| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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undertake this process, formal state organizations—through their personnel, precedents, and norms—become the storehouses for accrued practical policy knowledge.
The pattern outlined in the previous paragraph is a pattern the FCC has repeated many times while integrating various new technologies into the US communications infrastructure. In each instance—cable television, FM radio, television, computers, and broadband are just a few—the FCC's earliest regulatory actions took place in an environment characterized by limited or ambiguous information. As a result, none of these policy problems were resolved through a single decision at a single moment in time. Rather, decisions were made, assessed, and revised as new information became available. Along the way, the FCC acquired knowledge and skills it had not previously possessed. Thus, although many individual FCC decisions have been judged a failure, over time, the agency's ability to change course and seek out new policy solutions has allowed the US communications industry to flourish. Cable television is no exception to this pattern.
Learning and Policymaking:
A Conceptual Overview
The foregoing discussion suggests that neither principal-agent theory nor post-positivist discourse analysis can adequately explain the case of early FCC cable television regulation. What is needed is a theoretical perspective that does not dismiss political power, but that explains how political actors and institutional arrangements both constrain and enable effective bureaucratic decision making. Such a theory must effectively explain how agency leadership, ideas, and technical knowledge influence decision making in a complex and uncertain policy environment. Finally, the theory needs to address policymaking as a developmental