revenues from the explosive growth of mobile and Internet services. Indeed, competition in thetelecommunication market appears to be strengthening the public telecommunication operatorswho control the networks, in particular, the local loop, while some new entrants continue toexperience losses as a result of the investment necessary for building networks and keeping pacewith new technologies. The incumbent operators may have opportunities to increase their marketpower through the deployment of broadband infrastructures and services. This possibility iscreating new challenges for regulators who will need to create an environment that is attractive forinvestors especially in the local loop.

The report argues that governments will need to implement regulatory safeguards to ensurea pro-competitive environment for network competition. However, the authors are careful tonote that this policy prescription is neither simple nor straightforward. For example, if regulatorsfocus exclusively on infrastructure competition, some advanced services may not #ourish. Inturn, in the absence of growth in advanced services, network competition may not be sustainablein the long term. In practice, whatever policies are chosen, regulators face a substantial challengein balancing e$ciency, equity and innovation in the sector. They will need to address thepolicies appropriate to encouraging the development and integration of generic networks that willsupport electronic commerce, entertainment and telephony services, at the same time as theycontinue to address the &old' telecommunication issues stemming from continuing dominance ofpublic telecommunication operator incumbents. Broadcast regulators also face new challenges, forexample, in determining what if any regulatory treatment should be accorded to &webcastingservices'.

This report provides many valuable indicators and a comprehensive analysis of thedynamic features of the restructuring of telecommunication and related markets over the lastdecade. It foreshadows the opportunities that are in store in the broadband era. The account o!ersdetailed insights into the story of the evolution of the telecommunication sector and it calls uponregulators to undertake new empirical studies in key areas and to continue to assess the factors thata!ect who wins and who loses in the increasingly high telecom stakes. The credible data resourcesprovided by OECD provide a much needed foundation for research and monitoring developmentsin this area.

Byung-Keun KimSPRU, University of Sussex,

East Sussex, UKE-mail address: b.kim@sussex.ac.uk

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Liberalizing the European Media. Politics, Regulation and the Public Sphere,Shalini Venturelli; Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998, 324 pages, ISBN 0-19-823379-5

Venturelli's study of European Union (EU) media and communication policy and of itsphilosophical roots has been murderously di$cult to review. Her work is enormously ambitious,

80 Book reviews / Telecommunications Policy 24 (2000) 75}83

and therein lies the chief of its potential claims on the reader's attention. Venturelli has tried to dosomething very important: to explain and evaluate European media and communication policiesby revealing their philosophical roots. And by expounding the conceptual and ethical structure(and therefore choices) implicit in these philosophical systems she hopes to make systematic senseof the tortured history of the European Union's electronic media policies. The potential merit ofthis approach is obvious * if successful the author would provide not only a comprehensivedescription and analysis of what's happened, but also an analytical instrument equal to thedemands of interpreting and of constructing the European communications policy future: a heuris-tic useful to both policy analysts and policy makers.

But, I surfaced from Liberalizing the European Media convinced neither by Venturelli's argu-ments nor enlightened by her exposition. Unfortunately, the work achieves too little by attemptingtoo much. It neither o!ers a comprehensive account of EU developments (because the develop-ments discussed are subordinated to the philosophical/historical argument) nor does it o!er a fullyreasoned philosophical critique. Venturelli's book is vitiated by three mutually re-enforcing kindsof shortcoming: imprecision in the language of argument, over-generalisation in the character ofargument and fuzziness in the empirical foundations of argument.

Venturelli writes at a high level of abstraction. This demands that elementary grammatical rulesare followed. When they are not, arguments become di$cult to understand and the author losesher power to convince the reader. For example, to take one of many instances, Venturelli states (p.40) that `like its conceptual predecessors, the political consequences of postmodernist perspectivesreify the status quo through retreat to celebrations of the private, thus reinforcing conservativethreats to progressive democratic politics.aVenturelli is not alone in writing clotted prose, but herethe singular pronoun `itsa agrees with neither of the plural nouns `consequencesa or `perspect-ivesa. This may seem pedantic. Of course, a charitable reader can make some sort of sense here andmy laborious demonstration of di$culty looks petty. But a brief citation cannot demonstrate thedi$culties the reader encounters when trying to follow the author's arguments over page after pageof interdependent abstractions expressed in grammatically imperfect prose and seldom helpedeither by quotation from the sources to which the author refers or by explanatory examples.

Where there are citations they are not always su$ciently speci"c for the reader to be able to testthe author's arguments against appropriate evidence. Can citations such as these (Venturelli, 1998,p. 39) really help identify the grounds on which arguments are founded?

`Political community and the terms of associational life precede the claim to these rights anddetermine the socio-legal basis of economy and society (Barber, 1984; Aristotle, 1981, 1962;Arendt, 1975; Hegel, 1952a). Theories of freedom which envision pre-political, a priori naturalstates for human freedom (Locke, 1960, Kant, 1990, Hobbes, 1991) may constitute ambiguous,even harmful fantasies (Taylor, 1993).a

Touching trust that such fundamental issues can be resolved by 24 pages of even Charles Taylor'sprose! Touching too the assumption that the reader is so familiar with this galaxy of philosophersfor her or him to need no page references to "nd the arguments relevant to the author's case.

But of course there are speci"c citations. And these do exactly what they are supposed to do inscholarly works: where the reader "nds the author challenging her or his own establishedassumptions, the source can be consulted and the reader's assumptions con"rmed or challenged.

Book reviews / Telecommunications Policy 24 (2000) 75}83 81

Venturelli rightly gives prominence to the Article 128 added to the European Economic Treaty atMaastricht in 1992. This `culturea article gave the European Commission power (in Venturelli'swords) `to intervene in the public sphere on cultural groundsa (p. 197). And, as Venturelli rightlyclaims, the article does `testify to the importance the EU attributes to the audiovisual sectora (p.198). Unfortunately, Venturelli misquotes the Article. She omits the crucial `ina from the "nalclause in Section 2 and gives the text as `* artistic and literary creation, including the audiovisualsectora (p. 198). Whereas it should read `* artistic and literary creation, including IN (myemphasis) the audiovisual sectora. The preposition `ina of course severely limits the potentialauthority which the article gives the Commission. Including `ina in the text of the Treaty wasa source of considerable satisfaction for those Member States which sought to limit the Commis-sion's cultural jurisdiction in the Maastricht negotiations. Its excision in Venturelli's text maymislead the reader on a matter which the author rightly deems important.

Other references can also puzzle. For example the author's reference (p. 106) to the EuropeanCourt of Justice assimilating `communications policy to the competition provisions of Articles 85and 86 of the founding Treaty.... with the landmark judgements in the so-called terminal equipment(France v Commission, 1991) and services directive (Spain v Commission, 1992) casesa. This isa curious interpretation for, in each of the landmark cases Venturelli mentions, the Court voidedsections of the liberalising directives under consideration.

Like the Habermas whose best known work is honoured in Venturelli's title, and to whomhandsome homage is paid in the pages of Liberalizing the European Media, the author does notconsider obdurate empirical exceptions to her arguments. Notoriously, Habermas wrote:

Radio, "lm and television 2 draw the eyes and ears of the public under their spell but at thesame time, by taking away its distance, place it under `tutelagea, which is to say they deprive it ofthe opportunity to say something and to disagree (Habermas, 1989, pp. 170, 171).

He did so in West Germany at a time when and where the most perfect form of public servicebroadcasting yet established enjoyed a monopoly of providing the radio and television services heexcoriated! Venturelli echoes Habermas in not always examining the actual performance of theinstitutions to which her arguments refer. But, whereas Habermas implicitly censured the publicsector (along with the private) Venturelli explicitly celebrates it. However, empirical enquiry* e.g.,a comparison of the extent to which private cable operators and public telephone companiesconnected homes in, e.g., Belgium might give her a nasty shock. So too might comparison of thepenetration of domestic phone service in the UK before and after liberalisation. It remains to bedemonstrated that the public interest has been served better by pre-liberalisation public institu-tions than by post-liberalisation commercial and mixed arrangements.

Lurking beneath Venturelli's arguments, and those of the tradition of communication scholars inwhich she places herself, is the stubborn ghost of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Venturelli hintsas much when she attributes the roots of her argument to `two categories of emancipatory ideas:"rst from the work of Aristotle and Arendt and second, from the thought of Hegel, Kant andHabermasa (p. 76). In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle constitutes man as uniquely rational. Ittherefore follows from his generally functionalist argument that man's vocation lies in striving fora thoughtful, rational and reasonable life. This perspective is not always helpful when applied toVenturelli's subject matter, the electronic media of communication which play so striking a role incontemporary Europeans' leisure and pleasure! As Zygmunt Bauman wickedly put it, (sniping at

82 Book reviews / Telecommunications Policy 24 (2000) 75}83

Habermas), this perspective means a normative view of `society shaped after the pattern ofa sociology seminara (Bauman, 1992, p. 217).

Moreover, while discussion of EU copyright proposals is clearly relevant to Venturelli's generalthemes, I was surprised to see no discussion of the interests of information consumers: notably theirinterest in a `right to copya and cheap and easy access to information. An interest likely to beserved by neither side of the droit d+auteur/common law opposition set up by the author. Indeed,technologies of information reproduction and distribution, grosso modo, now make it easier andcheaper than ever before to establish cheap universal access to information. But it is speci"cinstitutional arrangements, such as law, which stand in the way. It is easy to copy and be a piratebut it is unlawful. Technological change, which the author frequently avers is the totem beforewhich policy makers kneel, is sometimes hostile to signi"cant proprietary interests. Such contradic-tions are not fully explored.

Venturelli's critique of Eurocrats' gee whiz enthusiasm for new toys and of the dopey tunnelvision of the `End of Historya school are certainly timely. But they are one "nger exercises. Toomuch of her critique engages with a straw man or measures actual arrangements against theoreticalcriteria which, I believe, are either notional or partial. All this is a great pity. This could have beenan important book. Venturelli could have done much to help us make sense of the twists and turnsin European Union electronic media and communication policy. But too much has been bitten o!and too little chewed over.

References

Bauman, Z. (1992). Intimations of postmodernity. London: Routledge.Habermas, J. (1989 [1962]). The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Richard CollinsBritish Film Institute, 21 Stephen Street,

London W1P 2LN, UKE-mail address: richard.collins@b".org.uk

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Book reviews / Telecommunications Policy 24 (2000) 75}83 83