ABSTRACT
Reforms in the regulation of telecommunications have been at the spearhead of national policy programmes. The rhetoric of privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation has spread across Europe and beyond. Nevertheless, the issues of regulation, the rules, standards and their enforcement remain crucial for the development of the emerging markets in telecommunications. Since the 1980s the control of economic activities are said to have undergone a fundamental transformation, not only in telecommunications, but also in key industrial sectors such as financial markets or transport. Multiple pressures, ranging from technicaleconomic to supra-national factors and to the ‘fiscal crisis of the state’ in the 1970s, are held responsible for a shift in the attention of policy-makers, particularly in Western Europe, from traditional issues of questions of ownership and welfare provision to the study of rule and incentive structures as a means of political control of economic activities. Regulation-‘the sustained and focused control exercised by a public agency over activities that are valued by a community’ (Selznick 1985: 363)—has therefore become one of the most crucial aspects of policy-making. This chapter does not deal solely with issues of telecommunication regulation, but also draws on some key issues discussed in the general regulation literature in political science and on experiences in other regulated industries in order to provide an overall perspective on regulation.
