新国際電気通信体制の起源 -国家による学習と体制変化-

抄録

This article discusses and analyzes changes in the international telecommunications regime which have given rise to a whole new set of expectations in the management of global communications, and also examines the political process that has led to the changes.
First, it argues that the expected patterns of international cooperation as embodied in this new regime have become both more global and liberal. They have become more global, because the boundaries between domestic and international telecommunications have all but disappeared, and as a result, international cooperation regarding telecommunication standards and regulations now concern the terms of user access to the digital public-switched telephone network known as “integrated services digital network” or ISDN. They have also become more liberal in the sense that telecommunication services can now be defined and provided independently of the network by end users as well as enhanced service providers. Combined together, these changes have transformed telecommunications into services which can be traded internationally for profits, hence the reason for close coordination between the International Telecommunication Union and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
It then attempts to explain these changes by developing a set of neo-functionalist hypotheses that emphasize the role of an epistemic community in governmental learning, a cognitive process whereby scientific experts and their consensual knowledge induce actors' preference change leading to progressive changes in international regimes. The study has found that indeed the creation of this new international telecommunications regime is attributable to the consensual knowledge on ISDN, created by the International Consultative Committee on Telegraph and Telephone (CCITT) of ITU, and also to a high degree of uncertainty regarding nations' economic futures, spurred by the technological convergence between computing and telecommunications.
More specifically, the discussion focuses on the governmental responses in the European Community, Japan, and the United States to the CCITT's proposal on ISDN. In Europe, the EC under Davignon's leadership has played a decisive role in promoting ISDN as a means of creating a common market for telecommunication services and equipment. Its primary aim has been to provide economies of scale to the European telecommunications equipment manufacturers as well as to provide more diverse and cost-efficient telecommunication services to Europe's major multinationals, lest Europe as a whole lose future information-based economic competition to Japan and the United States. Similarly, the concept of ISDN has been eagerly adopted by Japan's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications as a necessary foundation for Japan's commercial success in the emerging gobal information economy. Compared to these two cases, however, the cognitive change in the United States has been more complex as well as more unpredictable. This is due to the fact that the political process in the United States, being extremely fragmented, has lacked a dominant player such as the European Commission or Japan's MPT. But, in the end, a policy coalition sharing a concern for the economic fortunes of the U. S. industry, led by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration of the Commerce Department, has succeeded in making both the U. S. Congress and the District Court for the District of columbia reconsider the role of common carriers in enhancing the country's international competitiveness.
Finally, it discusses the negotiation process that actually led to the successful conclusion of new International Telecommunications Regulations at the 1988 World Administrative Telephone and Telegraph Conference that laid the foundation for the emerging international cooperation in telecommunications, and concludes that governmental learning by advanced industrial countries was a necessary,