ABSTRACT

There is no single international regime for global communications. Radio and television broadcasting, electromagnetic spectrum allocation, telecommunications (telephone, telegraph, communications satellites, transborder data flows), and remote sensing are governed by a variety of principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures-or, in some cases, by no regime at all. Variation in outcomes can be explained by the interests and relative power capabilities of the actors in each case. Global communications have been characterized not by Nash equilibria

that are Pareto suboptimal but rather by disagreements over which point along the Pareto frontier should be chosen, that is, by distributional conflicts rather than by market failure. Changes in the relative power of states have led to changes in international regimes. The apparatus of economics, which has been so heavily deployed in regime analysis, has focused on information and monitoring rather than power, implying, if not explicitly arguing, that intelligence (figuring out the right institutional structure) is more important than the underlying distribution of capabilities. Regime analyses based upon market failure inevitably obscure issues of power because, given a Paretosuboptimal situation and a concern with absolute not just relative gains, it is possible to make at least one actor better off without making others worse off-an outcome that can be resolved through cleverness rather than by resort to power, threat, and coercion. Information flows and knowledge have been less important than relative

power capabilities for international communications regimes or the lack thereof. Where there have been disagreements about basic principles and norms and where the distribution of power has been highly asymmetrical, international regimes have not developed. Stronger states have simply done what they pleased. Radio broadcasting and remote sensing offer the clearest examples. Where there are coordination problems and the distribution of power has

been more symmetrical, however, regimes have been established. The level of conflict has varied according to whether states were dealing with pure

coordination problems or with coordination problems that had distributional consequences. The resolution of the former has caused little conflict because the purpose of the regime has been to avoid mutually undesirable outcomes. The allocation of the radio spectrum before the 1970s and the telecommunications regime before the 1980s offer two examples. By contrast, in cases that have had distributional consequences, conflict

has been more intense: though the states agreed on mutually undesirable outcomes, they disagreed on their preferred outcome. Controversies were triggered by changes in power, usually resulting from the development of new technologies. In recent years distributional questions have precipitated conflict over the allocation of the radio spectrum and over international telecommunications. The outcome of these disputes has been determined primarily by the relative bargaining power of the states involved. Whereas previous institutional choices had not imposed much constraint, new interests and power capabilities conferred by new technologies have led to new institutional arrangements. This is not to say that institutional arrangements were ever irrelevant:

indeed, they were necessary to resolve coordination problems and to establish stability. Without regimes all parties would have been worse off. There are, however, many points along the Pareto frontier: the nature of institutional arrangements is better explained by the distribution of national power capabilities than by efforts to solve problems of market failure.