Transforming Global Information and Communication Markets: The Political Economy of Innovation

Peter F. Cowhey · Jonathan D. Aronson

Jan 2012 · MIT Press

About this ebook

Innovation in information and communication technology (ICT) fuels the growth of the global economy. How ICT markets evolve depends on politics and policy, and since the 1950s periodic overhauls of ICT policy have transformed competition and innovation. For example, in the 1980s and the 1990s a revolution in communication policy (the introduction of sweeping competition) also transformed the information market. Today, the diffusion of Internet, wireless, and broadband technology, growing modularity in the design of technologies, distributed computing infrastructures, and rapidly changing business models signal another shift.

This pathbreaking examination of ICT from a political economy perspective argues that continued rapid innovation and economic growth require new approaches in global governance that will reconcile diverse interests and enable competition to flourish. The authors (two of whom were architects of international ICT policy reforms in the 1990s) discuss this crucial turning point in both theoretical and practical terms.

About the author

Peter F. Cowhey, a former senior FCC official, is Dean of the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Communications and Technology Policy at the University of California, San Diego.

Jonathan D. Aronson is Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California.

Donald Abelson, a former senior U.S. Government trade and communication official, is the head of Sudbury International, LLC.