The European Conference on Politics, Economics and Law 2014

Brighton, United Kingdom



Official Conference Proceedings

The European Conference on Politics, Economics and Law 2014

Brighton, United Kingdom



Official Conference Proceedings

The European Conference on Politics, Economics and Law 2014

Brighton, United Kingdom



Official Conference Proceedings

This paper explores the nature of collective action in the governance of transnational
common resources and proposes a private regimes approach for its study. Using the
example of the radio spectrum as a global resource – representing the totality of radio
frequencies used largely for wireless communications – the paper argues that the
variation in property systems witnessed in global commons cannot be fully explained
by negotiations between public actors managing the access and use of these shared
resources. Instead, it proposes greater recognition of the role of industry actors
organised in strategic associations that negotiate technical standards for the extraction
of economic value from the radio resource. This argument is derived from two case
studies that address the rule systems formed in the 900MHz band for the deployment
of second-generation mobile communications in the late 1980s, and in the 800MHz
band for the deployment of mobile broadband in the late 2000s in Western Europe.
Using the method of process tracing, the paper shows that, faced with different
competitive pressures, industry actors respond by relaxing their rights of use in the
first case study and, respectively, by relaxing their rights of access to the resource in
the second case study. This occurs irrespective of the presence of a weak or strong
public administrator.
Keywords: property systems; global commons; radio spectrum; private governance

Irina Iordachescu