ABSTRACT
The aim of this study is to point out in what way three Western European countries have responded to changes in technologies, demand, regulation, and the international political economy of telecommunications, and whether the adjustment strategies of France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s have varied or converged. Comparative studies contribute to the debate on national and sectoral diversity versus international convergence in analysing industrial restructuring and explaining policy development. The question to be addressed is whether public policies vary across nations, across policy sectors and even over time or whether, eventually, they become more similar. This chapter provides an overview of various theories and concepts that deal with the convergencedivergence debate in comparative strategy, organisation and policy studies. In section 2.2 we will discuss the ‘policy styles’ approach, referring to distinctive forms of decision making stemming from national or sectoral settings, as investigated in comparative public policy studies. In section 2.3 we will introduce the business system approach and related concepts that refer to management and economic organisation being culture-bound and societally-embedded, as advocated in comparative organisation studies. In section 2.4 we will discuss the contributions from comparative political economy, Here, the emphasis is on the international context within which national institutions are embedded and on the different structural adjustment strategies countries pursue. Finally, in section 2.5, finally, we will elaborate on the research model, as mentioned in Chapter 1, by introducing and discussing the five national variables, originally introduced by Gourevitch (1986), that will allow for a comparison between telecommunications restructuring in France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The contingencies and constraints that shape and constrain a country’s adjustment strategy are the production profile, the role of the state, the system of interest intermediation, the economic ideology and culture, and the nation’s position in the international political economy.
