"The disruption of national policy communities in Europe: The precondition for a European policy"

This article investigates the conditions under which national policy communities were disrupted, thereby opening a window of opportunity for policy entrepreneurship on the part of the European Commission and transnational private actors. Special attention is given to the case of telecommunications which has been highly insulated from external pressures and competitive processes and for which an EU policy did not exist before the mid-1980s. This article suggests two factors which strongly contributed to the disruption of national policy communities. First, their disruption began with the virtual defection of transnational firms including corporate users and manufacturers, as the telecommunications equipment and services markets were transnationalized. Second, the Europeanization of telecommunications politics was a sufficient condition for the disruption of national policy communities, leaving the formation of a transnational policy network whose members were the officials of the European Commission, the chief executives of transnational firms, Europeanized neo-liberal bureaucrats and politicians, and telecommunications professionals. This transnational alliance has enabled the EU to function as a post-national form of the capitalist state