Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 135
‘limited’ to economic policy (Nulens and Van Audenhove 1999). It does
not do so, by trying to direct policies towards the solution of social problems
but calls upon governments to deal with them, while at the same time
together with the IMF imposing economic policies upon countries with
the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP). Its overall philosophy leans
closer to liberalization and the market than the development of national
state or communitarian-driven policies for IS, more favourable to the private
sector and market mechanisms covering the ‘wishes’ of consumers
with the public sector forming ‘partnerships’ with the private sector in
order to cover those areas that the market will not be able to address, especially
in the first years. World Bank policies concentrate on prioritizing
private enterprises, restricting the role of the state and directing pressure
for the state to improve its capabilities where its role is still regarded
as necessary. As a consequence of the hyper-liberalization process, increasingly
the state in the developing world is losing its ‘jurisdiction’ and
negotiating power to determine the pace and nature of domestic markets,
and this necessarily will take the form of increased demands to correct
social inequalities with less means in the hands of public authorities.
Owing to its previous attention to the socioeconomic dimensions of
telecommunications the ITU was criticized by the USA as being too
politicized, a similar argument exercised against UNESCO when the organization
tried to launch a platform of socially responsible policies, as
we discussed in chapters 2 and 3, with the effect that the USA withdrew
its membership from UNESCO. In the ITU case, the USA and other
countries withdrew their funding with the consequence that the ITU
sought private funds to support its activities. This situation is evident
today during the World Summit on Information Society, one of the most
significant events for the implementation of policy globally, as we discuss
below. The ITU’s African Green Paper brought the institution back to a
more prominent position in international policy next to the World Bank.
The document ‘admitted’ the limited success of state-owned telecommunications
and was therefore seen to move away from its ‘political’
support of state control over post, telecoms and transport. Despite this
more favourable approach to liberalization, the ITU paper proposes a
‘modified’ version of liberalization where independent national agencies
have the power and the means to oversee the operation of private and
public telecoms operators as well as function as arbiters between these
operators and the consumers (ITU 1996).
In the same year, the United Nations’ Economic Commission for
Africa (ECA) designed a charter of policy principles for the developing
world, encapsulated in the African Information Society Initiative
(AISI). AISI identifies a set of policy issues that are not identical to those