Abstract
Liberal international trade in telecommunications services is presented in two competing and sometimes inaccurate images in international political economy literature.1 On the one hand, liberal economists depict trade in telecommunications services as a natural expansion of the liberal international trading order, an expansion which will bring benefits of accelerated economic growth to previously stagnant sectors of the economy and parts of the world stultified by monopoly state control of national service industries. While states should enter service trade agreements to exploit their comparative advantages, liberalisation is often resisted by protectionist national groups. Those drawing on dependency theory, on the other hand, point to the open ‘investment’ aspects of ‘trade in services’ agreements, and argue that the prime driving force behind institutional change is transnational corporations based in the North which wish to gain access to Third World markets. Northern market-economy states support these corporations’ needs in international negotiations because such a position is seen to serve their national interests.
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Notes
This conceptualisation arises from a reading of Robert W. Cox, Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New York: Columbia, 1987).
For more discussion see Jean-Pierre Vercruysse, ‘Telecommunications in India: “Deregulation ” versus Self-Reliance’ in Telematics and Informatics, Vol.7, No.1 (1990) pp. 109–21.
Among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development studies on services is Changing Market Structures in Telecommunications (Paris: OECD, 1983).
My approach to the understanding of ‘institutions’ in political economy is centrally influenced by Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944). The analysis of liberalisation has also profited from reading Vincent Mosco and Janet Wasko (eds), The Political Economy of Information (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).
For influential discussions of the service economy and services trade see Raymond J. Krommenacker, World-Traded Services: The Challenge for the 1980s (Dedham, MA: Artech House, 1984); R.K. Shelp, Beyond Industrialization: ascendancy of the global service economy (New York: Praeger, 1981); and Orio Giarini, The Emerging Service Economy (Oxford: Pergamon, 1987).
See Robert W. Cox, Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New York: Columbia, 1987); Stephen Gill and David Law, The Global Political Economy: Perspectives, Problems and Policies (New York: Harvester, 1988); and Enrico Augelli and Craig Murphy, America’s Quest for Supremacy and the Third World: A Gramscian Analysis (London: Pinter Publishers, 1988).
See Gilbert R. Winham, ‘The prenegotiation phase of the Uruguay Round’ in International Journal, Vol.44, No.2 (Spring 1989) pp.280–303; and Jonathan Aronson, ‘Negotiating to Launch Negotiations: Getting Trade in Services onto the GATT Agenda’ (Pittsburgh: Pew Programme in Case Teaching and Writing in International Affairs, 1988). Also see Stephen D. McDowell, ‘India, the LDCs, and Trade and Investment in Services’ in Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R.D. Underhill (eds), Political Economy and the Changing Global Order (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, forthcoming 1994).
See William J. Drake and Kalypso Nicolaides, ‘Ideas, interests, and institutionalisation: “trade in services” and the Uruguay Round’ in International Organisation, Vol.46, No.1 (Winter 1992) pp.37–100. This is the most detailed historical and analytic treatment of the development of trade in services policies available in the literature. See also Stephen D. McDowell, ‘Policy Research Institutes and Liberalised International Services Exchange’ in Stephen Brooks and Alain-G. Gagnon (eds), Social Scientists, Policy Communities, and the State (New York: Praeger Publishers, forthcoming).
See John Zysman and Stephen Cohen, Manufacturing Matters: The Myth of the Post-Industrial Economy (New York: Basic Books, 1987).
For a good outline of development planning issues see Sukhamoy Chakravarty, Development Planning: The Indian Experience (Delhi: Oxford, 1987); and The State and Development Planning in India’, Economic and Political Weekly (19 August 1989).
Sanjaya Baru, in The Economic Times New Delhi (23 July 1990). Also see The World Bank, World Development Report 1990 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1990).
See United States Information Service, Economic News from the United States (New Delhi: USIS, November 1989).
See UNCTAD, Services and Development Potential: The Indian Context (New York: United Nations, 1990), for the papers presented at UNCTAD-ICRIER ‘Seminar on Role of Services in Development Process: International Experience and its Relevance to India’ New Delhi. 27–29 April 1989. Also see Sumitra Chishti, ‘Services and Economic Development of Developing Countries: Liberalisation of International Trade in Services and its Impact’ in The Indian Journal of Social Science, Vol.2, No.2 (1989) pp. 109–29; and Dr S.S. Saxena and Dr R.K. Pandey, The Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations under GATT: An Analytic Review (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, November 1988).
For the changes taking place in the ITU see George A. Codding and Anthony M. Rutkowski, The International Telecommunication Union in a Changing World (Dedham, MA: Artech House, 1982); and James G. Savage, The Politics of International Telecommunication Regulation (Boulder: Westview, 1989).
See William Pierce and Nicholas Jequier, Telecommunications for Development (Geneva: ITU, 1983); and International Telecommunication Union, The Missing Link: Report of the Independent Commission for Telecommunications Development (Geneva: ITU, December 1984). Critics might see ‘telecommunications for development’ as a way to deflect opinion from divisive spectrum allocation issues in the ITU and New World Information and Communication Order questions in UNESCO, as the worse type of developmentalism (state-led, high technology mega-projects which may be inappropriate to national needs and give ample opportunity for increased foreign debt and for middlemen to extract commissions) and as not addressing rural development — since the main users are likely to be urban elites and international business. See ‘Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Communication and Third World Development’ in Gerald Sussman and John A. Lent (eds), Transnational Communications: Wiring the Third World (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991) pp. 1–26.
See Peter F. Cowhey, ‘The International Telecommunications Regime: The Political Roots of Regimes for High Technologies’ in International Organization, Vol.44, No.2 (Spring 1990) pp.169–99; and Peter Robinson, Karl P. Sauvant and Vishwas P. Govitrikar (eds), Electronic Highways for World Trade: Issues in Telecommunications and Data Services (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989). For a critical perspective see Jill Hills, ‘Telecommunications Policy: The movement towards liberalisation and privatisation’ in Telecommunications Journal, Vol.56, No.3 (1989) pp. 163–71.
The GATT Secretariat prepared a background note entitled, Trade in Telecommunications Services (Geneva: GATT, 19 May 1989) (MTN.GNS/W/52). See also GATT Focus, No. 63 (July 1989) and GATT Focus, No.73 (August 1990) for reports on telecommunications issues arising in the Group of Negotiations on Services.
For theoretic perspectives on the role of the state see Vincent Mosco, ‘Toward a Theory of the State and Telecommunications Policy’ in Journal of Communication, Vol.38, No.1 (Winter 1988) pp. 107–24.
See for more discussion Peter B. Evans, ‘Indian Informatics in the 1980s: The Changing Character of State Involvement’ in World Development, Vol.20, No.1 (1992) pp.1–18.
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McDowell, S.D. (1994). International Services Liberalisation and Indian Telecommunications Policy. In: Comor, E.A. (eds) The Global Political Economy of Communication. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24926-8_6
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