Unfinished Business: Telecommunications Reform in Mexico

Telecommunications reform in Mexico was part of a larger reform which consisted in a shift from a closed to an open economy. This policy context and the nature of Mexican political institutions led to the decision of maintaining a dominant firm in the telephone market and to postponing the creation of governance structures to regulate telecommunications. Moreover, the process and its outcome took place in the context of a worldwide movement of telecommunications reform. While Mexican telecommunications reform shares motives and objectives for regulatory change with other countries, chief among them technological innovation, the specific nature of this reform is largely the result of domestic political factors.

The role of political institutions and policy contexts in other national cases of reform was also explored. This research supports the argument that, as in Mexico, political factors determined the specific character of reform in the other countries examined.

This chapter will integrate the findings of previous chapters and provide a generalized conclusion as to why and how domestic political factors determined telecommunications reform in each of the countries studied. These concluding remarks are divided into three sections. The first section identifies the causes for telecommunications reform common to all countries. The second section restates the findings for each national case, while the third generalizes the argument about how politics determined the policy decisions.

Starting in the late 1970s, global changes in the economic environment transformed the traditional role of government intervention. The increas-

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