Varieties of the Regulatory State? Government-Business Relations and Telecommunications Reforms in Malaysia and Thailand

Discussions of regulatory reform in the telecommunications sector almost without exception take for granted the case for convergence. Pressures on national regulators to conform to liberalisation programs and to open up domestic markets so as to give free play to new technology investments seem to be inexorable, by many accounts. Privatisation, deregulation, re-regulation to strengthen competitive pressures, removal of barriers to trade and foreign investment and so on are recommended in varying mixtures as a common recipe. Institutional pressures, particularly international agreements, underscore these trends. They are associated in the literature with the emergence of the “regulatory state” as a global phenomenon. This paper explores the argument that there are varieties of the regulatory state, shaped by local administrative cultures and political circumstances, through analysis of the process of telecoms liberalisation and regulatory reform in Malaysia and Thailand. It is argued that the legacy of domestic policies and the interests that are entailed in them are major factors in shaping the mix of policies and instruments to be found in the field, despite considerable convergence with the appointment of independent regulators to administer pro-competitive regulatory regimes.