The Politics of Telecommunications: National Institutions, Convergences, and Change in Britain and France

This book confronts some of the most important questions related to liberalization, regulation, and the role of the nation state in an increasingly international economy. In the face of powerful transnational pressure for change, to what extent are states able to maintain stable institutional frameworks? Do different domestic structures generate dissimilar patterns of policy making and economic performance? How important are past institutional choices for subsequent reform? This book addresses these questions through a study of the transformations of a strategic economic sector, telecommunications, in Britain and France over the last three decades. The book analyses the theoretical strengths and weaknesses of ‘national institutionalist’ models of policy making. It employs the model to compare institutions in British and French telecommunications, analyses the process of organizational reform, and assesses the effects of national institutions on policy making and economic outcomes (Copyright Oxford Scholarship Online).