International regime or corporate actor? The European Community in telecommunications policy
Volker Schneider, Raymund Werle
Abstract
This chapter presents a brief discussion of the relevance and the basic assumption of the concepts of regime and actor in the theory of international relations. It shows that the European Community (EC) in its dynamic development cannot be adequately understood as a regime but constitutes instead a corporate actor that increasingly gains influence in new policy areas more so than in traditional ones. The telecommunications sector provides an excellent example of such an increase in activities governed by corporate self-interests. ‘Neo-functionalists’ reacted to criticism that pointed to the very abstract and macroprocedural automatism of functionalism by connecting functiona-list and group theoretical concepts. By mid-1983 the Commission took the offensive. In June it sent a note to the Council signed by Davignon, responsible for industrial policy matters. The note once again strongly emphasized the need for a common telecommunications market.