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STUDY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND MEDIA POLICY 19
a variety of first reflections upon another significant institutional reform
is emerging, addressing the official inclusion of civil society actors in the
deliberations of the World Summit on the Information Society. 4 Recent
approaches to communications and media policy attempt to sketch the
structural and institutional transformations of international and national
policy-making from a critical political economic perspective that introduces
a synthesis of factors into the equation of communication policy
analysis. These are institutional change, legislative reform and process,
analysis of legislative, policy and political discourse, the impact of the international
policy regime and the relationship with the symbolic cultural
domain of identity and expression (for example, Mosco 2004).
In this book, we are exploring the multiplicity of these factors and
draw upon theoretical perspectives that address the structural as well
as cultural and agency bound domain to analyse policy. We argue that
there is a need to move beyond the developmentalist framework of the
study of global communication policy based on our previous work on
communication, modernization and the postcolonial state (Chakravartty
2001, 2004). We address institutional change building upon previous
work on representational politics and parliamentary advocacy within the
context of liberal democracy and in response to processes of globalization
(Sarikakis 2004c). This book is also informed by postcolonial and feminist
scholarship influencing the ways in which we look into other than the
obvious spaces, to identify the range of policy formation. And it is in this
way that we seek to help extend the rich debate on global communications
and media policy.
The logic and organization of the book
Our approach to the study of policy derives from the understanding
that communications and media are not just technologies or tradeable
goods but also expressions of social relations and power. In this work,
we focus on the actors and institutions that have played a significant role
historically in defining, challenging, disrupting or reinforcing symbolic
power in the policy field – both in terms of influencing outcome and
discourse. Our approach to policy is to identify those issues that are of
common concern across cultures and geopolitical formations, whether
states, regions or other localities, and analyse them against the background
of the intensification of market integration at a global scale. The
study uses empirical and historical sets of data that relate to policy development
in the fields of telecommunications policy, broadcasting and
audiovisual policy, as well as information and communication technologies
(ICTs) policy. These fields are intrinsically dependent in the way that