ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the second case study of a European country adjusting its domestic industrial organisation to the structural changes in technology, markets and international governance in telecommunications. The Netherlands, a small and open economy, sought to pursue a strategy of promoting national and global liberalisation while retaining its unanimous and consensualist decision-making structures at home. In the Netherlands there has always been a tendency as well as a necessity to follow major international developments. In order to strengthen their economic position as a major European centre for international trade, transportation and financial services, the Dutch decided relatively early to evaluate their existing telecommunications policy. The radical US policy to deregulate domestic telecommunications and to break up the Bell system, and the British decision to privatise the public operator and to establish a duopoly, were regarded as too controversial to be implemented in the Netherlands. The Dutch strategy showed a more gradual approach to the introduction of liberalisation, privatisation and regulatory reform in telecommunications.
