Page 47 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

US Foreign Communication Policy 35

flexibility and efficiency, new communication and information tech-
nologies modified distribution and consumption capacities: informa-
tion-based services facilitated the rapid turnover of capital
investments; corporate abilities to respond to consumer and market
demands were enhanced; globalized and instantaneous personal credit
facilitated market expansion efforts; and through the more compre-
hensive and accurate monitoring of lifestyles and price system activ-
ities, potential consumers were approached in ever more enticing
ways.
The opportunities provided to service sector-based corporations as
a result of these complex developments, coupled with the ongoing
crisis in the US economy (particularly in relation to the decline or
stagnation in real incomes and the disintegration of secure middle-
class employment opportunities) - and the collapse of the Soviet
Union as a counter-weight to capitalist models- facilitated the radical
reform of international communication and information regimes dat-
ing from the late 1980s. This has involved the American state as the
complex mediator of mostly neo-liberal reforms in a range of inter-
national organizations, including the ITU and, most importantly, the
GATT. In its institutionalization of a free trade in services and
requisite intellectual property rights (when viewed in conjunction
with ongoing technological innovations and applications), the recently
institutionalized World Trade Organization (WTO) now constitutes a
dramatic step forward in efforts to open world markets to producers
and distributors of information-based commodities.
The American state has been affected by and has affected these
changes. As Cox has generalized, the role of· states has been trans-
formed during this period. Rather than an institutional buffer, man-
dated to protect and develop domestic interests, state priorities have
shifted toward 'adapting domestic economies to the perceived exigen-
cies of the world economy.' 39 This internationalizing of the state has
involved the ascendancy of state departments and personnel directly
involved in foreign relations and international economic affairs and
the relative subordination of domestic-orientated intra-state agencies.
As a result, says Cox, state structures have been recast to facilitate
the incorporation of world-economy developments into the decision-
making processes of domestic policy makers. 40
States, of course, were not and are not the only institutions mediat-
ing the international political economy. International institutions,
such as the WTO and the ITU, play decisive roles in contemporary
information and communication developments. As with states, the