and information technologies, the building of cross-industry alliances and mergers and acquisitions among communications and information firms previously operating only in distinct sectors, the creation of transnational alliances and ownership relations among firms previously operating only in single countries, and the rapid introduction of new digital technologies at various points in communications networks. In order to facilitate, accommodate, and actively promote industry and market restructuring, governments have been called upon to undertake a wide number of new policy directions and governing practices. In addition to new policies, more fundamental alterations in the ways in which telecommunications activities are governed have been introduced, as have changes in the actual organizational entities that are the locus of telecommunications governing activities. The chapter addresses the nature of these changes, and discusses different ways to understand why these changes in governance are occurring. It considers these changes in Canada and the United States, where the private sector has long been active in telecommunications, and where a variety of governing bodies and forms of governance have been in place throughout the twentieth century. The numerous existing forms of telecommunications governance are accompanied by new public policy measures and directions, as well as by non-state 211 forms of governance. Changes in the forms of governance have occurred alongside the reorganization of the geographic scope of telecommunications governance , with significant activity taking place at the multilateral, regional, bilateral, and sub-national levels, in addition to traditional nation-state governance of telecommunications. This chapter outlines the changing role of solely national telecommunications governance, and sets this in the context of emerging patterns of supra-national and sub-national governance. PRODUCTION, TECHNOLOGY AND GOVERNANCE Two sets of developments are most often related to changes in governance; the organization of economic production, and the development of new information and communication technologies. A critical political economy perspective argues that these changes in economic patterns, technology, and governance must be related to each other in a holistic, historical, and nonlinear fashion. New technologies have been designed and deployed to serve the purposes and projects of powerful organizations and social groups, such as states and transnational enterprises and their managers. The economic, cultural, and political patterns referred to as globalization also arise as a result of efforts of firms and states to compete in or more effectively control global markets, and their efforts along these lines lead to investments in certain technical infrastructures and economic policies. Rather than assuming a certain type of technical change or economic restructuring as the starting point for exploring changes in governance, we also need to consider the origins and determinants of those broad sets of change. The analysis in this chapter draws from historical and critical approaches in the study of international political economy and world order, especially that of Robert Cox (1987) and other neo-Gramscian political economists. The paper also draws insights regarding the spatial organization of production, governance, and social life and cultural meanings from economic and cultural geographers dealing with political economy and communications (Harvey 1990; Castells 1996; Graham and Marvin 1996). State power and forms of state should be seen in historical context, rather than abstract containers of sovereignty. Some states and forms of state will benefit from changes while others may lose out. Conventional accounts tend to assume that state organization, goals, and relationships with civil society remain similar, even if there are other new actors and even if there are new forms of power and threats. Rather, some states are undertaking efforts to benefit from new economic and technical patterns, and working to introduce new forms of governance that involve relations with non-state actors and supra and sub-state governing bodies. Although they may share the conceptual category of state, the capacities of small 212 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AND GLOBAL POLITICS [18.191.21.86] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 00:55 GMT) states and large states may differ to make them, in many respects, more different than similar in the global order. Governance is chosen in this analysis over a number of other possible terms such as regulation, policy, or law. This term is selected for several reasons. Some terms, such as regulation, although they may...