The Governance and Regulation of the Internet in the European Union, the United States and Switzerland: A comparative federalism approach

Defence date: 23 March 2007Examining board: Prof. Martin Rhodes (EUI/Denver University)(Supervisor) ; Prof. Andreas Auer (University of Geneva) ; Prof. David McKay (University of Essex) ; Prof. Alexander Trechsel (EUI)This dissertation analyses the dynamics of EU policy making through a structured and focused comparison with two other federal polities: the United States and Switzerland. To this end, it draws on the wider comparative federalism literature to examine how basic federal political institutions structure the development of policy outcomes. The empirical focus is on the regulatory challenge posed by the internet's spectacular proliferation during the period of 1995-2005. Two hypotheses are formulated as to how basic federal political institutions shape the development of policy outcomes in the three polities under investigation. First, given the cross-border nature of the policy challenge, we expect to find similar interactions among the different levels of government in all three units of analysis. In particular, federal level political actors should be similarly mobilised into offering centralising solutions to problems with cross-border effects. Furthermore, this could provoke allocational shifts in authority towards the centre in the three units of analysis. Second, it is expected that differences in the policy process and the ‘power capabilities’ of the centre help to explain the variance in policy outcomes. The main findings of the empirical investigation suggest that the dynamics of policymaking in the realm of internet regulation exhibit similarities that make EU comparison with other federal polities across these dimensions especially revealing. This is particularly the case when comparing the EU with polities characterised by an extremely decentralised federal configuration, institutionally weak centres, consensual modes of decision-making, and decentralised modes of policy implementation such as Switzerland