Page 212 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

202 Communication, Commerce and Power

construct a new hegemonic order. In analyzing US micro processes in
the context of relatively macro (national and international) condi-
tions, the potential for this kind of renewal can, I think, be identified.
Due perhaps to a lack of detailed research on the nature of domestic
US structures, and as a result of a recent tendency to privilege global
forces over domestic, Cox and others have found it difficult to con-
ceptualize this. Given that the history presented in this book reveals
that the American state has acted as the mediator among and on
behalf of mostly US-based corporations in international agencies
involving their structural reform, such attention to domestic structures
and struggles not only remains analytically relevant, it is strategically
essential.
In response to the crisis in foreign communication policy of the
1980s, components of the American state were reformed in order to
facilitate its mediation of more comprehensive efforts in global
restructuring. In sum, the American state - through the ascendancy
of trade- underwent reforms enabling it to service the political and
legal needs of mostly transnational corporations and international
business consumers directly involved in information economy devel-
opments. These modifications, in tum, altered aspects of US relations
with transnational capital. Rather than viewing this in terms of an
'either/or' nation-state or global-capital dichotomy, an analytical
emphasis on structures and media direct us toward a more sophist-
icated conceptualization. This is not to say that the American state, by
'freeing up' mostly US-based and other private sector interests to
become increasingly transnational actors has not set in motion prob-
lematic tendencies involving, for example, the capacity of US-based
corporations to become geographically decentralized and mobile in
relation to their 'home' nation state. Rather than contradictions stem-
ming from reduced state capabilities to influence capital, a focus on
structures and media suggests that core contradictions will involve the
form in which the United States relates to capital. 9
While the dominant position of the United States in service sector
activities has been greatly enhanced through the Uruguay Round
GA 'IT agreement and related international reforms, the doors that
these have opened for US-based corporations, however, could presage
problems for the American and, indeed, the international political
economy. The globalization of information-based commodity activ-
ities- facilitated through new technologies like DBS and complemen-
tary institutional reforms- are now, for example, directly affecting the
form in which the United States deals with international financial