Case Studies

The research project studies different nationwide convergent regulatory institutions in various countries. Its research question is: What standardized indicators on best practices can be established based on the international comparative analysis for addressing the process of designing and creating a convergent regulatory institutionalism of communications (IRCC) in Chile?

The research is based on the following assumptions: 

i) The convergent regulatory institutionalism is not homogeneous at an international level. It is permeated by the respective regional and national political culture, whose characterization was developed by Hallin and Mancini (2004) for the area of communication systems. This is a structural factor that determines (yet not in an absolute manner) how the institutionalism is organized, as the possibility of agency of the subjects participating in the process is also a variable to be considered.

ii) Two strategic aspects for differentiating the ways in which the relationship between structural political culture and agency permeates the form of the institutionalism are: a) the manner and direction in which the regulatory convergence is conceived; and b) how the autonomy, composition, accountability and selection of its management are conceived.

The general objective of the research is to develop a proposal for qualitative and quantitative standardized indicators on best practices for addressing the process of designing and creating an IRCC in Chile.

The subject of study is autonomous state agencies that regulate radio, television, telecommunications and/or Internet established as of 2000. The sample consists of four international cases plus Chile, which is presented as a pre-convergent case. Specifically, these are cases that respond to specificities of interest for the objective of the research: 

• OFCOM (UK), the first and oldest convergent regulator; 
• CRTC (Ca), an agency that addresses the matter of cultural diversity and linguistic pluralism at the convergent regulation level; 
• IFT (Mx), an agency from an OECD and Pacific Alliance country just like Chile with influence on matters of competition; 
• CRC (Co), a convergent body from a Latin American OECD and Pacific Alliance country just like Chile, but with two separate regulation chambers for broadcasting and telecommunications.

The sources of the research are fundamentally secondary data: official documents and publications produced by the very institutions under study and other incumbent actors (parliaments, trade associations, companies affected by the regulation, international organizations), records, websites, press archives and bibliographic sources of theoretical nature. Additionally, a field visit is contemplated during year 1 for interviews with experts and key informants of the international study cases, as well as interviews with national experts and key informants (academy, civil society, trade associations, owners of communication and media companies, members of parliament, government representatives and bodies that supervise telecommunications, Internet and media) that will allow establishing the keys for organizing the work with the secondary data.

The data of the first phase of the study is generated from the dumping, systematization and organization in a record sheet of the information contributed by the secondary and primary sources of the chosen case studies based on the following strategic concepts identified in the theoretical debate: communication system, political culture, status of convergence, institutionalization of convergence, subjects of regulation (services, infrastructures and contents), typologies (regulation, self-regulation and co-regulation), and principles (free competition, spectrum as a scarce resource, communication rights).