Consolidating Pro-Liberalization and Free Trade Coalitions in Member Countries Sample Clauses

Consolidating Pro-Liberalization and Free Trade Coalitions in Member Countries. The GBT deal helps to consolidate pro-liberalization and trade coalitions. In the public sector, the institutionalization of trade in services over the past decade has been an important factor in altering national decision-making processes. In the past, telecommunications policy was largely the proprietary preserve of ministries of posts and telecommunications or regulatory bodies like the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the state public utility commissions. Where national carriers were closely aligned with or part of the ministries, government policy unsurprisingly acted to preserve their monopolies or at least slow down competitive entry by alternative providers. Similarly, many observers argue that nominally independent regulatory agencies like the FCC were subject to "capture" or strong influence by the major carriers they were supposed to regulate, although the evidence suggests that this has not been consistently the case over time. Either way, absorbing telecommunications into the trade policy environment has clearly altered the inter-ministerial or inter-agency mix by making the organizational objectives and intellectual frameworks of trade, industry, and finance ministries or agencies a vital part of decision making. In Europe, it also has strengthened in parallel the position of the Commission relative to national telecommunications ministries. Further, it has often pushed awareness and involvement in telecommunications policy matters out of obscurity and up the political ladder to the desks of top-level elected officials. In consequence, permanent bureaucratic coalitions have been established that have stakes in promoting liberalization to the benefit of the economy as a whole, rather than in protecting the prerogatives of traditional national carriers, and elected leaders have come to see telecommunications as part of their "high-politics" national strategies. The same sort of coalition building has been happening in the private sector. Pro-liberalization and trade firms that are looking to international markets for their futures have been emboldened to press the case for more openness at home as a price for gaining access abroad. Users, too, have been emboldened to push for xxxxx trade, since this allows them to procure the best services without regard to the nominal nationality of their providers. Like the telecommunications ministries, national carriers whose first preference might otherwise be for protectionism are no longe...