| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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At that time, most of the FCC commissioners and many of the most powerful broadcasters were predisposed to regulation. The broadcasters’ frame thus provided a powerful intellectual road map for the advancement of a preferred course of action.
By focusing scholarly attention on ideas and discourse, both Streeter and Parsons contributed important insights to the understanding of both FCC policy deliberations and regulatory policymaking in general. In particular, the two studies demonstrate that ideas, interests, and institutional arrangements can interact in complex ways to shape policy change. Although political actors may appear to intentionally select issue frames that support their strategic interests, their choices are limited by existing legal frameworks and other contextually relevant factors. At the same time, however, the choice of issue frames can have a constitutive effect, redefining issues in ways that can alter perceived interests and point the way to previously unforeseen policy options. These findings are by no means dismissed in the present study. Indeed, the learning model presented in the next chapter shares many of these basic convictions concerning the role of ideas in the policy process.
Nevertheless, the discourse analyses presented by Streeter and Parsons provide an incomplete picture of FCC policy deliberations for at least two reasons. First, both studies provide a highly limited characterization of how ideas shape policymaking. In particular, both studies focus on the narrow issue frames offered by contending interests without examining whether these discursive constructs might be related to much broader, historically situated sets of policy ideas. For instance, Streeter convincingly describes the rhetorical success of the cable discourse during the late 1960s, but he does not provide an analytical framework capable of explaining how this issue frame relates to the broader “public interest” goals that had undergirded communications policy for decades.31 By contrast, Parsons’ approach, with its emphasis on