Chapter Eight New Regimes, New Capacities: The Politics of Telecommunications Nationalisation and

One of the most important and influential ideas of globalisation is that the capacity of states to govern is constrained and diminished by increased liberalisation and competitive markets. This chapter examines the validity of this claim through a comparative historical analysis of the role of the state in the telecommunications industry since the invention of the telephone. Telecommunications had been an extreme case of etatisation as it has experienced nationalisation almost all over the world. Starting in Europe as early as 1880, nationalisation spread across the globe, leaving the provision of telecommunication