International Coercion, Emulation and Policy Diffusion: Market-Oriented Infrastructure Reforms, 1977-1999

Why do some countries adopt market-oriented reforms such as deregulation, privatization and liberalization of competition in their infrastructure industries while others do not? Why did the pace of adoption accelerate in the 1990s? Building on neo-institutional theory in sociology, we argue that the domestic adoption of market-oriented reforms is strongly influenced by international pressures of coercion and emulation. We find robust support for these arguments with an event-history analysis of the determinants of reform in the telecommunications and electricity sectors of as many as 205 countries and territories between 1977 and 1999. Our results also suggest that the coercive effect of multilateral lending from the IMF, the World Bank or Regional Development Banks is increasing over time, a finding that is consistent with anecdotal evidence that multilateral organizations have broadened the scope of the “conditionality” terms specifying market-oriented reforms imposed on borrowing countries. We discuss the possibility that, by pressuring countries into policy reform, cross-national coercion and emulation may not produce ideal outcomes.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40099/3/wp713.pd

Global Telecom Talks: A Trillion Dollar Deal

On 15 February 1997, the World Trade Organization's negotiating group on basic telecommunications service reached a path-breaking agreement. In all, 68 countries accounting for more than 90 percent of telecom revenue worldwide made commitments to open their telecom markets to competition and foreign investment. This agreement will contribute to lower costs for consumers, improved telecom service quality, and new jobs in competitive telecom sectors. Petrazzini describes the context leading to the agreement, estimates the benefits of the deal, and provides an in-depth assessment of the economic and technological forces changing the way we talk, fax, e-mail, and network with each other.

Telecommunications policy in India: The political underpinnings of reform

In the mid-1980s India became one of the first developing countries to launch reforms in its telecommunications services; yet 10 years later little change had been introduced in the sector. Then in 1994 the government launched a new national telecommunications policy which has a considerable number of important features that are rather puzzling and uniquely Indian. This paper argues that the slow pace and uniqueness of India's telecommunications reform are to be explained in terms of the country's institutional arrangements. Radical telecommunications reforms move at a slow pace, take peculiar local twists or fall in implementation when (1) the state is highly permeable and vulnerable to demands from powerful, domestic interest groups that oppose changes in the sector; and/or (2) top government officials diverge and clash over the reform agenda, generally due to the head of state's lack of power.

Promoting Internet development: the case of Argentina

Only a few years ago Argentina had a very low Internet penetration compared with its neighbouring countries in Latin America. In 1993, for example, the country had only 0.05 Internet hosts per 10,000 people, while Chile had as many as 1.01 (Brazil had 0.27, Mexico had 0.40 and Venezuela 0.23). By July 1999, however, the situation had changed in some fundamental ways. While countries like Chile and Brazil had 25 Internet hosts per 10,000 people, Argentina was enjoying the presence of almost 39 Internet hosts per 10,000 people. The number of estimated users had climbed from some 70,000 in late 1996 to more than 900,000 in mid-1999; while the number of Internet accounts had grown almost nine fold, from 40,000 in late 1996 to some 348,000 in mid-1999. The poor market prospect that reigned in the early days of the Internet had certainly been reversed. Argentina became, by late 1999, the country with the highest Internet host density among the large economies of Latin America. A number of obvious questions come to mind when confronted with this puzzle: How can it be that in a short period of time the country reversed the situation in which it was in 1993? What happened between 1993 and 1999 that the number of connections to the Internet grew more than 255 percent a year, shooting the hosts density from 0.05 to 39 Internet hosts per 10,000 people? This case study attempts to provide some clues to the Internet growth puzzle in Argentina. Most analysts would agree that changes in market structure and profile are not the product of a single factor. This paper argues, however, that the Internet boom in Argentina lies mainly on two main policy decisions: (a) the reduction in the price of leased lines and (b) the reduction of tariffs for local calls through the creation of a special dialling scheme for Internet-related calls. The paper pays special attention to these regulatory changes, their impact on the evolution of the Internet in Argentina, and the subsequent benefits that the Net has brought to both businesses and consumers.Internet development Argentina