Global Markets and Government Regulation in Telecommunications

In recent years, liberalization, privatization and deregulation have become commonplace in sectors once dominated by government-owned monopolies. In telecommunications, for example, during the 1990s, more than 129 countries established independent regulatory agencies and more than 100 countries privatized the state-owned telecom operator. Why did so many countries liberalize in such a short period of time? For example, why did both Denmark and Burundi, nations different along so many relevant dimensions, liberalize their telecom sectors around the same time? Kirsten L. Rodine-Hardy argues that international organizations – not national governments or market forces – are the primary drivers of policy convergence in the important arena of telecommunications regulation: they create and shape preferences for reform and provide forums for expert discussions and the emergence of policy standards. Yet she also shows that international convergence leaves room for substantial variation among countries, using both econometric analysis and controlled case comparisons of eight European countries.

1. Understanding global regulatory reform in telecommunications – a paradigm shift; 2. Why change the rules? Explaining liberal telecom reform; 3. When and how do countries change the rules? Econometric analysis of the timing of establishing separate regulators and privatizing telecom incumbents; 4. Regulatory reform in central Europe – freer markets, European rules; 5. Northern European regulatory reform – liberal reform northern-style – 'regulation-lite'; 6. Conclusion: explaining change in a globalized world.

Kirsten Rodine-Hardy is an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University, where she teaches international political economy, comparative politics and European politics. She completed her PhD in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and spent two years at Harvard University on a pre-dissertation fellowship. She earned degrees from Brown University (AB honors and magna cum laude) and Georgetown University (MSFS in international trade and finance) and she studied at the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris and at the ICPSR at Michigan University. She was a visiting assistant professor at Brown University in 2005 and 2006. She has received research support from the University of California's Institute for Cooperation and Conflict and the Berkeley Post-Soviet Studies Program, and she has consulted for the World Bank, the OECD and the European Union. She participates actively in the American Political Science Association, the Midwest Political Science Association and the International Studies Association. She is affiliated with Harvard University's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies and the Northeastern University Center for Emerging Markets, based at the Northeastern School of Business.