 |
MPIfG Working Paper
99/12, November 1999
The Internet Society and its Struggle for Recognition and
Influence
Raymund Werle and Volker Leib
Forthcoming in: Karsten Ronit, Volker Schneider (eds.),
Private Organisations in Global Politics. London: Routledge. ECPR
Studies in European Political Science 13. ISBN: 0-415-20128-4
Dr. Raymund Werle and Volker Leib are researchers at the
Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne
Contents
-
The Internet Society between changing
organizational fields
- Corporate actors and organizational fields
- Public and private coordination of global
telecommunications
- The Internet complex and the Internet
society
- Internal problems of the Internet society as
a global organization
- The Internet Society between the
telecommunications and the Internet domain
- Conclusion
References
1 The Internet Society between changing
organizational fields
With the formation of a private non-profit
corporation providing mainly technical coordination and guidance for
the global Internet, a new, as yet uncertain, era of the network's
governance began in November 1998. The Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) assumed the responsibility for
functions which previously were guaranteed by the US government.
Thus ICANN serves as an example of private governance with global
significance, in an industry which can neither be completely left to
the market nor exclusively be governed by national public
authorities or international intergovernmental organizations.
We will touch upon these points in this paper.
However, our main focus is on a different question: Given an
increasing salience of private organizations in international
governance, how must a private organization be equipped, or what
determines the opportunities of such an organization to establish
itself as an important actor in the new arrangement of private
governance? As the answer to the question is based on a single case
study, we cannot claim general validity for it. The study, however,
does suggest a perspective that places single organizations in the
context of a field of organizations and regards them as one player
in a policy domain involving many public and private organizations.
While these organizations differ with respect to their structure,
resources, missions and legitimacy, they create an ecology which may
be favorable or unfavorable to an organization with a given
structure and a given aspiration to reach its goals.
Our study does not record a success story
because it is not focused on ICANN. Rather, the Internet Society (ISOC),
which was formed in 1992 to take responsibility for the fast-growing
Internet, is at the center of our analysis. From its inception this
private non-profit organization tried to establish itself as an
international organization. However, the struggle for recognition
both in the international realm and at the national level of the USA
proved to be a tedious, if not altogether futile, task. This is
amazing, given the need for an organization representing the
Internet in the arena of international coordination at a time (the
early 1990s) when no serious competitors to the ISOC existed.
Although the composition of states, private organizations and market
elements involved in coordinating the Internet's technology and
services has been contentious, this cannot be regarded as the main
reason why the ISOC has experienced difficulties in establishing
itself.
One way of explaining these difficulties, we
suggest, is by combining the corporate-actor approach to
organizations with the new institutionalism in organization theory.
The corporate-actor approach helps us to understand why the ISOC
aspired to position itself at the international level. The
institutional perspective on organizations and organizational fields
directs our attention to both the changing landscape of
organizations involved in regulating and coordinating
telecommunications and the emerging Internet complex. The ISOC's
location at the interface of these two distinct organizational
fields accounts for many of the tensions this corporate actor has
been facing.
At the time when the ISOC was set up, the
international regime that governed global communication networks was
in a state of transition. The core of this regime was the
traditional telecommunications regime. In the 1980s it came under
pressure as many industrialized countries began a process of
deregulation and liberalization. National monopolies were dissolved
and competition was introduced. This also affected the international
telecommunications regime, which began to transform itself from a
predominantly intergovernmental arrangement of self-sufficient
technical coordination, interspersed with policies aimed at the
protection of national monopolies, into a more open, less
centralized cluster of private and public organizations blending
many issues of technical coordination with strategic business
interests. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), as the
main public actor in the field of international telecommunications
coordination, pursues a policy of multilateral coordination, which
is characterized by its rather tedious processes and technical
debates, which in turn always require a consensus being reached. The
ITU has undergone substantial reforms since the beginning of the
1990s. Nevertheless, its tradition as an intergovernmental
organization determined by the habits of representatives of
sovereign nation states has left its mark on the telecommunications
regime.
The Internet has developed apart from
telecommunications, as a separate organizational field. It is a
global data network that initially sprang up in the United States,
but was not bounded by national borders. The procedures, norms and
membership rules that constitute the Internet complex of
organizations differ fundamentally from those in telecommunications.
This complex has not wanted to be absorbed by the organizations that
traditionally operate, coordinate or regulate networks and services
in telecommunications. Internet coordination is characterized by
relatively informal procedures, open individual and organizational
participation, and technically driven debates aimed at quick,
easy-to-implement solutions. Parts of the Internet complex regard
themselves as a "community" of individual and collective
actors, and they have traditionally been in opposition to the
telecommunications regime, including the area of international
standardization. However, Internet governance has not yet reached a
stable, mature state. The growing commercial viability and the
global significance of the network have induced changes in the
governance structure which were influenced by the ISOC.
In 1992, when the ISOC was created, use of the
Internet was no longer confined to its original domain of education
and research, but had expanded into other sectors such as business
and politics, not only in the USA, but increasingly on a global
scale. As a result, the Internet complex could not expect the U.S.
government to continue subsidizing and sheltering the community.
Therefore, leading activists of the Internet community set up the
ISOC in order to help consolidate the Internet by taking over some
of the governmental functions and by coordinating the Internet
complex with other organizational fields, chiefly telecommunications
to begin with.
Below we show why this has not worked out in
the way some of the founding members of the ISOC hoped it would. We
analyze the organization's internal structure and relate it to the
development of the two organizational fields or policy domains
between which the ISOC was torn: the domain of international
telecommunications coordination and the Internet domain (Figure 1).
Both fields differ in many respects, but what they have in common is
the fact that they are changing rapidly. Before we turn to these two
fields we should like to briefly introduce the central theoretical
concepts.
Figure 1: The Internet Society (ISOC)
between two organizational fields
2Corporate actors and organizational fields
The concept of the corporate actor is
rooted in institutional economics, which has traditionally regarded
corporatization as a specific means of concerting individual action
(Commons 1961). In the corporate mode of concerting action,
individual actors transfer rights and resources to act (i.e. power)
to an organizational entity, which then acts for the members
(Coleman 1974; 1990). A basic contract between the members as the
sources of power (they are the sovereigns rather than the staff of
an organization) and the corporate actor as the wielder of power is
meant to ensure a maximum of conformity between the corporate
actor's actions and the members' preferences. However, the rules
cannot completely determine organizational action. They necessarily
provide the corporate actor with some freedom to act. The results of
organized action are usually group products, which cannot be
received by individual members as separate returns, but are
distributed among them according to special rules (Vanberg 1992).
The rules are more relevant for business corporations than for labor
unions, and they may be least relevant for those voluntary
associations which produce public goods. On the other hand, as we
know from the theory of collective action, these organizations often
have difficulty attracting members unless they are able to provide
selective incentives for membership (Olson 1971).
The corporate-actor model approaches
organizations from the procedural rules which organized action is
based on. Its specific focus on the internal structure of an
organization distinguishes this approach from other views of
organizations. It has inspired a wealth of literature dealing with
internal control as a principal-agent problem. But the consequence
of this approach - attributing actor quality to organizations -
has often been neglected. The corporate actor's goals, interests and
preferences are more than, or different to, the sum of the members'
respective features. Corporate actors have what can be called
self-interest, i.e. they have goals such as autonomy, organizational
survival, growth and domain expansion. Their strategic implications
and the resulting internal and external conflicts depend on the
institutional environment in which the organizations operate and
only to a minor degree on their internal structure (cf. Scharpf
1997: 51-68). We regard the ISOC as such a corporate actor. Since
its creation the ISOC has developed an interest not only in
promoting the growth of the Internet, but also in establishing
itself as a recognized and powerful actor in the arena of global
coordination of the Internet.
Research into the interaction of corporate
actors in different policy domains has revealed that these actors
prefer dealing with other clearly structured actors rather than
being confronted with a diffuse conglomerate of fluid constellations
of individuals, research projects, workshops, "movements"
etc. (cf. Flam 1990; Schneider et al. 1994). Thus, the incumbent
corporate actors have an interest in the "corporatization"
of new collective actors in their policy domain (Döhler &
Manow-Borgwardt 1992; Döhler 1995). This provides new corporate
actors, such as the ISOC in 1992, with a good opportunity - though
no guarantee - for establishing themselves as recognized partners
in a policy domain. To understand the development and behavior of a
corporate actor, therefore, requires including the actor's
environment in the analysis rather than concentrating solely on the
internal structure and processes of a single corporate actor. In our
particular case, the ISOC, this means that we should not simply look
at its constitution, evolution and strategy from an internal
perspective, but include the ISOC's organizational and institutional
environment and its specific dynamics as well. The ISOC is but one
organization in a population of organizations which regard it as
their business to promote and coordinate global information and
communication networks.
The organizations constitute what is called an
organizational field in the new sociological institutionalism
of organization theory. DiMaggio and Powell, who introduced this
concept, use it to explain why, as they argue, organizations in a
specific line of business grow increasingly similar to one another.
The authors call this phenomenon institutional isomorphism.
Borrowing from population ecology, they describe isomorphism as
"a constraining process that forces one unit in a population to
resemble other units that face the same set of environmental
conditions" (DiMaggio & Powell 1991b: 66). Whereas
population ecology in organization theory emphasizes competition as
the selective force that eliminates non-optimal forms and produces
organizational similarity in a given population (Hannan &
Freeman 1977), the concept of institutional isomorphism includes
other (institutional) forces that promote similarity. Unlike
competition these mechanisms trigger organizational change without
necessarily making organizations more efficient. Organizations, for
example, incorporate institutionalized elements of their environment
because this increases their legitimacy, thereby strengthening
support and securing their survival (Meyer & Rowan 1991).
DiMaggio and Powell distinguish three
mechanisms that trigger institutional isomorphic change. The first
is external pressure, e.g. legal obligations, towards similarity (coercive
isomorphism); the second is uncertainty, inducing imitation and
copying of successful organizational models (mimetic isomorphism);
the third is related to the cognitive and normative base of the
professions which shape organizations (normative isomorphism).
These three mechanisms do not provide a complete picture of how
institutions affect organizational structure; other mechanisms need
to be included (cf. Scott 1987). The distinction between
institutions and organizations, however, allows DiMaggio and Powell
(1991a: 14) to draw our attention to rules and norms that structure
organizations and the courses of actions of individual and corporate
actors (see also Knight 1992: 66 ff.).
DiMaggio and Powell define an organizational
field as a set of organizations involved in a common enterprise and
mutually aware of each other. Patterns of coalitions and structures
of domination between organizations characterize such a field, which
includes "the totality of relevant actors" (DiMaggio &
Powell 1991b: 64, 65). This understanding of an organizational field
is similar to what has been called a policy domain in
political sociology (see Pappi & Knoke 1991; Kenis &
Schneider 1991). The concept of policy domains, however, puts
greater emphasis on agency (actors) and interests than does the
concept of organizational fields, which is restricted to
institutions (cf. DiMaggio 1988).
Two organizational fields provide the focus of
our analysis: the relatively new Internet complex and the
traditional area of telecommunications. A closer look at the
structure of these fields helps us to understand why it has proved
difficult for the ISOC to establish itself in both fields at the
same time.
3Public and private coordination of global telecommunications
The Internet is a comparatively new phenomenon.
While predecessors can be traced back to the first half of the
1980s, the Internet only started to develop into a global network of
networks in the early 1990s. At that time, the telecommunications
sector was in a state of transition: from a system of highly
regulated, nationally controlled networks, providing telephone and
basic data transmission services, to a deregulated competitive
system of a growing number of network operators and services
providers, offering a wide range of voice and data services. While
public administrations (PTTs) originally controlled almost every
aspect of telecommunications, the public sphere was pared down to
the minimum by the end of the 1990s, with the result that, today,
private organizations can be found operating networks and providing
services (Schneider 1999). Thus, the new national telecommunications
regimes have many features of a market regime, and the governments'
capacities to directly control the sector have been reduced
considerably. Regulatory agencies have been set up, whose central
task involves safeguarding competition, providing open access to
networks and ensuring universal provision of basic services. (For
Germany, see Werle 1999a.)
The changes at the national level have
also challenged the international telecommunications regime,
which in the past resembled a closed shop in which national
governments or their PTTs almost exclusively controlled the
technical and commercial aspects of international telecommunications
(Genschel & Werle 1993). Whenever international coordination was
necessary, it was achieved in the context of the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU), one of the oldest intergovernmental
organizations. The ITU provided technical and operational
specifications (standards) as well as commercial regulations, such
as accounting principles, rate sharing, prohibition of bypass
practices and reciprocal monopoly protection (Aronson & Cowhey
1988). The ITU was the institutional basis for the transnational
coordination of international telecommunications and, at the same
time, an arena of national interest representation, which in effect
reinforced the traditional regulatory structure to the benefit of
the national monopolies (Cowhey 1990). In the wake of deregulation
this system has lost much of its legitimacy. Accordingly, other
international organizations such as the OECD or the WTO have
achieved some leverage in telecommunications as liberalization has
become global.
Even technical standardization, a crucial
basis of the ITU's legitimacy, is no longer regarded as a "natural"
part of its jurisdiction. This relates to the fact that in the past
the ITU and, to a lesser degree, other standards organizations, such
as the International Standardization Organization (ISO) or the
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), managed to combine
"pure" technical coordination with an element of
legitimate political control of international standardization
(Schmidt/ Werle 1998). While in the era of public monopolies this
arrangement appeared essential to the orderly development of the
global telecommunications system, today many private network
operators and service providers regard it as too rigid and even
counterproductive to the promotion of open markets. As a result,
some processes of standardization are simply left to the market,
whereas others have been taken over by new private associations at
the regional or international level. In these consortia and forums
the principle of national representation is obsolete and political
arguments are avoided. This does not mean, however, that technical
standardization is "freed" from all non-technical
considerations. In private standardization business and profit
motives play a significant role.
Multimedia systems, national and global
information initiatives and, of course, the Internet have increased
the need for technical standards. Many new consortia and forums have
been created, while others have extended their domains. It is
estimated that their number exceeds 200 in the computer and
telecommunications industry. What these new units have in common is
that they do not aspire in an "imperialistic" way to
provide standards in most areas of telecommunications and
information technology. Rather, they restrict themselves to more
specific tasks, often in the context of a certain technology or
technical solution. The consortia and forums mirror the tendency
towards a more market-oriented way of developing and operating
technical systems. On the other hand, the new organization have also
copied and only slightly modified the procedural rules, working
methods and other features prevalent at the working level of the ITU
and the other public or quasi-public standardization organizations.
However, the appearance of the new units on the stage of
international standardization has put pressure on the incumbents to
improve their working procedures, modify their membership rules and
rethink the overall organization of standard-setting and
standard-distribution (David & Shurmer 1996).
At present the consortia and forums co-exist
with the ITU and other intergovernmental or quasi-intergovernmental
standardization organizations, which are undergoing institutional
reforms in order to cope with the new industry structure and the
resulting coordination demands in telecommunications. Taken as a
whole, the global landscape of technical coordination and
standardization in telecommunications is a mixture of public and
private organizations, which combine technical work with either
political or commercial considerations. Where the organizations'
main focus is on telecommunications, the model of the telephone
network, both as a technical system and as a social organization
with specialized (and centralized) network operators, service
providers and passive users, has left its mark on their structure,
goals and strategies.
Originally, the process of restructuring the
international telecommunications domain was only marginally affected
by the emergence of the Internet. Even though liberalization of
telecommunications provided beneficial conditions for the Internet
to take off, there was no need to deal with the network and its
promoters in the context of international coordination of
telecommunications. The Internet had its own address space and used
its own set of technical protocols. For a long time it was viewed as
an academic network controlled by the U.S. Government and the
Department of Defense. Moreover, no private organization existed
which might be addressed as an acceptable partner at the
international level. Accordingly, no organization "representing"
the Internet was among the stakeholders who played an active role in
the process of transformation of the telecommunications regime. The
changes in this regime, however, had to be considered by the ISOC
and other organizations from the Internet domain if they wanted to
be recognized by the incumbent organizations in the
telecommunications domain. This recognition was regarded necessary
because the Internet depends on the telecommunications
infrastructure. In particular private households use the telephone
line to connect up to the Internet. The big network operators and
service providers who control the global telecommunications
infrastructure have an interest in extending their control to the
Internet (Werle 1999b).
4The Internet complex and the Internet society
What we today call the Internet has different
roots. Some go back to the late 1970s and early 1980s when in the
USA the ARPANET fascinated its academic users and motivated those
academics who had no access to this network to fight to get similar
networks funded (Leib & Werle 1998). With the establishment of
the NSFNET in the mid-1980s, an academic and research network funded
by the National Science Foundation, a crucial step was taken towards
setting up a nationwide network of networks. The NSFNET served as a
national backbone to which other networks were connected. The
connections were made possible using protocols on which the
well-known Internet protocol suite TCP/IP came to be based, so that
users can now access the Internet as if it were one single network.
Already by the end of the 1980s the first commercial segments were
linked to the Internet. This marked the beginning of a development
that is characterized by commercialization, privatization and
internationalization.
Compared with the traditional telephone
network, it is evident that the organizational foundation of the
Internet is completely different. No central unit operates and
controls the Internet. Although the functioning of the whole
Internet depends on some parts of the network (the backbone) more
than on others (the regional or local networks), its overall
organizational structure is genuinely decentralized: the
sub-networks, too, are loosely coupled. Thus, the Internet embodies
a decentralized mode of provision of networks and services, where
few "top-down" and many "bottom-up" elements
interact.
The Internet complex as an organizational
field and the social and normative order of the Internet community
evolved in the years when the U.S. government funded the essential
technical and organizational elements required to keep the system
going. Stressing the decentralized nature of the Internet does not
imply that it has developed in an uncoordinated way. Especially in
the area of technical coordination and standardization, a number of
committees and groups have evolved that ensure operational stability
and direct development. Some vital functions were originally
executed by a single, top-level entity, the Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority (IANA), which had to make sure, among other
things, that every host computer on the Internet had a unique
address. Despite its functional importance the IANA was only a small
unit in a distributed system relying heavily on delegation.[1]
The central unit of standardization is the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). The IETF is split into numerous working
groups covering eight to ten functional areas. In the middle of
1999, 118 working groups were active in a total of eight areas.
Working groups can be easily created, and most of them are wound up
after they have fulfilled their brief. The groups are managed by
area directors. In contrast to most of the standardization
organizations in telecommunications, participation in the IETF and
its working groups is open to virtually anyone. Formal membership is
not required, and the latest IETF meetings were attended by more
than 2,000 people. As a rule, participants do not represent
organizations and they are by no means regarded as delegates of
their employer organization or their home country. Much of the work
proceeds on-line via mailing lists, and many of the influential
committee members are volunteers from public and private research
organizations with a strong academic or professional interest. They
follow the informal IETF credo "We reject kings, presidents,
and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code",
coined by Dave Clark from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Laboratory for Computer Science.
A steering body, the Internet Engineering
Steering Group (IESG), has been formed by the IETF Chair and the
area directors. The IESG coordinates the activities of the working
groups, assigns group chairs and approves the results of the groups'
work. Before standards are adopted, at least two independent
implementations must have demonstrated that they really work.
Moreover, when a standard is proposed, it is published
electronically and at some stage of the standards track it is
introduced as a "Request for Comments" (RFC) in the RFC
document series. Thus, a broad and unrestricted discussion of the
proposal is possible via electronic discussion groups and mailing
lists. To be approved as a standard, the draft must be accepted by
the IETF and the IESG on the basis of consensus. Every standard is
provided free of charge and published as an RFC.
Until 1992/93, when the standardization
procedure was reorganized, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
had to give its approval, too. The IAB, an "independent
committee of researchers and professionals with a technical interest
in the health and evolution of the Internet system", as it
defines itself, is the highest committee in the technical or
techno-political "hierarchy" of the Internet. Since the
1992/93 reform, it only becomes involved in the standardization
process if conflicts at the working level cannot be resolved at this
level. Members of the IAB are appointed - by way of cooptation - for
a two-year term by an IETF nominating committee. With the network's
global expansion, Internet standards have gained international
significance similar to, and in some cases higher than, those issued
by international organizations.
If we compare Internet coordination and
standardization with telecommunications, political considerations -
and to a certain degree commercial considerations - appear to be
less prevalent in the Internet community than in the
telecommunications field. The Internet community is committed in the
first place to scientific, educational and, above all, professional
objectives.[2] It is
noticeable that these objectives are not restricted to national
confines. Although the Internet activities originated in a national
(partly even military) context, many of the relevant actors in the
early Internet community had a global vision. Consequently, people
from outside the USA participated in the Internet committees from
the outset. In 1996, only seven out of twelve members of the IAB
were based in the USA. The international shape of organizations
which have been very closely linked to the development of the
Internet is both a result of and a reinforcing factor in the growing
global significance of the network[3].
This development, however, has created challenges for these and
other organizations involved in the coordination of the Internet,
because the U.S. government no longer sees a need to provide funds
and organizational assistance to a network that has attracted
thousands of firms and millions of users. The establishment of the Internet
Society (ISOC) must be seen in this context.
In 1992, the ISOC was formed "by a number
of people with long-term involvement in the IETF" (Cerf 1995:
1), who assumed responsibility for the network. This private
non-profit organization (formally an incorporated not-for-profit
corporation) was set up primarily "to facilitate and support
the technical evolution of the Internet as a research and education
infrastructure, and to stimulate the involvement of the scientific
community, industry, government and others in the evolution of the
Internet" (Articles of Incorporation of Internet Society: 3.A,
also published as RFC 2134). The ISOC was supposed to take over
certain functions of the U.S. government concerning the provision of
funds and organizational assistance in areas which still depended on
these resources. From its inception the ISOC was not seen as being
restricted to the USA (Malamud 1993), although one pressing reason
for the creation of the ISOC was to mobilize resources in order to
fund the IETF and other parts of the Internet's administrative
infrastructure, since the U.S. government agencies had started to
reduce financial support. The aim of the ISOC was to act as an
internationally recognized body. This is mirrored in the board
of directors (Board of Trustees, BoT) of the ISOC. Already on the
initial board, three out of 14 trustees were from Europe and one
from Australia. Later, the number of non-U.S. citizens in the board
increased, reaching 50 % in the boards elected in 1997 and in 1999.
The ISOC is open to individual and corporate membership. In 1999 the
society had about 150 organizational members and more than 8,600
individual members from about 170 countries. The majority of
individual members are now from outside the U.S., and despite this
broad range of membership the ISOC has been guided by a circle of (elected)
activists who were also involved in the IETF, the IAB or other
groups functionally significant for the Internet. This network of
actors with a high reputation in the Internet community still has
considerable de-facto control over those issues which are directly
linked to the Internet, especially technical and organizational
matters. The activists have in common the conviction that government
action is not needed to provide the public good "Internet
coordination" (cf. Eisner Gillett & Kapor 1997) This
conviction is also shared by the U.S. government, which since 1995
has repeatedly declared in official statements that it is committed
to a hands-off policy. If collective rather than market coordination
is needed, it should be provided by private organizations and not by
American government agencies or intergovernmental organizations.
Initial activities of the Internet Society aimed at establishing it
in the organizational field of the Internet complex - a
precondition for its future goal of also gaining recognition in the
organizational field of telecommunications. The role of the ISOC
vis-à-vis the IAB, the IETF, the IESG and the Internet
standardization process had to be determined. This coincided with a
perceived need by these organizations to reorganize standardization.
With growing numbers of IETF working groups and participants
involved in Internet standardization, organizational, procedural and
legal issues arose which threatened to undermine the traditional
patterns of standardization and technical coordination. The ISOC
chartered the IAB and sponsored its work. As a consequence, the ISOC
Board of Trustees (BoT) claimed the right to approve new members of
the IAB. In addition, a recall mechanism was planned with the ISOC
providing an ombudsman (see RFC 2282). Also, members of the ISOC BoT
expressed their concern about legal issues, in particular with
regard to the legal liability of the IESG. In the discussions which
followed about the role of the ISOC it became evident that the other
organizations did not want the ISOC to become involved in technical
matters. In their view the ISOC was best suited to the role of a
supervisor of formal procedures and a provider of a legal umbrella
for the Internet Community. After some time a consensus was reached
along these lines.[4] This
indicates that the IETF succeeded in preventing the ISOC from
interfering with its business. It is important to notice that,
during the discussions, the ISOC had to adopt the particular style
of debate prevailing within the Internet community: "The ISOC
will, like the IETF, use public discussion and consensus building
processes when it wants to develop new policies or regulations that
may influence the role of ISOC in the Internet or the Internet
technical work" (RFC 2031).
The somewhat intricate process used to define
the relation of the ISOC and the IETF exemplifies the ISOC's
difficulties in getting established in the Internet complex.
Originally, the ISOC was supposed to become a major funding
organization for the Internet community, but due to the ISOC's own
financial problems this turned out to be unrealistic.
Notwithstanding that the ISOC was expected to establish links to
external organizations, it was not accepted as a representative
speaker for the Internet community as a whole. However, in December
1997, the ISOC's Board of Trustees could report a stable
relationship between the IETF and the ISOC, even though this was
reached on the IETF's, rather than on the ISOC's, terms. The ISOC's
incorporation into the Internet community is confirmed and declared
by the fact that the ISOC's articles of incorporation and by-laws
have been published in the RFC-Series (see RFC 2134 and 2135 [April
97]).
Compared with its original aspiration, the
ISOC only partly succeeded in getting established in the
organizational field of the Internet. This was a setback for the
ISOC's ambition to play a crucial role in the process of organizing
global Internet governance as a distinct set of rules and
organizations vis-à-vis the organizational field of
telecommunications. Before we examine the ISOC's role at the
interface of the two organizational fields, we need to look at the
internal structure and resources the organization relies on.
5Internal problems of the Internet society as a global organization
Corporate actor theory emphasizes the
significance of the actor's constitution for its potential to
respond to and act on the outside environment. The ISOC's
constitution apparently does not provide a consistent structure that
legitimates and empowers organizational action effectively. When the
ISOC was set up it was supposed to be an organization with
individual membership. Only later could corporate entities also
become members of the ISOC. However, the role of the individual vis-à-vis
the corporate members and the rights of the membership in general
were ill-defined. The individual members have the right to elect the
Board of Trustees (BoT), the central executive body of the society
headed by a President, who is chief executive officer (CEO) at the
same time. No other formal means of directly shaping the ISOC's
politics are provided in the by-laws. Organizational members may
designate a representative to the ISOC Advisory Council, which
provides advice and recommendations to the ISOC President and Board
of Trustees, but the Council does not seem to play an active role.
This may be one reason why the ISOC reports a high annual attrition
rate.
Moreover, although the ISOC maintains that it
operates not only through its BoT but also through national and
local chapters, the relation between the ISOC and these chapters is
ambiguous. For individuals and organizations committed to the
Internet and to the ISOC it is possible to set up chapters. All
members of a chapter are at the same time members of the ISOC, but
not vice versa. While the ISOC, on the one hand, appears as an
umbrella organization with subordinate chapters, the chapters, on
the other hand, define their own purpose, focus on local issues and
maintain no formal linkages to the ISOC (apart from annual reports).
To act as official chapters of the ISOC these units have to be
recognized by the BoT. The ISOC has set up model by-laws - partly
with obligatory phrasing - and guidelines for establishing a chapter.
Chapters are funded by local membership (individual or
organizational) and for that reason chapters can charge dues
additional to the ones paid to the ISOC. The chapter's scope may be
local, regional or national, and redundancy should be avoided.
For the time being, 45 chapters have been
recognized and some 60 are in formation. Some of them can be
regarded as national chapters, for example the Norwegian, the German
or the Japanese chapter. The national chapters, however, have
committed themselves to different missions. Some see their central
role in addressing national political agencies and influencing the
national political process; others put more weight on providing
services for the members. In Spain the ISOC chapters have emerged as
regional organizations in Andalucia, Catalonia etc. Four chapters
have already been recognized and another two are in formation.
Especially remarkable from the point of view
of international coordination and regulation of the Internet are two
local chapters of the ISOC. One is located in Washington DC and the
other has its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Setting up a
chapter in Geneva was no accident. Many international organizations
have their home here. Geneva also hosts European branches or
headquarters of many multinational corporations. The Geneva ISOC
Chapter created a Special Interest Group on Development in order
"to promote Internet connectivity and awareness in developing
countries". This group has a membership "drawn from
International Organizations such as ITU, WHO, CERN, UNCTAD, ILO,
IATA, UN-ECE, UN-DHA as well as from business and consulting
backgrounds" (cf. ISOC Forum Vol. 2, No. 11, 26 November 1996).
The ISOC chapter in Washington, as we read on its WWW home-page,[5]
was formed "to meet unique needs of Washington, DC-area
Internet planners, builders, and users, and to help represent the
Internet to the U.S. government. The Internet Society itself (headquartered
in nearby Reston, VA), as a global organization, has encouraged
creation of DC-ISOC to allow the headquarters organization to
maintain a global perspective, while the chapter meets the pressing
need for Internet representation in the U.S. government's work to
define the National Information Infrastructure (NII)."
The last two examples indicate that some kind
of division of labor between the national and local chapters and the
ISOC is emerging, although this is more haphazard than clearly and
intentionally structured. The headquarter organization defines its
role as an actor at the global level in the concert of international
organizations. However, the headquarter organization is not the peak
organization of an ISOC-federation, and the Geneva chapter's Special
Interest Group on Development, for example, works on its own right
rather than on the basis of competencies delegated from headquarters.
It does not formally report to headquarters either. Therefore it
comes as no surprise that the ISOC decided to set up an extra office
for the permanent presence of the ISOC staff in Geneva.
The ISOC, we can summarize, is characterized
by considerable internal ambiguity over its constitution, but
particularly its relation to national and local chapters. Some
chapters argue that a truly international ISOC would have to be
governed by its constituent chapters and therefore a national U.S.
chapter should be formed. At INET 1998 (the ISOC's annual conference),
representatives of the chapters got together with the ISOC's
headquarter management to discuss their relationship and also how
chapters in regional areas should cooperate. The issue of regional
cooperation came up after the European chapters had met in Brussels
with the European Commission. It remained unresolved. While the ISOC
enjoys a high degree of autonomy when it acts as a representative of
its global membership, its ill-defined internal structure makes it a
weak organization with little resources and therefore an
unattractive ally for other organizations so far.
6The Internet Society between the telecommunications and the Internet
domain
In the eyes of many observers, the Internet
complex has evolved as a decentralized heterogeneous system with a
loosely defined national or territorial identity. Its social
structure in a way mirrors the technical structure of the network of
networks. The units are loosely integrated in the system. They
retain as much autonomy as possible without this being detrimental
to the links connecting the units. Organizations in this field
interact on a peer-to-peer basis rather than in a hierarchical mode.
Power, control and authority is distributed, and the system is open
and responsive to bottom-up initiatives. Coordination rather than
regulation is the operating mechanism of this complex. This becomes
apparent if we look at the organizations which laid the technical
foundation of the network. Not only the IAB, the IETF and the IESG,
but others too were traditionally guided by professional and
scientific, rather than political and economic, motives and values.
The withdrawal of U.S. government agencies from funding the
coordination and administration of the network has reinforced
privatization and commercialization of the Internet. Although
commercial use of the Internet is regarded as legitimate and
beneficial to the network, deliberations of technical and
operational matters are not meant to be guided primarily by business
concerns.
Some features of the Internet complex stand in
sharp contrast to the organizational field of telecommunications,
which has inherited monopolistic or oligopolistic structures that
are subject to regulatory and anti-trust intervention in order to
maintain competition and prevent abuse based upon economic power (Kahin
1997). The users of telecommunications networks and services still
play a passive role, whereas the Internet is more open to user
participation. However, deregulation and liberalization of the
telecommunications markets have triggered structural changes of this
organizational field towards decentralization, greater competition
and a globalization of network operators and service providers. This
development has also left its mark on the global landscape of
technical standardization, where many private consortia and forums
have evolved which co-exist with the official intergovernmental
standardization organizations enjoying global and regional
significance.
In addition, technical changes have
accelerated the convergence of the Internet with the telephone
network and the emergence of many new services. This has triggered a
need for new standards and collaboration between the organizational
field of the Internet and that of telecommunications. In this
context it has become apparent that many organizations in
telecommunications have traditionally ignored the Internet or
regarded it as a transitory phenomenon. The majority of Internet
standards have never been approved as international standards,
although the specifications have gained an international
significance and reputation on a scale parallel to the global
expansion of the Internet. The international standardization
organizations, the ITU in particular, have refused to give their
approval because the Internet protocols provide a platform for a
multitude of standards which are functionally equivalent to, but not
directly compatible with, the standards developed by these
organizations (Malamud 1993). This policy indicates that powerful
organizations in the telecommunications domain have tried to gain
control over the Internet and absorb its components.
The Internet community has been open and
cooperative with regard to efforts aiming at improving technical and
organizational coordination with telecommunications. However, it has
not been clear who would represent the Internet at the international
level. Early on, the ISOC had an interest in filling this gap and
acting as the representative of the Internet community. This "mandate"
would facilitate its acceptance as an important player in the area
of international standardization and technical coordination. The
start was promising. A first symbolic gesture indicated tentative
international recognition. At its TELECOM 95 Forum in Geneva, for
instance, the ITU organized a special Internet@TELECOM.95 conference
with many companies representing the different facets of the
Internet. At this occasion Vinton Cerf, a co-inventor of the generic
Internet protocol and a member of the Board of Trustees of the ISOC,
was awarded the ITU Medal by the ITU's Secretary General, Pekka
Tarjanne - an act of techno-political diplomacy. A short time
later a substantive step was made when a formal liaison was approved
between the ISOC and JTC1(the Joint Technical Committee of the ITU
and the ISO) in the area of information technology standards -
another notable stage of recognition from the ISOC's point of view.
However, other formal links were established between the IETF -
not the ISOC - and several committees of regional and global
standardization organizations. This was welcomed by the Internet
community, although not so much by the ISOC.
These developments mobilized the ISOC's CEO,
who announced a more active role for his organization in the future.
In a press release of 1996 he declared that the ISOC aspired to be
placed "squarely at the forefront of some very key issues
developing with regard to Internet governance". In fact, if the
Internet complex wanted to prevent being absorbed by the
telecommunications field it had to develop a stable governance
structure which was recognized internationally.
Thus, it was a logical consequence that the
ISOC became involved in an international inter-organizational
committee charged with proposing a solution for restructuring the
Internet Domain Name System - one of the basic building blocks of
the organizational structure of the Internet. Initiated by the ISOC,
an International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC) was formed in order to
define, investigate and resolve issues arising from an international
debate over a proposal to establish global registries and additional
generic top level domain names (such as .com, for example). The most
important reason for this initiative was that the U.S. government
had signaled it would terminate its financial support of address and
domain name administration. Contracts with the Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority (IANA) and other organizations involved in this
area were not to be renewed, it argued, and the privatized and
commercialized Internet should become self-supporting. While it is
not our intention in the context of this paper to deal extensively
with the technical background and the regulatory and legal
implications of the Internet's domain name system, suffice it to say
that it is remarkable that the IAHC was composed not only of
representatives of the Internet complex, including the Internet
Architecture Board (IAB), the ISOC and the IANA, but that it also
included a representative of the U.S. Federal Networking Council (FNC)
and - more important with regard to the ISOC's aspirations to
become an international player - the ITU, the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO) and the International Trademark
Association (INTA), i.e. three well-established international
organizations.
The IAHC was dissolved after the signing
ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Geneva on May 1,
1997. According to the MoU, which has since been signed by more than
200 organizations from around the globe, the Secretary General of
the ITU was to act as the depository of the generic Top Level
Domains. Seven new domains were created and domain registration was
planned as a competitive field with different, commercially
operating registrars. Representatives of the registrars formed the
Council of Registrars (CORE), and before its dissolution the IAHC
appointed the first members of an interim Policy Oversight Committee
(POC), which was regarded as a central player in this new structure.
All organizations that participated in the IAHC were empowered to
appoint members of the POC and influence the administration of the
domains through the POC. Administrative Domain Name Challenge Panels
(ACPs) were to be established to resolve disputes over domains names,
and the WIPO was chosen to administer the procedures accompanying
the disputes.
The ISOC took a leading role in the
construction of this predominantly private regime for governing the
Internet. The idea behind the IAHC plan was to reinforce Internet
self-governance and at the same time include UN Treaty organizations
to provide the Internet with an international legal framework.
However, the new system never took off. As the U.S. government did
not accept UN Treaty organizations getting involved in the
governance of the Internet, in particular the ITU with its
traditionally tight links to the former national PTT monopolies, it
started to draft its own transition plan for the withdrawal of
government agencies from the Internet domain name and address
administration.
As a first step the Department of Commerce
issued a Green Paper (Improvement of Technical Management of
Internet Names and Addresses), the drawing up of which was directed
by its National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)
agency.[6] This paper meant
a major setback to the Internet Society since the ISOC and the IAHC
plan were not mentioned at all. The NTIA emphasized private
non-governmental coordination as one principle of the new system.
According to the Green Paper, the functions of the IANA would be
transferred to a new not-for-profit corporation based in the U.S.
and competition would be introduced not only at the level of the
registrars (which deal with the customers), but also at the level of
registries (which run the domain name/IP number databases). The role
of the U.S. government would be confined to participation in policy
oversight during the transition period and would be phased out by
the end of September 2000. The successor to the IANA would be
directed by an international Board of Directors, in which inter alia
Internet users would be represented by a membership association,
which according to the text had "to be created". The NTIA
received over 400 comments on the Green Paper, among them one from
the ISOC which stressed the principles of self-governance and the
concept of "rough consensus" that spearheaded the
evolution of the Internet. It pointed out that there was no need to
reinvent the IANA, and expressed its discontent at not being
recognized as the organization of Internet users that it is,
i.e. representative, international and open. The U.S. government's
response to the comments, however, gave no reason to expect that the
ISOC's position might be strengthened.
In a second paper, known as the White Paper (June
1998), the NTIA considered the comments received on the Green Paper.
The NTIA adhered to its plan to form a new corporation for the
coordination of core Internet functions. It stated that the private
sector should assume leadership and "that neither national
governments acting as sovereigns nor intergovernmental organizations
acting as representatives of governments should participate in
management of Internet names and addresses." While the IAHC
concept followed the model of global coordination by
intergovernmental arrangements, the NTIA favored private
arrangements akin to consortia and forums in international
standardization. The White Paper set up the framework for the new
corporation, but provided no definitive solutions. Although the ISOC
participated in the discussions which followed, its influence on the
foundation of the new Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN) was slight. In the middle of 1999, the ISOC reviewed
its strategic plans and decided to concentrate on its role as an
international and non-governmental professional organization. The
ISOC will continue to struggle for recognition as both the membership
association of Internet users and developers and a major player in
the concert of international organizations. However, in keeping with
the concept of organizational isomorphism, we surmise that the ISOC
will have difficulties in the future in placing itself at the
intersection of two different organizational fields.
7Conclusion
Liberalization and technical innovations in
telecommunications have changed the international regime of
technical coordination and regulation including the landscape of
international standardization organizations. The incumbent
intergovernmental or quasi-intergovernmental organizations at the
international and the regional level have been complemented by a
growing number of vendor-driven consortia and forums, which at the
same time represent a new model of standard-setting. The differences
between the older intergovernmental and the new private
organizations notwithstanding, we find substantial organizational
similarity in the field of technical standardization in
telecommunications and related areas of information technology
(Schmidt & Werle 1998: 58). Organizations rather than
individuals predominate. Individuals are regarded as "delegates"
of the organizations. Private units coexist and from time to time
cooperate with (inter-)governmental organizations. In principle,
participation is open, but de facto it is restricted to those
organizations which are "substantially interested". The
work is committee-based, cooperative and consensus-oriented. It
follows formalized rules and procedures. Besides technical
orientations, business interests guide the work.
Historically, the developments in this field
coincided with the evolution of new decentralized networks and
services. Most spectacular was the evolution of the Internet, which
developed into a backbone of the information society and a
commercially viable global network. Standardization and technical
coordination in the Internet context were motivated both by
businessand by scientific and professional objectives. The latter
were reinforced by the non-profit public-good tradition of the
Internet. With regard to the coordination of the Internet, an
organizational field evolved which comprised these elements, though
it has not as yet reached a stable state.
One of the organizations which form the
Internet complex is the Internet Society (ISOC), which was set up at
the time when U.S. government agencies began to disengage from
financially supporting the Internet. The ISOC's goal was to support
and fund the development and technical coordination of the Internet.
The procedures of technical coordination and standardization in the
Internet community add much to the view that the Internet represents
a new paradigm of governance. As in telecommunications,
participation is voluntary, though it is more open to interested
actors because there are virtually no formal membership rules.
Participants are seen as individuals and do not represent
organizations or companies. The work aims at achieving quick
technical solutions. Transparency of the working process is taken
for granted. In contrast with telecommunications, all documents are
available online and for free.
When technical coordination and support of the
Internet assumed an international dimension, and increasingly
overlapped and interfered with technical areas which were
traditionally controlled by actors outside the Internet complex,
this provided opportunities for the Internet Society as a corporate
actor to establish itself as a player at the international level of
coordination of telecommunications and data networks. However, the
ISOC could not rely on strong organizational resources to take
advantage of this situation, because its internal constitution as a
corporate actor remained ambiguous. Neither the relation of the
"headquarters" to the national and regional chapters nor
the role of the individual and the corporate members of the ISOC are
clearly defined. Individual membership and the predominance of the
individual over the collective have been typical of the Internet
community, whereas corporate membership and the priority of
corporate before individual interests characterize the
telecommunications domain. The ISOC has tried to integrate both
elements under one roof and, in doing so, has maneuvered itself into
a somewhat marginal position with regard to both organizational
fields.
The ISOC's difficulties in establishing itself
as a powerful connecting link between the two organizational fields
were aggravated by the general conflict over the role of private
organizations vis-à-vis intergovernmental arrangements in the
international coordination of technical networks. The transformation
of Internet names and address management touches upon this general
problem. Initially, the ISOC managed to bring together groups from
the Internet complex and intergovernmental organizations to build a
global regime of technical coordination of the Internet. However,
when the U.S. government intervened, the ISOC was not strong enough
to channel the national and international debate into a direction
favorable to the original governance model. Thus the process ended
with the formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers, which appears to be more in line with corporate
interests than of benefit to the traditional Internet community.
This is not to say that the new private system has already reached a
stable state. Problems, such as the representation of the individual
Internet user in the new governance structure or the enforcement of
rules in the Internet that developed from a computer network for
scientists to a universal infrastructure, remain to be solved. Some
observers suggest that in the long run the inclusion of the
International Telecommunication Union (or an equivalent body) in the
governance of the Internet is inevitable. Yet few expect that the
ISOC will be needed to cope with the problems. Torn between the two
organizational fields and their different institutional structures,
the ISOC could well end up being pushed into a marginal role in both
fields.
Endnotes
1 These functions
have since been transferred to ICANN.
2 Professional objectives always played
a significant role in standardization, besides business interests
and political interests. Many professional organizations are
involved in standardization at the national as well as the
international level. The most prominent professional association in
this area is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE). IEEE is a transnational society with about 300,000
individual members in over 130 countries.
3 However, a change has been observed
in recent years. Regarding the current composition of the IAB, most
members are U.S. residents working for the major information
technology companies. This indicates that some functions of the IAB
with regard to international coordination have been shifted to other
organizations, particularly the ISOC. At the same time we find that
many of the Internet pioneers have switched from the university and
research area to business firms.
4 This is documented in RFC 2028 (Oct
96) entitled "The Organizations Involved in the IETF Standards
Process", which describes Internet standardization as "an
organized activity of the ISOC, with the Board of Trustees being
responsible for ratifying the procedures and rules of the Internet
standards process". In RFC 2031 (Oct 96), which deals
exclusively with the "IETF-ISOC relationship", both
organizations state clearly "that ISOC has no influence
whatsoever on the Internet Standards process, the Internet Standards
or their technical content" and that the ISOC should restrict
its involvement to "provid[ing] a legal umbrella". Thus,
the ISOC should not directly deal with technical issues, but provide
the legal shelter for Internet standardization. Accordingly, since
October 1997, each Request for Comments (beginning with RFC 2220)
contains a copyright statement, which acknowledges ISOC as copyright
holder.
5 http://www.dcisoc.org/
6 The process is documented in some
detail on the homepage of NTIA
(http://www.ntia.doc.gov).
References
Aronson, Jonathan D./ Peter F. Cowhey, 1988: When
Countries Talk. International Trade in Telecommunications Services.
Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
Cerf, Vinton, 1995: IETF and ISOC. Coleman, James S., 1974: Power and the
Structure of Society. New York: Norton.
Coleman, James S., 1990: Foundations of
Social Theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
Commons, John R., 1961: Institutional
Economics. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
Cowhey, Peter F., 1990: The International
Telecommunications Regime: The Political Roots of Regimes for High
Technology. In: International Organization 44, 169-199.
David, Paul A./ Mark Shurmer, 1996: Formal
Standards-setting for Global Telecommunications and Information
Services. Towards an Institutional Regime Transformation? In: Telecommunications
Policy 20 (10), 789-815.
DiMaggio, Paul J., 1988: Interest and Agency
in Institutional Theory. In: Lynne G. Zucker (ed.): Institutional
Patterns and Organizations: Culture and Environment. Cambridge,
MA: Ballinger, 3-21.
DiMaggio, Paul J./ Walter W. Powell 1991a:
Introduction. In: Walter W. Powell/ Paul J. DiMaggio (eds.): The
New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: Univ.
of Chicago Press, 1-38.
DiMaggio, Paul J./ Walter W. Powell 1991b: The
Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective
Rationality in Organizational Fields. In: Walter W. Powell/ Paul J.
DiMaggio (eds.): The New Institutionalism in Organizational
Analysis. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 63-82.
Döhler, Marian, 1995: The State as Architect
of Political Order: Policy Dynamics in German Health Care. In: Governance
8 (3), 380-404.
Döhler, Marian/ Philip Manow-Borgwardt, 1992:
Korporatisierung als gesundheitspolitische Strategie. In: Staatswissenschaften
und Staatspraxis 1, 64-106.
Eisner Gillett, Sharon/ Mitchell Kapor, 1997:
The Self-Governing Internet: Coordination by Design. In: Brian Kahin/
James H. Keller (eds.), Coordinating the Internet. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 3-38.
Flam, Helena, 1990: Corporate Actors:
Definition, Genesis, and Interaction. MPIFG Discussion Paper
90/11. Köln: MPIfG
Genschel, Philipp/ Raymund Werle, 1993: From
National Hierarchies to International Standardization. Historical
and Modal Changes in the Governance of Telecommunications. In: Journal
of Public Policy 13, 203-225.
Hannan, Michael T./ John Freeman, 1977: The
Population Ecology of Organizations. In: American Journal of
Sociology 82, 929-964.
Kahin, Brian, 1997: The U.S. National
Information Infrastructure Initiative: the Market, the Web, and the
Virtual Project. In: Brian Kahin/ Ernest J. Wilson (eds.), National
Information Infrastructure Initiatives. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 150-189.
Kenis, Patrick/ Volker Schneider, 1991: Policy
Networks and Policy Analysis: Srutinizing a New Analytical Toolbox.
In: Bernd Marin/ Renate Mayntz (eds.): Policy Networks: Empirical
Evidence and Theoretical Considerations. Frankfurt/M.: Campus/
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 25-59.
Knight, Jack, 1992: Institutions and Social
Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Leib, Volker/ Raymund Werle, 1998:
Computernetze als Infrastrukturen und Kommunikationsmedien der
Wissenschaft. In: Rundfunk und Fernsehen. Vol. 46, No. 2-3,
254-273.
Malamud, Carl, 1993: Exploring the
Internet. A Technical Travelogue. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
Meyer, John W./ Brian Rowan, 1991:
Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and
Ceremony. In: Walter W. Powell/ Paul J. DiMaggio (eds.): The New
Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press, 41-62.
Olson, Mancur, 1971: The Logic of
Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Pappi, Franz Urban/ David Knoke, 1991:
Political Exchange in the German and American Labor Policy Domain.
In: Bernd Marin/ Renate Mayntz (eds.): Policy Networks: Empirical
Evidence and Theoretical Considerations. Frankfurt/M.: Campus/
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 179-208.
Scharpf, Fritz W., 1997: Games Real Actors
Play: Actor-Centered Institutionalism in Policy Research.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Schmidt, Susanne K./ Raymund Werle, 1998: Coordinating
Technology. Studies in the International Standardization of
Telecommunications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Schneider, Volker, 1999: Staat und
technische Kommunikation. Die politische Entwicklung der
Telekommunikation in den USA, Japan, Großbritannien, Deutschland,
Frankreich und Italien. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Schneider, Volker/ Godefroy Dang-Nguyen/
Raymund Werle, 1994: Corporate Actor Networks in European
Policy-Making: Harmonizing Telecommunications Policy. In: Journal
of Common Market Studies 32 (4), 473-498.
Scott, Richard W., 1987: The Adolescence of
Institutional Theory. In: Administrative Science Quarterly
32, 493-511.
Vanberg, Viktor J., 1992: Organizations as
Constitutional Systems. In: Constitutional Political Economy 3,
223-253.
Werle, Raymund, 1999a: Liberalisation of
Telecommunications in Germany. In: Kjell A. Eliassen/ Marit Sjøvaag
(eds.), European Telecommunications Liberalisation. London:
Routledge, 110-127.
Werle, Raymund, 1999b: The Impact of
Information Networks on the Structure of Political Systems. In:
Christoph Engel/ Kenneth H.Keller (eds.), Understanding the
Impact of Global Networks on Local Social, Political and Cultural
Values. Baden-Baden: Nomos, forthcoming.
Copyright © 1999 Raymund Werle and
Volker Leib
No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted without permission in writing from the
author.
Jegliche Vervielfältigung und Verbreitung, auch auszugsweise,
bedarf der Zustimmung des Autors.
MPI für Gesellschaftsforschung,
Paulstr. 3, D - 50676 Köln, Germany
|
|
