Towards New Regulatory Regimes in Globalized Infrastructure

The internationalization of infrastructure raises the issue of internationalization of regulatory governance. By internationalization of infrastructure, I mean the presence if not predominance of cross-border interconnections, ownership, interdependencies, spillovers, and the like. Such cross-border relationships are not new, but are growing in their significance. In several instances, this internationalization of infrastructure has led to internationalization of regulatory activity, such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), international cooperation among competition authorities, and supranational regulators – for example, the European Union (EU) or the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL). The formal authority of these arrangements ranges from completely voluntary organizations, such as associations of regulators or cooperative committees, to institutions with coercive power. There is interest in expanding international regulation with greater coercive power. I examine the issue of the scope of regulatory institutions in the presence of international infrastructure. I do not find a pressing need to internationalize additional regulatory institutions for infrastructure, but I do see a need to leverage the co-evolution of service providers, customers, and governance institutions to learn through experimentation