Telecommunications Policy

Since the mid-1980s telecommunications policy has attracted growing interest from political science. Hundreds of books and articles deal with governmental decisions, programs and actions related to the broadening spectrum of technologies and technical systems that facilitate communication over large distances. Telecommunications policy is studied at national, cross-national and supranational level, and it is widely acknowledged that this specific domain of public policy has changed significantly and taken on a European character. However, the answers diverge regarding the question of which forces have driven this process. Likewise, telecommunications policy is only rarely defined or delineated in a systematic way. Depending upon what is considered when telecommunications policy is analyzed, we arrive at different conclusions concerning the extent and the characteristics of the Europeanization of national telecommunications policies in Europe