Governing information infrastructures and services in telecommunications

Purpose – Telecommunications comprises a vital component of information infrastructures and services, with a historically strong public interest dimension. For the best part of 30 years, the telecommunications sector in Europe has been the subject of a radical reorganisation in structural and operational terms along the lines of neo-liberalism. This paper aims to analyse the significance of the neo-liberal project in telecommunications in respect of the related dimensions of ideology and practice. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a public policy critique of the manifestation of neo-liberalism in the telecommunications sector in the European Union, employing desk-based research on relevant primary and secondary source documentation. Findings – The paper finds that proponents of neo-liberalism have been able to secure the broad acceptance of neo-liberalism as a “view of the world” for telecommunications. It shows that in practice, however, the neo-liberal model in telecommunications provides evidence of a less than efficacious adoption process in three respects: neo-liberalism requires an elaborately managed system the regulatory burden of which has been under-emphasised; the normative success of neo-liberalism has masked how difficult it has actually proven to be to create competition; the preoccupation with markets and competition has resulted in de-emphasis of public interest issues in telecommunications. Originality/value – This paper contributes up-to-date knowledge of the nature and effects of neo-liberalism in the European telecommunication sector. It provides a challenge and counterweight to the “received wisdom” that neo-liberalism has been an overwhelmingly successful approach to the re-ordering of European telecommunications

Pervasiveness and efficacy in regulatory governance – neo-liberalism as ideology and practice in European telecommunications reorganisation

Telecommunications provides one of the most well-developed examples of the growth of neo-liberalism. The sector is interesting since the contrast between its pre neoliberal and post neo-liberal characteristics is particularly stark. This paper explores the impacts of neo-liberalism in European telecommunications, placing particular focus on the EU institutional context. It considers the conseqences of neo-liberalism as ideology, on the one hand, and practice, on the other. It finds that, ideologically, neoliberalism has become deeply pervasive in European telecommunications and for its advocates can be regarded as a highly successful project spanning almost 30 years. In terms of practice, the paper argues that the pursuit of neo-liberalism has been less successful. In particular, competition has proven complex and difficult to create and there are concerns over the ability of the neo-liberal model to provide sufficient investment to deliver new Next Generation Networks. However, these deficiencies tend to be under-played due to the ideological and rhetorical success of the neo-liberal project in telecommunications.

'Binge' drinking, neo-liberalism and individualism

‘Binge’ drinking in the UK is perceived by government, media and academics alike as a topic of concern, despite the absence of any agreed definition. The current UK government’s approach to alcohol policy can be understood within the framework of neo-liberalism, its clear morals and ideals juxtaposed with increased opportunities for apparent transgression. ‘Binge’ drinking is constructed – by both media and government – as such transgression, in contrast with the ideals of ‘responsible’ or ‘moderate’ drinking. ‘Binge’ drinkers are seen as hedonistic, excessive and irrational; the antithesis of the rational, self-governing, moral individual that is the ideal neo-liberal subject. Conversely, most academic discussions of ‘binge’ drinking have focused on the contrast with what has been called ‘traditional’ drinking, based in community pubs and understood to have reinforced stable working-class, masculine identities based on workplace relations. ‘Binge’ drinking is presented as an individualistic practice, constructing identities through consumption under conditions determined by big business, with any sense of community being simply brand loyalty created by companies. ‘Binge’ drinking is thus understood not as the antithesis of neo-liberal ideals, but their apotheosis. My ethnographic research of drinking cultures in Bournemouth, UK, suggests that the relationship between individualism and drinking on the British night-time high street is more varied and nuanced than either of these models suggest. Some drinkers did present individualistic identities constructed through consumption, but they emphasised self-control, rationality and ‘good taste’, trying to distance themselves from conceptions of ‘binge’ drinking. On the other hand, many who might commonly be identified as ‘binge’ drinkers denounced the construction of such identities as ‘stuck up’ because of the stress on ‘image’ over ‘having a laugh’, and emphasised instead a sense of community that built on relationships from school and work, not simply shared patterns of consumption. The paper will therefore address the theme ‘New and Old Individualisms’, as it considers how ideas of individualism and distinction inform Bournemouth’s high street drinking cultures

Neo-liberalism, consequences on the prospect of democratization in Latin America

The present paper aims to analyze the consequences of neo-liberalism on the prospect of democratization in Latin America, by concentrating on two case-studies, Brazil and Chile. The analysis is done on a double level. In a first part it considers the consequences of neo-liberalism on the first dimension of the infra-State level, the State itself and the government. In a second part it moves to the analysis of the second dimension of the infra-State level, the society. This double level of evaluation highlights the deficiency of an efficacious political democratization at the level of the State and the lack of the application of civil rights at the level of society. The neo-liberal context has accentuated democratic lacunas, because it has been ineffective in providing monitoring capacities in the field of democratic norms and institutional implementation.Neo-liberalism; Latin America; Democratization; Democratic deconsolidation; Depolitization; Public sphere

Machine/ Flow/ Territory

In his lecture of 14th March 1979, within the series, The Birth of the Biopolitical, Michel Foucault discusses in some depth the American form of neo-liberalism, contrasting it with the development of neo-liberalism in Germany before and during World War Two. With respect to the radical approaches to neo-liberalism of Theodore Schulz and Gary Becker, Foucault offers a succinct shorthand understanding of the notion of self as human capital within neo-liberal economic rationality. This self is an “ability-machine” and an “incomestream” or “flow.” The English translator of The Birth of the Biopolitical, Graham Burchell, offers a curious footnote on this succinct abbreviation, machine/flow: “The word “machine” seems to be Foucault’s, an allusion or wink to L’Anti-Oedipe of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari”. Indeed the machine/flow couple is a crucial territorializing and deterritorialising ensemble of relations for Deleuze and Guattari in both volumes of Capitalism and schizophrenia. That “wink” to D & G, suggested by Burchell, opens the space for a compelling engagement with an ongoing understanding of Foucault’s critical philosophical writings and Deleuze’s own work. But here we are afforded an opportunity to engage the extent to which the machinic/flows ensemble in Deleuze and Guattari, or their political concerns with capitalism, are an allied diagnostic to Foucault’s writings on the governmentality of neo-liberalism, particularly in relation to the radical notions of the movement of freedom in a self’s relation to herself, that is opened in an analytics of the political rationality of neo-liberalism. This paper approaches an understanding of “territory” in relation to the emphasis given by both Deleuze and Foucault to fundamental transformations, particularly since the second half of the twentieth century, to sovereign juridical understanding of subject-rights, to neo-liberal understandings of entrepreneurial self-enterprise as inequity of competition: territory becoming milieu, becoming flow