The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime

The emergent global information policy regime. In Sandra Braman (Ed.), The emergent global information policy regime,
pp. 12-37. Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
The Emergent Global Information
Policy Regime
Sandra Braman
Though international telecommunications regulation, launched mid19th century in response to the telegraph, is often cited as a model of
a classical regulatory regime (Zacher and Sutton, 1996), regime theory
has only recently been taken up for analysis of international policy for
the information infrastructure and the content it carries (Cowhey,
1990). Regime theory was, however, one of the first types of theory used
to address informational issues once they came to be viewed as 'high'
rather than 'low' policy (Gassmann, 1981; Nye, 1999; Oettinger, 1980),
a shift in salience that resulted from the informatisation of society.
Just as diverse strands of economics came together in the economics
of information over the last couple of decades (Lamberton, 1998), so historically distinct policy matters pertaining to global flows of information,
communication, and culture are now also coming together into a single
emergent global information policy regime. This regime is 'global'
because it involves non-state as well as state actors, and 'emergent' a concept drawn from complex adaptive systems theory - because both
the subject of the regime and its features are still evolving.
Nation-states and global regimes can be thought of as complex
adaptive systems because at each level there are behaviors that cannot
be inferred from those of constituent entities, and because any change
in one entity or relationship alters other entities and/or relationships.
Political systems in turn unfold within a broad legal field comprised of
a wide variety of practices, institutions, and discourses involving multiple actors and sub-systems in constantly shifting formal and informal
relationships. From this perspective, a regime is an equilibrious but still
dynamic condition of a political system as it takes shape within the
legal field. Even the nation-state can then be seen for what it is, the
Sandra Braman
13
'state of a system at a particular point i n time' (Kwinter, 1992, p. 59).
Thus regimes involve:
government (the formal institutions, rules, and practices of historically based geopolitical entities);
governance (the formal and informal institutions, rules, agreements,
and practices of state and non-state actors the decisions and behaviours of
which have a constitutive effect o n society); and
governmentality (the cultural and social context out of which modes
of governance arise and by which they are sustained).
Regime theory complements and contextualises analyses of global
information policy that rely upon and are limited by legacy law (see, for
example, Branscomb, 1983, 1986; Bruce etal., 1986). I n sum, it provides a
framework for understanding the processes by which the complex adaptive
systems of geopolitical entities undergo transformation within the legal field as manifested within a specific issue area; here, information policy.
The regime approach t o global information policy has utility because
it offers a heuristic that helps identify common trends in phenomena
and processes scattered across policy arenas historically treated as
analytically distinct. It provides a foundation for constructive analysis
of new institutions, policy tools, behaviors, and relations as opposed t o
viewing transformations as merely t h e deterioration of long-existing
systems. It addresses one of the key problems facing information policymakers - the dispersal of decision-making across numerous venues and
players - by envisioning a common universe. It offers a position from
which analysts and policy-makers absorbed in the 'new' can return
t o legacy legal systems t o mine what can most usefully be brought forward. Finally, t h e use of regime theory t o frame other types of analyses
of t h e impact of information technologies o n international relations,
such as those by Deibert (1997) and Der Derian (1990), increases t h e
analytical utility of that work. Thinking of global information policy in
these terms i n turn forces further development of regime theory because
it highlights the importance of epistemic communities, emphasizes the
multiplicity of formal and informal processes involved, and draws
attention t o t h e parameters within which regime features operate.
T H E POLICY FIELD
Neither the concept of the field nor complex adaptive systems theory
originated in political thought, but both have been taken u p i n policy
14
The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime
analysis. The theoretical translations and extensions have deepened
and broadened our understanding of the nature of power.
The concept of the field
Bourdieu's conceptualisation of the field as a grid of relations that governs
specific areas of life has been the most influential, but was neither the
first, nor is it the only, approach (Bourdieu, 1991; Lash, 1993; Lash and
Urry, 1987; Palumbio-Lio and Gumbrecht, 1993). The concept follows
quite naturally from structural theories of society, but differs from them
in viewing social relations as dynamic rather than static, flexible rather
than fixed, engaged in struggle over positions within the field rather than
treating those positions as inevitable, and resulting from agency that is
as likely to be an indirect predisposition as it is a conscious act.
A field is a structure of possibility and probability that constrains and
encourages certain types of choices, though a degree of indeterminacy
always remains. Every field is historically specific, dynamic, and affected
by both internal and external factors. Structure and interaction are
mutually constituted and constituting. Fields vary in the degree t o
which they exhibit awareness of boundaries, levels of interaction and
order from those that are low in these dimensions to those that have
well-recognised boundaries, intense interaction, and are highly ordered;
relations in fields at the low end of the spectrum are described as
'loosely coupled', and those at the high end 'tightly coupled'. They also
vary in the extent to which positions within the field are specialised,
level of administrative and technical coherence, and, as is explored by
Kahin i n this volume, degree of codification (Poole et al., 1986).
A central axis of variation of fields is their autonomy. The digital
information technologies that are a key subject of the global information policy regime affect the autonomy of fields and the actors within
them because they vastly multiply the degrees of freedom available; as
explored in more detail elsewhere (Braman, 2002, 2004), it is this feature of
digital technologies that identifies them as meta-technologies rather
than industrial technologies. With an increase i n degrees of freedom
relations become more loosely coupled, non-linear causal relations rise in
importance, and the very site of agency can become not only decentred
but distributed. Because both agency and structure are ambiguous and
filled with possibility, they are also sites of conflict, responsive to the
exercise of multiple forms of power. The field i n which information
policy appears is further complicated because with digital information
technologies it has become clear that agency is structure and structure,
agency.
Sandra Brarnan
15
The concept of the field is used in policy analysis both explicitly and
implicitly. A theoretical ground for doing so appeared in political
thought when it turned away from the nation-state as a unitary and
autonomous actor comprised of formal institutions and towards an
emphasis on governance as practices of power. Diverse intellectual
influences contributed to this shift, including neo-Marxist thought
(particularly that of Poulantzas [1974]) (Carnoy, 1984), the 'rhetorical
turn' in political theory (Schon and Rein, 1994; Simons, 1990), and
scrutiny of the very nature of power itself (e-g., Olsen and Marger,
1993), so long taken as a given. While Foucault declined to offer a theory
of the state itself - 'in the sense that one abstains from an indigestible
meal' (Foucault etal., 1991, p. 4) - his notion of governmentality as the
means by which the possible field of actions is structured also had great
impact.
Many differences of course remain among political theorists, but this
sea-change writ large shared features that stimulated attention to the
politics of culture (e-g., Pal, 1993), theories of postcolonialism (Ahmad,
1995), and historical work on practice-based differences among nationstates that appear in formal terms to be similar (Greenfeld, 1992; Held,
1989). Conceiving of the state as a field rather than an entity widens
the analytical lens to include, for example, the longue dure'e within
which any given political structure is embedded (Flew, 1997), discourses
of power (Fischer and Forester, 1993), epistemic communities (Fox and
Miller, 1995), contributions to the episteme of the social sciences (Brooks
and Gagnon, 1990; Wagner etal., 1991), and the practices of everyday
life (Pal, 1990).
Boulding (1971) was the first to explicitly apply the concept of the
field to policy. Dezalay and Garth (1996) suggest it may be easiest to see
the legal field in the international context because in that environment
there are structures but n o specific legal order, although the concept is
useful in the domestic context as well - particularly as the very nature
of the law and its relations to other structural forces undergoes change.
The concept is sufficiently open and systematic (Dezalay, 1989, 1990)
to enable examination of both the features of emergent regulatory
structures such as those of global information policy and the processes
by which regime formation takes place.
Complex adaptive systems and the policy field
The concept of the legal field establishes the context within which
regimes appear, but the looseness of the construct makes it difficult
to rely upon it alone to identify the boundaries of specific fields, the
16
The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime
nature of causality (and therefore of change) within them, and the
processes through which agents and fields cohere. Complex adaptive
systems theory offers a framework through which to understand these
additional facets of the structuration processes that are the stuff of policy.
Born in the natural sciences, systems theory has been applied in the
social sciences for decades. Theories that examine complex adaptive
systems go under a number of different names, depending on the discipline in which they were developed and/or the stage of transformation
processes of focal interest; they include theories of chaos, dissipative
structures, punctuated equilibria, second-order cybernetics, and catastrophe. Elsewhere, I have offered a more detailed synthesis of the
implications of such theories for analysis of political phenomena and
processes (Braman, 1994).
References to systems theory have been trendy since the mid-20th
century but must be carefully unpacked in the 21st because there has
been significant theoretical development since the popularly known
ideas of the 1950s. Early weaknesses, such as the concern that it is
overly functionalist (Giddens, 1984)) have been overcome. In its first
incarnation, systems theory started from the assumptions that individual
systems could be studied in isolation, were most successful when they
were equilibrious, and responded only to negative feedback. Contemporary versions of complex adaptive systems theory, on the other hand,
assume systems are constantly interacting with other systems at the
same, supra- and infra-levels; healthiest when undergoing transformation;
and respond to positive as well as negative feedback as triggers to selfamplifying causal deviations. Theoretical development has been aided
by the results of empirical research as well as the ability to use advanced
mathematics in ways only recently made possible by increased computing
speed and capacity. As technological innovation further expands computational capacity, the ability to analyse the multiple variables involved
in social systems is expected to further improve (Metropolis and Rota,
1993).
System change of course involves both destruction and creation of
form. It is most successful when the systems involved are self-conscious
about the process of change, or morphogenetic, heterogeneous internally, and symbiotic with other systems in their environments. Because
system change is nonrandom and multiple change processes both
within and outside of a single system are interrelated, change is not
always statistically predictable. Decisions at either the individual or
collective level affect the evolution of the system and everyone in it and
are thus collective in impact, irrespective of intention. Morphogenesis
Sandra Braman
17
driven by t h e elements of which the system is comprised rather than
mandated from the top or initiated by external forces is described as
'autopoietic'; i n political systems those elements are the citizens. Several
conditions with information policy implications are supportive of
morphogenesis and autopoiesis, including the ability of citizens to act
autonomously, encouragement of experimentation and self-examination,
and citizen knowledge about the system and its environment.
Disturbances t o a system that provoke change vary in their intensity
and severity. Distinctions are thus drawn between fluctuations (sudden,
spontaneous, and often unexpected departures from the norm), perturbations (change i n a system's structure or behavior that respond t o environmental impacts and a weakening of linkages between subsystems),
noise (small, constant, random variations), and catastrophes (abrupt
change, often wrought by a continuous but changing force) (DeGreene,
1982). Within political thought these distinctions are captured by use
of the term 'sensitivity' t o refer t o change within a system, and the term
'vulnerability' to change i n the parameters of the system itself. Concern
about the latter has been one of the drivers of global information policy
since a report t o the Swedish government i n the late 1970s (Tengelin,
1981) introduced the notion that new types of nation-state vulnerabilities
result from the use of new information technologies.
As systems appear and evolve, feedback between macroscopic and
microscopic structures lead to the development of parameters - in political
environments, policy - that reduce the number of degrees of freedom in
a system as stability increases (DeGreene, 1993). Collective structures
at the macroscopic level, such as the law, damp fluctuation. But if such
structures are too tightly coupled t o their subsystems the life of existing
structures may be considerably prolonged even though functionality
decreases (Jantsch, 1989), as Singh suggests may be the case with continued adherence to the industrial era policy principles of territoriality
and exclusion in his chapter in this volume. When all rules and
resources are transformative - as is the case when digital meta-technologies
are involved - actors may exhibit what Archer (1982) calls 'hyperactive'
agency.
Since the 1980s scholars of international relations have been pointing
to the 'cascading interdependence' (Rosenau, 1984) among nationstates as fundamental to understanding global affairs. From a systems
perspective this is a n increase in interactions among systems at the
same, infra-, and supra-levels of analysis. Fluctuations in each can initiate self-amplifying causal loops that can ultimately cause significant
changes t o other systems, even at other levels of the social structure,
18
The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime
i n what has become famously known as the butterfly effect. Healthy
exchanges among systems have characteristics i n dimensions that
are the subject of information policy: adequate modes of information
collection and processing, internal processes for incorporating and
responding to what has been learned from the environment, and a sufficient
level of complexity. When all three conditions are met, evolutionary
developments within one system serve as stimuli for developments
within other systems; and when these evolutionary cycles become
coordinated among systems, there is coevolution. The process of system
evolution, too, entails degrees of freedom and involves the dynamics of
self-organisation, so that evolution is open not only with respect to its
products, but also to the rules of the game it develops. The result, as
Jantsch (1989) puts it, is the self-transcendence of evolution i n 'metaevolution', or the evolution of evolutionary mechanisms and principles.
It is just such a change that is being experienced with the informatisation
of society.
Systems evolve through a series of transformations in which instability
and turbulence generate a disequilibrium that will deteriorate into
chaos or ultimately resolve into a new equilibrium or an oscillation
between equilibria. As the new form gradually appears, it is known as
emergent because it exists only at the system level. Emergence is behaviour
'which cannot be predicted through analysis at any level simpler than
that of the system as a whole' (Dyson, 1998, p. 9) - or, more colloquially,
what's left when everything else has been explained away.
Systems theory found a n early welcome in social theory because the
intellectual ground had already been prepared by Alfred North Whitehead's early 20th century process philosophy and Max Weber's still
influential work o n the bureaucratic structures of the nation-state.
German theorists first explicitly described the nation-state as a system
t o oppose organic theories of the 1920s, though the notion first gained
real traction when it was introduced in t h e 1950s i n t h e US by Easton
(1953, 1981) in an effort to turn analytical attention away from the
state and towards the forces that generate and constrain state activities.
During t h e same decade Gunnar Myrdal proposed a n 'autocatalytic'
model of regional development that shares much with today's selforganising systems theories, and scholars at the University of Chicago
began to look at common problems that arose i n the application of
systems ideas across the social sciences (Archer, 1982).
By t h e 1960s, it was common for those theorists of t h e nation-state
who focused on its bureaucratic nature to view it as a form of organisation,
and both organisational sociologists and political scientists commonly
Sandra Braman
19
referred to shared characteristics. This parallel became important when
it became clear in the 1970s that traditional ways of analysing organisations - whether corporate or political - were inadequate to the task of
explaining growth in the rate of complexity and change. By the late
1980s, organisations were understood to be fundamentally paradoxical,
complex, and turbulent. The systems model of an alternation between
periods of reorientation (marked by shifts in strategy, redistributions of
power, and changes in the nature and pervasiveness of control systems)
and periods of stability seemed to apply (Tushman and Romanelli,
1985). The insight that organisations, such as the nation-state, also
move from order t o chaos and back, gained force in political theory
in the influential book Bringing the State Back In edited by Evans,
Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol (1985).
Luhmann (1985) presents an abstract approach to the role of law in
producing and reproducing the nation-state as a system that treats the
law largely as a text rather than the outcome of social processes. More
pragmatic approaches to the use of complex adaptive systems theory
for policy analysis, however, are now in use at the domestic level
(DeGreene, 1993; Kiel, 1994; T'veld etal., 1991; Innes and Booher, 1999),
applied to analysis of issues as diverse as waste management and taxes.
The attention of those in international relations has also been drawn to
this body of theory by the need to cope with complexity (Axelrod, 1997;
Guzzini, 2001), turbulence (Jervis, 1996) and cascading interdependence
(Rosenau, 1984).
The political role of information from a systems perspective was first
examined in the abstract by Krippendorff (1993), who importantly
noted that not all systems are in fact autopoietic and that information
policy can be used to subordinate parts of a system to the whole, isolate
a system, or maintain an equilibrium whether healthy or not, as well
as to enable morphogenesis. Complex adaptive systems theory was first
used in actual analysis of information policy in Kuwabara's (2000) study
of the bottom-up decision-making approach that characterised the
design and building of the internet. Singh in this volume provides
an example of its utility for understanding the strategic choices of
businesses faced with an uncertain and turbulent environment.
REGIME THEORY
Though regime theory was developed by political scientists without
reference to social theories of the field or to complex adaptive systems
theory, it gains in richness, utility, and persuasiveness by being placed
20
The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime
within this expanded theoretical context. Regime formation, then, is
the process by which new policy forms emerge out of the policy field. It
occurs when factors internal or external to the issue area require transformations in law and regulation; in the case of information policy, as
the authors of this book explore in more detail, technological innovation
and the consequent processes of globalisation have been particularly
important factors in stimulating the transformation of the global
information policy regime.
Regime theory of course has its own history. The effort to understand
international and global decision-making in specific issue areas forced
scholars of international relations to widen their conceptual toolkit
beyond ideas used to examine the traditional geopolitical entity of the
nation-state (Clark, 1999). In doing so, they turned to less formal
elements of the legal field such as discourses and norms. Because international and global decision-making are relatively recent and in most
issue areas have rarely been static, it was necessary to emphasise transformational processes. Regime theory is thus the development within
political thought of an approach to understanding the emergence and
transformation of complex adaptive systems as they operate within a broad
legal field in a specific policy area.
The concept of a regime developed in response to the same developments that produced the notion of globalisation as the very subject of
political theory was changing (Cerny, 1995). Though many were initially
skeptical, its utility has come to be widely acknowledged. This section
examines what has happened to the 'subject' of international relations,
the appearance and development of regime theory, characteristics of
regimes, and critiques of regime theory. The next examines the emergence
of the global information policy regime.
The 'subject' of international relations
The subject of international relations became problematic beginning in
the 1970s as the costs of the post-World War I1 global economic structure became evident to the then-new states of the developing world and
to non-state actors. Formal diplomatic habits came under threat as new
political actors began to operate quite outside of established rules. Gaps
between the intentions and the effects of international organisations
needed explanation, with reactions to international law and the actualities of its implementation differing by issue area. Technological change
began to make geopolitical borders permeable, flexible, or irrelevant
altogether.
Sandra Braman
21
The long-dominant realist approach t o international relations started
from the position that agency - what Der Derian (1990) refers to as its
'reality principle' - lay with the nation-state. Alternatively, it can be
argued that agency lies with society at large (Mouritzen, 1988; Rosenau,
1992). Bringing the two positions together suggests the statelsociety
complex as the locus of agency, responding to social forces generated by
interactions among material capabilities, institutions, and ideas (Comor,
1996; Cox, 1997 ) . Regime theory focuses o n the interstitial tissues of
the agreements, norms, and behavioural habits through which the state/
society complex is enacted (Kratochwil and Ruggie, 2001).
Evolution of the regime concept
As the subject of international relations was reconsidered, regime theory
became useful as a way of thinking about the changes that were taking
place and of resolving anomalies that appeared when formal institutions
and processes were the only subjects of study (Keohane, 1982; Keohane
and Nye, 1977). The concept appeared t o resolve both disciplinary and
real-world problems. It was at first more popular in the United States
than in Europe, perhaps because of the nationalist response t o international affairs of the era in the US as opposed t o the wider range of
concerns of interest t o Europeans (Keohane and Ostrom, 1995; Rittberger
and Mayer etal., 1993). Interest remained low-key during the years of
the Cold War focus o n East-West relations (Crawford, 1996; Rittberger
and Zurn, 1990). Indeed, many expected the notion of regimes to be
only a passing fad (see, for example, Strange, 1982). By the 1990s, however, interest in, and theoretical supports for, regime theory multiplied.
The concept helped divide the subject of international relations into
smaller analytical pieces (Efinger and Zum, 1990). It explained cooperative
behaviours, such as proposals for a 'common security blanket' across East
and West, that were ever more evident even though not predicted by
realist theory. Indeed, regime theory was the first approach that made it
possible to address both conflict and cooperation in global power structures
within the same theoretical framework. Regime theory also addressed
the failures of realism to predict or explain significant changes within
and among nation-states and the mutual interactions between international and domestic politics (see, for example, Goldstein, 1988). The
reshaping of positions on various issues transformed some conflicts over
values into conflicts over means, leading t o the formation of regimes
in a number of areas in which they had not been seen in the past. As
nation-states became more involved in business competition, attention
was drawn away from actors and towards the relationships that comprise
22
The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime
regimes. The general need for more policy coordination and coherence in
government raised the salience of resolving problems across issue areas.
The Foucaultian approach to the nation-state itself as a regime comprised of multiple governmentalities also began to influence international relations (Keeley, 1990; Pal, 1990). Furthermore, though regime
analysis has been viewed by some as a competitor to realist approaches
to international relations (e.g., Jonsson, 1993; Jonsson and Aggestam,
1997), acceptance of theoretical pluralism had spread across the social
sciences by the 1990s. This made it possible to add regime analysis to
the conceptual toolkit without requiring abandonment of other ideas,
enriching analysis and increasing its rigour as different analytical
techniques serve as checks upon each other (Blommestein and
Nijkamp, 1992).
Conceptualising regimes
Regime concepts range from the-very abstract and broad to the very
specific and concrete. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive; as
Krasner (1982) noted, regimes may relate to each other hierarchically,
with micro-level regimes for specific narrowly-defined issues nesting
within meso- and macro-level regimes with broader foci. Regimes at
each level may operate differently, however; fundtionally specific regimes
are often directed by technical specialists and mid-level administrators
in participating governments while functionally diffuse regimes are
more likely to be managed by diplomatic generalists and higher-level
political officers (Hopkins and Puchala, 1983).
The regime concept is related to other notions that have become
important in policy analysis. The policy network literature emphasises
that policy-making takes place within a variety of networks that are
more likely to be interpersonal than structural and which exist at the
sectoral levels. Marsh (1998), for example, places policy communities
and issue networks on a continuum. In this approach, the former are
tight networks with few participants who share basic values and exchange
resources, characterised by considerable continuity in membership, values,
and outcomes, while the latter are loose networks with a large number
of members with fluctuating access and significant disputes over values,
characterised by little continuity in membership, values, and outcomes.
Interdependence, so much of interest in the regime literature, is a key
dimension along which policy networks vary. Similarly, regime theory
is at home with constructivist approaches to international relations
(Bauzon, 1992) and with those that emphasise identity and culture
(Lapid and Kratochwil, 1996).
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23
Macro-level conceptualisations
Abstract conceptions such as those of a 'technological regime' or a
'regime of accumulation' are still important in international relations.
The former points to a frontier of technological capabilities economically achievable within certain material constraints. The latter, more
widely used, is the view of the French Regulation School; as applied to
international telecommunications, it is a set of economic regularities
that enables a coherent process of capital accumulation (Kim and Hart,
2002). The notion of a regime has been applied to fundamental
elements of international relations such as free trade and reliance upon
the market (Goldstein, 1986). The term has also been used abstractly to
describe a decision-making procedure around which actors' expectations
converge (Stein, 1982).
Micro-level conceptuaIisations
At the other end of the spectrum are concrete approaches that define
regimes narrowly as spcial institutions governing actions of those interested in very specific types of activities (Young, 1982). Properties of issue
areas differentiate opportunities and obstacles to collective action that
derive from the detailed nature of the policies involved (Ikenberry,
1988; Lamborn, 1991). Industry-specific regimes may stand alone or be
nested within issue-area umbrellas (Acheson and Maule, 1996). An issue
area is a set of issues dealt with in common negotiations and by the
same or closely coordinated bureaucracies, but the definition of specific
issue areas depends on the perceptions of actors and on their behaviours rather than on the inherent qualities of the subject matter - thus
their boundaries can change gradually over time (Efinger, 1990; Saksena,
2002). An issue is a single goal on a decision-making agenda and issue
linkage, therefore, is bargaining that involves more than one issue
(Haas, 1990). The case of information as an issue area in international
relations presents an example of a domain of activity that has emerged
as a result of just such a change in perceptions and behaviours, and that
has expanded in part through the process of issue linkage.
Meso-level conceptua lisations
The dominant view of regimes is meso-level, referring to specific ways
of shaping relationships among actors that embody abstract principles
but are operationalised in a multitude of diverse concrete institutions,
agreements, and procedures. Krasner (1982) offered the definition of
a regime that is most widely used: implicit or explicit principles, norms,
rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations
24
T h e Emergent Global Infomation Policy Regime
converge i n a particular issue area. Principles are beliefs of fact, causation, and rectitude; norms are standards of behavior defined in terms
of rights and obligations; rules are specific prescriptions or proscriptions
for action; and decision-making procedures are prevailing practices for
making and implementing collective choice. Organisations are often
(Haas, 1990), but not necessarily (Young, 1982), components of regimes.
Regimes thus understood are a cooperative, sociological, mode of conflict
management (Rittberger and Zurn, 1990; Young, 1999).
Characteristics of regimes
The general concept of a regime can be further articulated in order to
analyse regime features as they vary across formation processes, effects,
and change.
Regime fornation
A variety of factors trigger - and may interact in - regime formation.
Cox (1997) divides these into functions, international power, and
cognitive frameworks. All of these lead to an increased need for policy
coordination to cope with what might otherwise be unresolvable
conflicts (Efinger, 1990), dilemmas of common aversions (situations in
which actors must coordinate their activities to avoid mutually undesirable outcomes), or dilemmas of common interests (situations in which
actors must coordinate their activities to avoid Pareto-deficient outcomes)
(Krasner, 1991). Young (1982) distinguishes between spontaneous orders,
in which there is neither conscious coordination nor explicit consent;
negotiated orders, in which there are conscious efforts to agree on
major provisions and explicit consent on the part of individual participants; and the imposed orders generated deliberately by hegemons or
consortia of dominant players. Among the reasons the ultimate nature
of the global information policy regime is still to some degree uncertain
is that currently all three means of developing order are in play.
The desire to reduce transaction costs and to manage technological
change can drive regime formation (Cox, 1997; Lawton, 1997)) and
both have been important in the area of information policy. Commodification of previously uncommodified areas of activity also can lead to
regime formation, as happened with food at the close of the 19th
century (Poitras, 1997). Commodification of previously uncommodified forms of information is one of the reasons it is argued that the
industrial economy has been superseded by an information economy
(Braman, 1999).
Sandra Braman
25
The exercise of power by a hegemon in the international environment can also create a regime. Many argue that the active assertion of
a regime framework by a hegemon is not just a potential factor, but is
required (Keohane, 1980; Keohane and Nye, 1998). In some cases the
choice may be between a regime proposed by a strong nation or
nations, or none at all (Frankel, 1991). Certainly the need to enforce
compliance suggests the utility of hegemonic leadership for regime survival (Yeutter, 1988), though superior power in bilateral relations on the
part of a nation-state that is not globally hegemonic can also be effective (Kaempfer and Lowenberg, 1999). Other potential factors in regime
formation related to the sheer exercise of power include the appearance
of new actors with political weight (Cutler etal., 1999; Haufler, 1999)
and failures of existing international organisations or legal systems
(Gallarotti, 1991).
Shifts in cognitive frameworks can lead to identification of new issue
areas in which an agreement on operating principles must be achieved
where there have been none before and/or change in an existing regime
is required. Such shifts may alter the ways in which problems are
defined, the domain of possible solutions, and the norms according to
which problems will be resolved (Cox, 1997; Nadelmann, 1990; Schon
and Rein, 1994). Discursive factors distinguish contending actors and
ideas, name and evaluate subjects of conflict, identify modes of argument and standards of judgment, and provide the grounds for agreeing
upon objectives and mechanisms for dispute resolution (Keeley, 1990;
Kim and Hart, 2002; Risse, 2000). Ideas themselves can enable regime
formation (Corrales and Feinberg, 1999; Goldstein, 1986), and regimes
are self-enforcing to the degree to which expectations converge and,
thus, behaviours are coordinated (Lipson, 1991; Stein, 1982).
Regime effects
The goal of a regime is to achieve specific effects, with reduction of
uncertainty high on the list. This can be accomplished by coordinating
domestic policies with common rules and dispute settlement procedures. Doing so reduces transaction costs, increases the importance of
reputation, and decreases the incentive to.cheat (Acheson and Maule,
1996). Regimes can also reduce conflict intensity by reshaping actors'
interests and enabling shifts in position.
The effects of regimes extend beyond the actors and issues directly
involved, however, as has happened with nuclear non-proliferation
(Cohen and Frankel, 1991) and is happening with information policy.
Effects may be intended or unintended, with the latter including behaviours
26
The Emergent Global Infomation Policy Regime
triggered by the desire to defect informally or to develop alternative,
perhaps complementary, modes of action in support of state interests
(Saksena, 2002).
Regime effects are of course not unbounded. There may be limits
to negotiability, or the encouragement of direct and indirect, overt and
covert, resistance. Defiant behaviours can undermine achievement of
regime goals by changing the context within which it operates, as is
seen with the proliferation of non-tariff trade barriers in the face of
international trade agreements. In the area of information policy,
software techniques for getting around regulatory limits provide an
example of indirect defiance, and continued use of peer to peer content
exchange software an example of direct defiance.
Regime change
A regime becomes transformed when there are 'significant alterations
i n . . . rights and rules, the character of its social choice mechanisms, and
the nature of its compliance mechanisms' (Young, 1982, p. 291) - that
is, shifts in the nature of decision-making. Change can involve not only
destruction of existing institutions and the creation of new ones but, as
in the case of information policy, coordination of expectations and
perceptions around new focal points. Regimes can start and stop, as has
happened in the area of biotechnology (Wiegele, 1991) and in the case
of efforts to achieve internationally acceptable norms for journalistic
involvement in peace-making and -keeping (Nordenstreng, 1989).
Lindquist (1990) offers a typology of decisions that positions regime
change relative to other political moves. Routine decisions occur when
there is significant consensus on prevailing policy and relatively few are
interested in the area; responsibility for such decisions is delegated to
those few individuals who can use data to determine whether or not
pre-established programmes are performing to expectations and, if not,
what should be changed. Incremental decisions occur when a substantial
consensus remains but selective issues merit the attention of interested
policy-makers; here the method of successive limited comparisons is
desirable. Fundamental decisions occur when a significant departure
from a policy base is considered or occurs, and thus will affect a large
number of policy-makers; for such decisions more information, including
research, is often needed, the costs of calculation and prediction are
higher, and more policy-makers must be persuaded of the advantages of
various alternatives. Regime ships, in this typology, occur when there
are major failures under routine decisions, incremental decision-making
is blocked, or when policy-makers refocus attention to new policy issues.
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27
A variety of factors can stimulate regime change. Material and psycho-
logical limits may rule out certain approaches while almost demanding others (Appadurai, 1993). Technological change has recently had
a n impact i n issue areas as diverse as security and agriculture, (Young,
1982) as well as in the area of information policy. Shifts i n the relative
power among nation-states can lead t o regime change, both within
existing parameters and to t h e parameters themselves (Krasner, 1985).
Internal contradictions within a regime can also force change. Whatever
the triggering factor, according to complex adaptive systems theory
even when turbulence appears within a previously stable equilibrium,
only those actions or ideas that exploit t o their advantage the nonlinear
relations that previously guaranteed stability will have effect (DeLanda,
1991).
When a regime changes, it may extend itself vertically, from the
nation-state t o regions and/or the globe, or from the global and/or
regional levels down t o t h e nation-state. The European Union provides
an example of t h e extension of the effects of regime change u p
(Caporaso, 2000), and the increasingly constitutional nature of international trade ,law a n example of the extension of the effects of regime
change down (Buzan, 1993; Petersmann, 1991). Change may result in
creation of new rules or institutions, alteration of the criteria by which
decisions are made, or transformation of t h e policy process itself
(Fischer, 1993). All of these are at play as global information policy
regime emerges.
Critiques of regime theory
There are of course critiques of regime theory, ranging from concerns
about conceptual clarity t o difficulties with the unit of analysis.
Imp recis ion
Strange (1982) found regime theory imprecise, and others have similarly claimed it refers t o so many different things, and so loosely, that it
is little more than a synonym for a n international organisation or for
a n issue area. It can be difficult t o determine either where one regime
ends and another begins, or t o distinguish between a non-regime and
a regime (Kratochwil and Ruggie, 2001). In some cases there are disagreements as t o whether or not a regime even exists - was arms control
in the 1980s a new security regime, for example, or a piecemeal effort
only? (Efinger, 1990; Frankel, 1991). Hard empirical indicators of a regime
and its boundaries can be difficult t o find, though growing appreciation
of culture within political theory is making it easier t o grasp cultural
28
T h e Emergent Global Information Policy Regime
aspects of regimes empirically, as Cogburn and Singh do in their
chapters here.
Overemphasis on order
Strange (1982) was also concerned about a n overemphasis upon order
in regime theory, warning that it could lead to an insistence upon
pattern where in fact there is none, blindness to those elements of the
international system that remain in disorder, and an exaggerated sense
of predictability that is not empirically based. The demand that various
regime components should be coherent and stable may be inappropriate.
Furthermore, the very use of regime theory may exacerbate the trend
towards interdependence in and of itself. The concern that a model may
restrict the analyst's vision to only those phenomena and processes that
are describable by the model is of course endemic to the use of any
heuristic, though it remains an important warning.
Topically limited
Regime theory does not yet deal adequately with problems arising out
of the rights and responsibilities of states toward individuals and other
states, or those that deal with technological innovation and markets.
Analysis of the emergent global information policy regime demonstrates these problems, though the utility of regime theory in this
domain makes clear that difficulties should not be equated with absolute limits.
Over-reliance on the nation-state
As a natural child of international relations, the study of the inter-state
system comprised of formal relations among nation-states, it was
inevitable that regime theory in its first incarnations should begin with
reliance upon the nation-state. Even in its original formulations, however, regime theory included attention to informal processes and the
cultural aspects of governmentality, easing the transition to analysis of
global rather than international decision-making.
Inadequate attention to the roles of knowledge and epistemic communities
Though regime theory acknowledges the roles of knowledge and
epistemic communities, norms and values, some - such as Cogburn in
this volume - feel this aspect of regime formation and sustenance has
not been sufficiently developed.
Sandra Braman
29
Complexity
Emergent systems in the international environment often involve such
a high degree of causal complexity that traditional modes of analysis
may not be adequate. Thus some shy away from regime theory simply
because it is difficult to operationalise (Jervis, 1996).
THE EMERGENCE O F T H E INFORMATION POLICY REGIME
The emergence of the information policy regime reproduces at the
international level some informational features of nation-states, themselves increasingly described in informational terms (Braman, 1995;
Richards, 1993; Rosecrance, 1996). The change in status from viewing
information policy as 'low' policy, of relatively little international
importance, to 'high' policy of great political importance is significant
to the nature of the regime because it moves responsibility for decisionmaking from technical experts with n o political responsibilities to top
levels of political leadership. In turn, the emergence of a global information policy regime shapes the empirical realities of the infrastructure
and content being regulated. Several key features of regime theory are
particularly apt when applied to the issue area of information, communication, and culture. Several features of regime theory make it particularly
useful for analysis of the development of a global governance system for
information creation, processing, flows, and use.
The conceptual foundations of regime theory are pertinent. The
regime concept's tolerance of changing definitions and boundaries for
issue areas meets a necessary condition for analytical frameworks in the
extremely dynamic terrain of information policy, as emphasised by
Cogburn in his chapter in this volume. While many of the policy
problems that must be addressed are ancient, many are new and issues
that once fell within other policy arenas are now informational. Similarly, those who use regime theory generally assume that the subjects of
their analysis are not static but should be expected to change over time,
a characteristic not always found in other types of political or legal theory.
(This dynamic aspect of the information policy regime is a theme in
every chapter in this book.) The focus o n relations between actors
found in regime theory is valuable in the analysis of information policy
because it brings the discursive, normative, and cultural elements of
such importance into view (these are examined in particular by
Cogburn, Heisenberg and Fandel, and Klein here). One feature of
informational activity so troublesome to economists - the fact that
often informational goods and services do not appear in tangible form
30
The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime
but are instead embedded in relations - makes the relational sensitivity
of regime theory important to information policy analysis.
A number of the triggers to regime formation are foundin the world
of information policy. Clearly there is a high need to reduce transaction
costs and uncertainty regarding the economic and legal treatment of
informational goods and services during a period in which qualitatively
new types of products are appearing and the conditions of the information
environment are so different from those of the past. (Singh, Garcia,
Mueller and Thompson, and Kahin in this volume all address this
aspect of information policy regime formation.) The process of commodification as a trigger to regime formation is also key to the area of
information policy: The commodification of types of information never
before commodified includes such treatment of private information
(e-g., personal data), formerly public information (e.g., information
held in some databases created by governments for public purposes),
and types of information unbundled from previously bundled packages
(e-g., separately selling citation information, the table of contents,
abstracts, and full texts of scholarly journal articles). (Garcia explores
the impact of commodification on the processes by which the global
information policy regime is forming in general in this volume, and Klein
provides a case study of the same in his examination of treatment of newly
commodified addresses in his chapter.) The theme of technological
change as a trigger to regime formation runs throughout the book.
Finally, thinking in terms of regime theory adds to our understanding
of the self-reflexivity of information policy. Three aspects of such selfreflexivity can be identified. First, information policy is always a reflexive
matter of the nation-state or other system from which it emanates
because it creates the conditions under which all other decision-making
takes place. Second, regime theory draws attention to the role of
information creation, processing, flows, and use as tools of power in
international and global relations. Monitoring and verification systems,
for example - whether in defense, agriculture, or environmental situations - are examples of the use of information policy as a tool in the
service of other types of policy goals. And third, as analyses of a number
of specific regimes often note, learning is critical to the ways in which
regimes adapt to changing empirical realities as well as the results of
experience.
There are distinct signs of the emergence of a global policy regime in
this domain. While in the past there was no single regime for global
communications, regimes have been seen in a number of areas of informational and communicative activity in the past, notably in the areas
Sandra Brarnan
31
of trade (Haus, 1991) and intellectual property (Band and Katoh, 1995;
Branscomb, 1991; Drahos and Joseph, 1997). Telecommunications,
which gave rise t o the first and most enduring international organisation, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), is identified
by some as a classic example of a regulatory regime (Cowhey, 1990).
There are three processes, however, by which information policy has
emerged as a distinct issue area in which a regime is forming: via a shift
in perception, via empirical change, and via a change in political status.
A number of different types of issues dealing with information and
communication that have historically been treated as distinct, from
technical standard-setting t o television content, are now understood as
elements of a common policy domain. Interestingly, this occurred earliest
within the developing world: Brazil was the first country - in the 1960s to link together previously disparate informational and communicative
issues for common policy treatment. Calls for a New World Information
Order in the 1970s similarly linked mass media and telecommunications
issues in many of their manifestations. Developed countries of Europe
began in the 1980s to examine such questions, while t h e US did not do
so until t h e 1990s.
This perceptual shift has been exacerbated - or stimulated - by empirical
changes wrought by technological change. As Ithiel de Sola Pool (1983)
so powerfully argued 2 decades ago, it was possible in the analogue
environment to have different regulatory systems for different communication technologies, but with digitisation and t h e convergence of
technologies the legal systems t o deal with those technologies must
themselves converge as well. Pool was making his point about law at
the national level, but it is true at the international level as well.
Though historically it was possible to treat technical matters of international news flow, entertainment programming, and telephone calls
via different regulatory systems, in t h e internet environment they are
empirically now all a part of the same system. Thus today's realities
demand common treatment via a common policy regime.
As perceptions of information as power have shifted and experience
in its use as a policy tool has grown, some types of informational activity
have changed in status from regulatory techniques t o issues for policy
attention in themselves. Transparency is a premier example of this:
While confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs) in the security arena were originally intended to merely provide supports for arms
control agreements focused o n the hardware of weapons, by the early
1990s 80 to 9 0 per cent of arms treaties dealt with information rather
than weaponry, and by the early 21st century transparency itself
32
The Emergent Global Infomation Policy Regime
has become a matter for international negotiations. Because transparency is
now also fundamental t o international trade law and other types of
international agreements, the common use of this informational policy
tool across issue areas itself constitutes an element of the global information policy regime. Indeed, analysis of t h e history of decision-making
in diverse arenas of international relations, from trade to defence to
agriculture, reveals that often techniques attempted in one realm where
they are blocked are then promoted in others where differences in the
decision-making culture makes it easier t o achieve those goals. Transparency again provides an example of this, for a sharing of information
about commercial activity that was long sought but rejected within
international trade negotiations was then achieved relatively easily
when incorporated into arms control agreements.
FEATURES O F T H E E M E R G E N T I N F O R M A T I O N P O L I C Y
REGIME
A regime is mature when its features are explicit and consensually
accepted by all parties to the regime. In a regime's emergent phase,
however, some features remain implicit and/or may still be contested.
As Biegel (2001) notes, features of the emergent global information
policy regime are being drawn not only from regulatory approaches
historically applied to information,,communication, and culture, but
also from regimes developed to apply t o quite other matters - such as
the ocean, and space - as well.
Explicit features
Explicit features of the emergent global information policy regime that
are consensually accepted include transparency as a policy goal, the
addition of networks to markets and organisations as social structures
needing regulation, and acceptance of shared responsibility for governance between the private and public sectors.
Transparency
Transparency is a policy tool that is now the subject of the international
information policy regime itself (Florini, 1998). It began as an element
of the security regime, was taken u p in trade, and is now used widely
across the board. Transparency has replaced notions of the free flow of
information i n all of its variations as the ideal for international
information flows and has now become a policy objective in its own
right. This transformation i n turn changes relations of individuals t o
society, and of societies to each other. Der Derian (1990) suggests that
Sandra Braman
33
the new importance of transparency affects the behaviors of nationstates vis-a-vis each other by inducing in them classic symptoms of
what would in individuals be referred to as paranoia.
Networks as organising principles
International regimes have historically dealt with two types of organisational forms: the market (as conceptualised in ideal form) and organisations (called hierarchies by economists) (Williamson and Winter, 1991).
The emergent international information policy regime also takes into
account - indeed, is most preoccupied by - a third type of organisational form of great importance in today's environment, the network.
The emergent information policy regime must deal with all three types
of social structures; the inability to clearly distinguish among them for
the purposes of designing policies and policy tools is one of the problems
confounding the regime formation process.
Attention to networked forms of structure is particularly important
to regime formation in light of the three different conceptualisations
of the information economy that have developed over the past several
decades. The earliest approach, which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s,
defines the information economy in terms of its products: this is an
information economy because the percentage of information goods and
services exchanged is relatively higher proportionately than it was in
the past. Beginning in the late 1970s and further developed in the
1980s, a perspective appeared that defined the information economy
in terms of its domain: this is an information economy because the
domain of the economy itself has expanded through commodification
of types of information, both private and public, never before commodified. By the early 1990s, a n approach had developed that defined the
information economy in terms of its processes: this is an information
economy because it operates in a qualitatively different way from how
it had operated over the last several hundred years (Braman, 1999).
As most clearly articulated by Cristiano Antonelli (1992), who based
his analyses on years of detailed empirical study of transnational corporations, this approach emphasises the importance of cooperation and
coordination as well as competition for economic success. This definition
of the information economy also emphasises that it is the long-term
project among multiply interdependent and networked organisations
that is today more useful as a unit of analysis than the firm or industry.
This 'network economy' approach is proving itself as more valid and
useful for decision-making purposes than either of the other two. It has
been taken up most quickly by the private sector, however - as indicated
34
The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime
by the intellectual capital movement and other shifts in corporate operations. The emerging global information policy regime is beginning to
manifest this approach in the policy arena, again ahead of most national
governments.
Shared private and public sector responsibility for policy-making
One manifestation of the acceptance of networks among organisational
forms of political importance is the appearance of policy networks in
which decision-making is shared by public and private entities. Policy
networks are related to but different from forms of corporatism and
neo-corporatism seen in the past and still in evidence, particularly in
Europe, today. These networked forms of policy-making reflect not the
influence of capital upon the nation-state but, rather, awareness that
private sector decision-making has significant structural impact and
a fundamental shift in power relations among types of players active
on the international scene. The degree to which power is to be shared
between the two sectors, however, remains a subject of contention;
thus the tension between private sector decision-making and public law
is the subject of several of the chapters that follow.
Informational power as the dominanat form ofpower
The development of policy tools that take advantage of, and respond to,
changes in the nature of power is among the implicit features of the
emergent global information policy regime. The emergent international
information policy regime is increasingly comprised of policy tools directed
at the exercise of genetic power and power in its virtual states. Examples
include regulation of software and information architecture design.
Every regime focuses on specific forms of power; in some instances,
the emergence of an international regime itself marks a shift from
dominance by one form of power to another. There are four forms of
power currently in use, sometimes concurrently and at other times in
competition with each other: Instrumental power controls behaviours by
controlling the material world; one party hits the other over the head,
or sends tanks in. Structural power controls behaviours by shaping institutions and rules, and thus social proce,sses. Symbolic power controls
behaviors by shaping beliefs, perceptions, and ideas. Informational
power controls behaviours by manipulating the informational bases of
materials, institutions, and symbols. Though each of these has always
been available, it is one of the consequences of the informatisation of
society that informational power has recently become not only visible
and particularly salient, but dominant.
Sandra Braman
35
Each of these forms of power can appear in various states: Power in its
actual state is power that is in'use. Power in its potential state is that
which is theoretically available, and/or which is claimed by the powerholder. Power in its virtual state is power that can be conceptualised and
brought into being with extant materials, knowledge, and skills, but
does not yet exist. One of the effects of the dominance of informational
power is a simultaneous increase in the relative importance of power of
all kinds in its virtual states:
Contested features
Several inter-related features of the emergent global information policy
regime are yet to reach consensual resolution. In each of these areas,
one position is dominant but there are strong counter-forces.
Information as a commodity vs. information as a constitutive force
Treatment of information and the value added by its processing from
an economic perspective dominates policy-making i n the economic
and trade realms as well as public perception. However, as the tortuous
history of negotiations over trade i n services under the General Agreements o n Tariffs and Trade (GATT) demonstrated, many within both
the developed and developing worlds are also keenly aware of the
cultural and constitutive importance of information and its processing,
flows, and use. Those who take this position continue to believe that
these alternative faces, or definitions, of information must be taken into
account in policy-making processes. Interestingly, this position is reinforced by the emphasis upon transparency and other confidence- and
security-building measures (CSBMs) within the defence arena, for these
have come into use precisely because of their constitutive value. Resolution
of this particular tension may require acceptance of multiple definitional approaches, each to be used as appropriate at different points in
policy-making processes; one version of such an approach is detailed
elsewhere (Braman, 1989/1996). The chapter by Cogburn in this volume
focuses o n precisely this tension.
Information as a final good vs. information as a secondary good
Economists distinguish between final goods (products and services sold
t o consuming individuals or organisations for use i n the form acquired)
and secondary goods (goods and services sold for use in the production
of other goods and services). Despite t h e fact that many of the most
powerful effects of the informatisation of society have derived from the
use of informational products and services as secondary goods, policy
36
The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime
discourse and public perception focus on those that are primary goods.
This problem is related to the definitional issue, for some of the functions
served by informational products and services as secondary goods
are those that give information its constitutive nature. Clarifying the
distinction between the two for differential treatment by policy analysts
and in the development and use of policy tools may help resolve a number
of current disputes.
Information as a n agent vs. information as the subject of agency
Though theorists across the social sciences who have dealt with
information in the past have habitually treated it as the subject of
agency, one of the most important but least understood aspects of our
newly informatised environment is the way in which information itself
can be a locus of agency. Hookway (1999) describes information flows
as predatory, for they activate everything apprehended. What he is
referring to is the way in which the production of information and
informational transactions today themselves often serve as the trigger
for other social processes or events. The notion of information as an
agent can be distinguished from information as a constitutive force
because the latter refers to cumulative indirect effects while the former
refers to single immediate direct effects. Indeed, the power of informational agents is now so great that they have in some cases supplanted or
even superseded structural decision-making made by humans (Braman,
2002). Very little theoretical, conceptual, or methodological work has
been done dealing with information as an agent, nor have its implications
been addressed by policy-makers beyond some specialised topics within
competition (antitrust) law.
Information as property vs. information as a commons
One aspect of the emergent global information policy regime receiving
attention in public discourse - and the only one for which civil society
has played a significant role in offering up policy alternatives - is the
question of whether or not information should be treated as a commons,
available to all, rather than as a form of property that can be appropriated.
While details about the structuring of the intellectual property rights
system that start from the assumption that information is property are
the stuff of negotiations within traditional international policy-making
venues, a proposal to alter the parameters of the regime structure has
been forced onto the table by the work of scholars, activists, and members
of the public. This is not a binary choice and as the conversation develops
there is also experimentation with a number of techniques for a mixed
Sandra Brarnan
37
system. Interestingly, as the chapter by Zittrain in this volume makes
clear, property rights in themselves can be used as a governance mechanism
for non-economic purposes.
I n f o m a t i o n as private vs. i n f o m a t i o n as public
Another issue of great public concern - particularly since post-9/11
policy innovations have come into play - is the tension between the
desire for personal and communal privacy in the face of extraordinary
demands to relinquish any such expectations in order to serve the
purported goals of national security. While Heisenberg and Fandel
in this volume report o n one relative success in protecting personal
privacy via the global information policy regime, Klein and Zittrain
provide detail on new means by which those protections may be abrogated and justifications for doing s o . Public attention to this tension
should be expected to. grow as individuals come to personally experience
post-9111 policy innovations.
CONCLUSIONS
Though information policy at the global level has historically been
made and implemented in multiple decision-making venues that are
often at odds with each other in terms of operational definitions, value
hierarchies, and modes of argument, these disparate but interdependent
strands are today coming together. Examination of shared features
across historically distinct arenas of international relations brings into
view an emergent global information policy regime. Thinking in regime
terms usefully enriches the ability t o perceive important patterns and
trends; understanding that the regime is still emergent provides insight
into those areas in which the features of the regime are still unresolved
and towards which analysis might most' usefully be addressed.
Further work must include detailed analyses of the features of the
regime as they have developed in historically distinct domains such as
defense, trade, and agriculture; examination of the manifestations of
this regime in the diverse array of pertinent public and private sector
decision-making arenas; exploration of the impacts of these trends in
policy for information and information technologies; and a probing of
those areas in which conflict remains, in order to elicit insights as to
how best to move towards constructive consensus. Before this can be
done, however, the very processes by which the emergence of the global
information policy regime is taking place must be understood, and that
is the subject of the work that follows in this volume.
38
The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime
Research - and theorisation - are particularly important during times
of regime change. As examined in depth elsewhere (Braman, 2003),
policy-makers are in fact likely to be particularly open to the input of
researchers during such periods for they demand new ways of thinking
and information upon which to base decisions. The test of this analytical
approach will come in its application i n actual policy processes.