Regulation, deregulation and re-regulation within the context of European Policy Regime
By: David Levi-Faur
Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1999, pp. 102-122.
Abstract
In the last decade Dutch policy regime for the governance of telecommunications was twice radically transformed. While the direction of change is clearly towards a more "liberal" regime, it reflects developments in regard to state-business interactions and member states-EU interactions that are hardly captured by existing (macro) theories of European integration and comparative political economy. By distinguishing between national policy regimes of interest intermediation (etatist and pluralist) and European embedded policy regimes (intergovernmental and supranational) this paper moves beyond the macro-analysis of European integration. Two areas of Dutch telecommunications reform - terminal type approval and network interconnection - serve to offer comparative analysis of micro-policy regimes and thus to avoid dubious generalizations which derive from high level macro-analysis. The papers’ findings reflects contradictory evidence as to (a) the process of liberalization and (b) the Europeanization of public policy. First, while type approval is a clear case of deregulation (less rules, freer markets), interconnection is an equally clear case of reregulation (more rules, freer markets). Second, while the case of type approval reflects a diminution in the role of both the Dutch state and the European Commission, the case of interconnection reflects a situation which both strengthen their capacities and therefore also their autonomy. The complexity of this picture does not mean that one should adopt a middle-of-the-way attitude to the issue of state power. The future of the Dutch economy and of national competitiveness in the "information age" still depends on the policies and capacities of the Dutch state.
Keywords: Interest intermediation, Liberalization, the Netherlands, Public Policy, Telecommunications, , Supranationalism.