Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

38 MEDIA POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION
involves movements from the taken-for-granted necessity of varied
forms and levels of partnership between official, parastatal, and nongovernmental
organizations in managing economic and social relations.
( Jessop 1999: 389–90)
Current discourses of global communication and media policy speak of
governance in this precise way, where the object and actors that define state
intervention have changed from centralized state bodies focusing on domestic
performance of the national economy to ‘partnerships’ between
private actors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and state bodies
to coordinate the delivery of social goods and services at the local level.
Although the nation-state plays a crucial role through public spending,
enforcing national laws or contributing other kinds of resources, private
investment, knowledge and expertise become important in shaping social
policy. Within the institutions of global governance, this process is evident
with the growing formal presence and participation of transnational
corporate actors who have deep pockets to conduct research, send delegates
to international meetings and press for changes at policy-making
forums. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have also gained more access,
albeit often with less financial and technical resources than their
corporate counterparts, who also represent themselves as part of civil
society depending on the forum or body. NGOs have historically been
recognized as part of the UN since its formation, but their roles only became
formally recognized through the UN Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC) in 1968. NGO participation within the UN began in earnest
in the 1970s, and then ‘exploded in the 1990s with the 1992 Earth Summit
in Rio de Janeiro’, reflecting the growing presence of both local
and international NGOs (INGOs). In 1996, ECOSOC formalized the
already-existing guidelines spelling out the basis for a ‘consultative relationship’
between ‘accredited NGOs’ and UN bodies (Siochrú 2003: 38).
In the following chapters we will interrogate these supranational sites
of global governance – the World Bank and the IMF, the WTO, the ITU
as the host of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) –
keeping in mind the growing tensions between the multilateral UN
agencies that have historically focused on political consensus versus the
market-oriented multilateral bodies. US-led pressure to shift power in
line with the ‘Washington Consensus’ away from UN bodies towards the
trade-oriented organizations have transformed the rules of global communication
governance. Private firms advocate ‘self-regulation’ in these
fora, providing technical and market expertise while NGOs might take
the lead in delivering services – a function that was previously limited