Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA POLICY 39
to state bodies. This devolution of national state power is less hierarchical
and centralized , reinforcing the legitimacy of ‘flexibility,’ a central
feature of post-Fordist discourse in the policy field.
The relative loss of national autonomy and the reorganization of the
state’s functions have taken place as policy regimes themselves have become
increasingly intertwined with the objectives of international competitiveness
(Jessop 1999). In terms of communication and media policy
this means that previous national policy objectives – cultural sovereignty,
universal service, national integration, national employment schemes –
are ‘subordinated to labour market flexibility and/or to the constraints
of international competition’ (392). The degree that individual nationstates
are subject to the internationalization of policy regimes varies with
political, economic and also military power – such that powerful nationstates
like the US can choose to opt out in ways that are unimaginable for
most nations in the South. But this obvious imbalance in the rules of the
game has led to debates about the accountability of the different social
actors involved in governance as well as the ‘governance of governance’
and the failure in most cases to create legitimacy for internationalized
policy regimes themselves. 20
The legitimacy of governance: rethinking normative
claims for social justice
The new actors and institutions of global governance face a legitimacy crisis
because of the dislocating effects of rapid global integration, reinforcing
and also creating new divisions based on race, gender and sexuality,
as well as ethnicity, religion and nationality. Foremost among these effects
is the growing inequality both within and across national economies
measured in terms of the increasing disparity between society’s marginalized
and affluent populations. Contributing to the rising inequality and
instability in people’s everyday lives is the rapid financial instability in
nations jolted by financial crises, growing rates of casualization and feminization
of labour, and the diminished capacity of states to fund health
and education to the growing cross-border movement of displaced peoples
in the form of migrant labour and refugees. In the midst of these
transformations, and despite the shifts in its institutional capacity, the
nation-state remains the major site of ongoing competition over social
conflict and cohesion and redistribution, precisely because supranational
and local and regional bodies do not possess the requisite ‘popular democratic
legitimacy’ (Jessop 1999: 395). It is in response to this disjuncture
between the nation-state as the enduring site of political legitimacy