Postal reform around the globe: Comparing the Asian and European experience

Postal reform has become a global trend in the age of liberalisation and privatisation. At the same time, change in this politically entrenched policy field meets with domestic resistance. This article sheds light on the politics of reform and regulation in four European and Asian countries. It is found that reform trajectories are far from being uniform and so are the emerging regulatory regimes: in view of domestic resistance France engaged in minimal change which was exclusively driven by European Union (EU) pressure; Germany initially introduced far-reaching measures, but for political motives deviated from this reform path over time; in Japan postal reform has been a side-effect of restructuring the country’s financial and banking sector, running short of introducing a regulatory framework which would effectively open up the market to competition; the preconditions for change were most favourable in Singapore, yet remaining bottlenecks may prevent that full liberalisation lives up to reality.