Harris, Joshua. Restructuring the international telecommunication union in a decade of development, 1985-1994 national sovereignty vs. the free flow of information. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3JQ0Z4P
TitleRestructuring the international telecommunication union in a decade of development, 1985-1994 national sovereignty vs. the free flow of information
DescriptionAlthough the International Telecommunication Union is the oldest existing international treaty organization in the world, it has attracted relatively little scholarly study or media attention aside from recent debates about its proposed role in Internet governance and “bridging the digital divide.” Utilizing the published “Final Acts” of the Union’s periodic conferences, this study explores the history of the ITU—with a particular focus on the decade between the Maitland Report in 1985 and the Union’s most recent restructuring in 1994—in order to illustrate how the Union has evolved, both structurally and in terms of policy and purview, in response to new communications technologies and changing political, economic and social climates. I argue that ITU regulations have historically been the result of political considerations aimed at maintaining the sovereignty principle, the right of each member-state to regulate information networks within its borders. This principle has consistently proven antithetical to the Union’s stated purpose, and has generated further ambiguities and conflicts in recent debates as delegates have attempted to extend it to regulation of the borderless Internet.