Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

18 MEDIA POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION
Humphreys (1996); and Moore (1997), despite their differences, tend
to agree on the categorization of communications policy according to
the degree of state intervention. The term dirigisme for example has been
used to describe a philosophy of active state involvement in policy matters,
especially in the European Union terrain, as opposed to laissez-faire policies
(Collins 1994; Harcourt 2005; Moore 1997; etc.). It is certainly the
case, however, that regulating for a neoliberalist framework of media policies
involves at least as much state intervention as in the cases of dirigisme.
Or, as several scholars have pointed out, deregulation of communications
has required a new set of regulations (for example, Humphreys 1996), so
that we are actually referring to reregulation.
The politics of neoliberalism has succeeded in defining the ways in
which we debate the role of the state in communications policy to a
rather significant degree. Dirigisme is considered an ill, to be avoided at
any cost in international relations and global policy as some of the most
influential neoliberal think tanks advise (e.g. Bandow 1994). The state
here is presented as ‘corrupt’ in the case of the ‘developing’ world, not
to be trusted with funds or other support by the ‘international community’
or, in the case of the ‘developed’ countries, as a rather asphyxiating
paternalistic nanny that hinders progress and individual freedom. In this
book, we try and map the shifting role of the nation-state in relation to
the market and society, paying attention to structural similarities as well
as historical specificities of this process.
Scholars have attempted to address this changing role, often indirectly
by mapping out the institutional changes that take place at the national
level, as direct responses to the profound pressures of the processes of
globalization. Within the field of communications and media studies,
there has been a growing interest in studying cultural and media policymaking,
where scholars have focused their attention on the shifting and
historically specific relationships between states, markets and social actors
who make policy (Lewis and Miller 2002). Also, scholars have concerned
themselves not only with the macro-level questions of globalization,
neoliberalism and the role of the media (McChesney 2004) but
also with ‘meso-level’ issues of institutional arrangements and policymaking.
So for example, Mansell (2001, 2002) points to the institutional
processes, strategies and rhetoric to define policy problems related to
the ‘new media’; Abramson and Raboy (1999) explore the institutional
responses of the Canadian state to adapt to the definitions and visions of
a global information society; Hamelink (1995) analyses the institutional
interactions of international organizations in the process of determining
policy paradigms. International and supranational policy developments
continue to attract the attention of scholars and activists. More recently,