Page 25 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

12 Communication, Commerce and Power

agreements, the collapse of Soviet and East European communism,
and the development of significant advancements in digital and other
technologies, all facilitated a growing appreciation that information-
based products and services themselves constitute a significant cul-
tural-power tool in America's foreign policy ensemble.
In Chapter 7, 'Capital, Technology, and the United States in an
"Open Market" Regime,' examples of late-twentieth-century US pub-
lic and private sector information and communication activities are
presented to illustrate empirical and theoretical points raised in Cha-
ter 6. The US Telecommunications Act of 1996, for example, is
treated as one of the most significant steps yet taken by the American
state in its role as a core mediator of corporate interests in interna-
tional markets. Beyond the further 'freeing up' of private sector
interests in efforts to construct some form of domestic and internat-
ional information highway, the Act fuels its development not despite
but precisely because of the oligopolistic tendencies it releases. Related
to this development are digital technology applications involving DBS
and the introduction of high definition television. From this discus-
sion, I argue that the disparate character of the American state
ironically has provided US-based capital with unanticipated competi-
tive advantages in most information economy developments.
European and Japanese efforts to challenge American-based interests,
for instance, have been handicapped both as a result of the wealth and
resiliency of the American market and (ironically) due to the struc-
tural inability of the American state explicitly to organize private
sector interests in communication and information activities - activ-
ities now predominantly characterized by technological dynamism.
In response to the history presented in the previous chapters and
the issues raised and elaborated in them, Chapter 8, the book's 'Con-
clusion,' suggests general theoretical revisions to the cultural imperial-
ism paradigm that may facilitate a more precise assessment of foreign
communication policy and more general developments in world order.
Aspects of the conceptualization of hegemony formulated by Robert
W. Cox are emphasized as developmental supplements to this para-
digm. However, as a result of the role played by the American state as
the core but complex mediator of what will be described as an emer-
ging hegemonic bloc of interests, this fmal chapter emphasizes the role
of the nation state in contemporary globalization processes. An
aggressive US-mediated process is portrayed in which the American
state has acted to reform the conditions in which a prospective US-
based and corporate-led global information infrastructure can be