The evolution of international policy agendas in the regulation of electronic communications: the internet and telecommunications

This paper focuses on the recent evolution of global regulatory policy agendas in two key parts of communication media: the Internet and telecommunications. It explores the key regulatory governance ideas and practices that have come to the fore in shaping these fast-moving policy arenas, commenting in the process on the place of regulatory competition and cooperation therein. It places particular focus on how, in different ways, selected global institutional contexts have played vital roles in shaping telecommunications and Internet policy agendas and the implications of this. In doing so, it explores a number of key junctures in the evolution of regulatory policy at the international level, highlighting the positions of Northern and Southern states at moments of policy change. The paper’s findings tend to underpin the assertion that sectoral internationalisation in telecommunications and the Internet have reinforced - rather than created a context for change in - the traditional order of North-South relations