Raymund Werle

From National Hierarchies to International Standardization: Modal Changes in the Governance of Telecommunications

The emergence of large technical systems like railroads, telecommunication networks or power grids was closely associated with hierarchical governance. Despite the success of hierarchical structures in promoting the development of these systems they have recently come under strain. They are suspected of being too slow, too cumbersome, and too unimaginative to deal with the complexity and turbulence of modern technology. Practical people as well as academics look for functional alternatives. One of the alternatives is the decentralisation of technical control via standards. The paper investigates this alternative by analysing the role that standards have achieved in telecommunications after the hierarchical order was eroded by globalisation and deregulation. It discusses how the demise of hierarchy has boosted the ‘demand’ for standards and how the institutional infrastructure for standardisation was adapted to meet this demand.

Internet @ Europe: Overcoming institutional fragmentation and policy failure

For more than a decade the Internet was confronted with ignorance and resistance in many European countries. National and European technology policies were unfavorable to not invented here technologies and committed to open networks of a different kind. The incumbent network operators in telecommunications, most of them enjoying a monopoly status for a long time, declined tolerating deviant modes of data communication and service provision, which might trigger competition and uncontrollable use of their networks. This situation was not simply a matter of attitudes and beliefs of the managerial and political elite. It was rather an expression of constraints of a traditional institutional setting which had produced industry structures and industrial policy strategies that were not compatible with the Internet. Only recently can we observe changes. Telecoms liberalization in the European Union and the emergence of market competition in this industry coincide with a new Internet policy that recognizes the infrastructural significance of this network for a European information society and the need to involve Internet users in order to exploit the potential of this network.

Software als Institution und ihre Gestaltbarkeit

ZusammenfassungSoftware regelt immer mehr zwischenmenschliche Interaktionen. Üblicherweise werden die Funktionsmechanismen, Wirkungen und Gestaltungsoptionen von Regeln in der Institutionenforschung behandelt. In diesem Artikel soll beleuchtet werden, inwieweit sich Ansätze der Institutionenforschung auf Software anwenden lassen und was sich aus dieser Forschungsperspektive zu den Regelungswirkungen und Gestaltungsoptionen von Software ableiten lässt.

Institutions and Systems: Analysing Technical Innovation Processes from an Institutional Perspective

Different sub-disciplines of the social sciences analyse the evolution and diffusion of technical innovations from an institutional perspective. Important contributions are provided by socio-economic studies of national systems of innovation, by politico-economic research on the varieties of capitalism, and by the sociology of technology. These studies often start from rather simple distinctions between types of technical innovations (e.g., radical versus incremental) which they usually do not elaborate on. Also, most of them neglect that particularly large and complex technical systems require specific institutional provisions for their functioning. Such “black-boxing” of technology by and large facilitates detecting generalisable relations between institutional constellations and technical innovations. But a more sophisticated analysis of the relationship between institutions and technical innovations needs more precise concepts of both technology and institutions, and it must dismiss the prevailing institutional determinism. Processes of technical and institutional innovations are characterised by co-evolution , interaction and mutual adjustment.

Liberalisierung und politische Techniksteuerung

Seit mehr als einem Jahrzehnt konnen wir einen Wandel der Rolle des Staates in der Technologiepolitik beobachten, auch wenn sich am grundsatzlichen Funktionskatalog des „technikfordernden“ und „technikbeaufsichtigenden“ Staates (Ronge 1986) wenig geandert hat. Dieser Wandel wird besonders in den technisch gepragten Infrastrukturbereichen deutlich, wo Forderung heute eher Koordination und Aufsicht eher Regulierung bedeutet und mit dem Staat nicht mehr der klassische Hierarch gemeint ist. Seit dem Ende der 1970er Jahre ziehen sich staatliche Verwaltungen und staatseigene Unternehmen aus dem (alleinigen) Betrieb der grosen technischen Infrastruktursysteme wie Eisenbahn, Elektrizitatsversorgung oder Telekommunikation zuruck. Die Politik der meisten westlichen Industriestaaten hat sich im Hinblick auf ihre Zielsetzung und ihre Institutionalisierung in diesen Bereichen grundlegend geandert. Liberalisierung, d.h. die Schaffung von Wettbewerbsmarkten, wo in der Vergangenheit in der Regel offentliche Monopole vorherrschten, ist zu einem zentralen Reformprojekt dieser Staaten geworden. Ein wichtiger Aspekt der Entwicklung ist, dass bestimmte Leistungen der „Daseinsvorsorge“, fur die der Staat unmittelbar verantwortlich war, nun von Privaten uber den Markt erbracht werden sollen (Eberlein 2000). Um die Leistungen garantieren zu konnen, reserviert sich der Staat das Recht, diese Markte zu regulieren (Grande 1997).

Liberalization and integration: Pathways to a trans-European network in telecommunications

Abstract In a dicussion of the telecommunications industry, the authors focus on the European Communitys objective of liberalization and integration—goals which they consider ‘only partly compatible’—and the frameworks within which they operate: standardization and harmonization. In examining the developments of policies in these two areas, the authors identify different interests and different Community strategies in each case.

Aspekte der Verrechtlichung

Zusammenfassung Anknüpfend an einige Überlegungen Wolfgang Kaupens zur Bedeutung des Rechts als Mechanismus sozialer Kontrolle und politischer Steuerung behandelt die Analyse einige methodische und begriffliche Probleme der neueren Verrechtlichungsdiskussion. Im Gegensatz zur ‚klassischen‘ Verrechtlichungsforschung, die schwerpunktmäßig an der Rechtsentwicklung und deren Einflußfaktoren interessiert ist, konzentriert sich die neuere Forschung auf die möglichen Konsequenzen zunehmender rechtlicher Regulierung sozialer Handlungsfelder. Die Tendenz, recht unterschiedliche Phänomene im Zusammenhang mit der Schaffung und dem Gebrauch von Recht, auf verschiedenen Analyseebenen, global mit dem Begriff der Verrechtlichung zu belegen, erschwert allerdings den adäquaten makro-theoretischen Zugang zu einer Erklärung der Konsequenzen der Verrechtlichung. Summary Some aspects of Wolfgang Kaupen’s articles on the significance of the law as a medium of social and political control are reconsidered and some methodological and conceptional problems of the new ‚legalization‘ debate are discussed. In contrast to the ‚traditional‘ approaches to the phenomenon of legalization, which concentrate on the problems and the causal factors of change and evolution of legal structures, the ‚new‘ research activities are aimed at the possible consequences of the growing tendency to legally regulate fields of social action. It is obvious in these studies that very different strategies of law creation and law use, on different levels of analysis, are labelled as processes of legalization. This variety of usage does not seem to be helpful in finding an adequate macro-theoretical approach to the problem of explaining the consequences of legalization.

Technik als soziale Konstruktion

Die fruhen 1980er Jahre markieren einen Wendepunkt in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Technikforschung. Bis dahin war sie, soweit man uberhaupt von eigenstandiger Technikforschung reden konnte, vor allem industriesoziologisch gepragt und orientiert an den Technikfolgen. In dieser zugespitzt als Technikdeterminismus (s. Kap. IV.A.9) bezeichneten Ausrichtung, deren »Ende« der Vorsitzende der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Soziologie in seinem Eroffnungsbeitrag zum Soziologentag 1986 verkundete, wurde Technik als treibende Kraft des industriellen und allgemein des sozialen Wandels betrachtet. Aus dieser Perspektive ist die technische Entwicklung durch eine kaum beeinflussbare Eigendynamik und Eigengesetzlichkeit gepragt, die eine passive Anpassung der soziookonomischen Strukturen, gesellschaftlichen Organisationsformen und sozialen Verhaltensweisen erzwingt (Lutz 1987, 35). »Der Kausalpfeil nimmt seinen Ausgang in der Technik und fuhrt zum Sozialen; eine umgekehrte Richtung ist nicht vorgesehen« (Grunwald 2007, 68).

Between Politics, Economy, and Technology: The Changing Environments of Business Associations

The central theme of this book is the adaptation of national systems of organized business interests to changing environments. In this chapter we take a more detailed look at the slices and layers of these political, economic, and technological ‘exostructures’ (Bunge, 1996). Our basic questions are: How do environmental changes affect business associations and how can they possibly trigger adaptation processes? As the overview of business association theories in Chapter 2 has shown, political factors have been given priority in explaining associational behavior and inter-associational structures, whereas economic and technological determinants still play a peripheral role. Nevertheless, it is commonly accepted that these factors have a strong impact on the membership base of business associations. Their neglect is important, because it is generally assumed that the expansion and contraction of membership may affect the entire interest group system. Furthermore, the ability of associational systems to include new and detach abandoned interests affects the legitimacy and effectiveness of public policy.

Sectors and Strategies of Global Communications Regulation

Summary Global communication networks, in particular the Internet, challenge the traditional systems and procedures of regulation, which are national or regional but not global It is evident that solely market processes will not assert the guidance and control needed to escort the growth of the network and its use for service provision and electronic transactions. Introducing the conceptual distinction of coordination and regulation we identify areas in which government intervention is unnecessary and where it is indispensable. Then, examining different areas and strategies of regulation we highlight crucial problems and regulators’ responses concerning electronic commerce and the protection of third parties. This helps identify trends and specify areas of regulation with and without governments involved It shows that global communications is governed by a patchwork of few uniform international legal rules, sparingly harmonized national regulations at the regional level, a number of laws framing schemes of self-regulation complemented by unregulated self-regulation and last but not least a growing number of legal interface solutions. They mediate between conflicting regulatory systems without affecting their autonomy.