Governing a monopoly market under siege: Using institutional analysis to understand competitive entry into telecommunications markets, 1944-1982

• Main Author: Schaaf, Jeanne M
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-1989
• Subjects: Economic history; Political science
• ISBN: 9798207784663

Governing a Monopoly Market Under Siege addresses the phenomena of competitive entry into telecommunications equipment, video transmission, private line, long distance, and enhanced services markets between 1944 and 1982, the year in which AT&T agreed to the settlement that broke up the Bell System. Why competition exists in markets once monopolized by AT&T can be understood by focusing on the actions and strategies of AT&T managers, market entrepreneurs, and government officials in a market environment characterized by regulatory oversight and in an era of extraordinary technological change. The analytical perspective of institutional analysis guides the study, and the explanation offered relies on the conceptual approach of rule-ordered relationships where variables such as participants, positions, actions, control, information, outcomes, and costs and benefits have particular values determined by an underlying set of rules (boundary, position, authority, aggregation, information, scope, and payoff) that is subject to change. The fact that rules can be changed suggests multiple levels of inquiry (rule making and rule following behavior) and requires multiple levels of analysis. In the cases discussed, the evidence shows the ways decisions made in one arena influenced actions and outcomes in other (sequential and simultaneous) decisionmaking arenas. The case discussions and analyses also illustrate the ways parties vied for market advantage by attempting to change or manipulate the rules that structured their market opportunities and the ways constitutionally-imposed rules structured the decisionmaking environment for regulators, setting the constraints and opportunities within which they, too, functioned. In short, the work provides an explanation of the political and economic forces that fashioned and refashioned the structure of the post-World War II telecommunications industry; it provides insight into the divestiture of AT and, in its broadest application, it illustrates the nature of political-economic decisionmaking.