The FCC and the Politics of Cable TV Regulation, 1952-1980: Organizational Learning and Policy Development
Powered By Xquantum

The FCC and the Politics of Cable TV Regulation, 1952-1980: Organ ...

Read
image Next

This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.

“Congressional Influence on Administrative Agencies: A Case Study of Telecommunications Policy,” in Congress Reconsidered, 4th ed., ed. Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, 393–410 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1989); “Congress and Telecommunications Policymaking,” in New Directions in Telecommunications Policy, ed. Paula Newburg, 301–314 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989).
18. McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast seem to think otherwise. In their seminal 1987 article, they argue that the FCC made cable television regulations on “autopilot” during the 1960s and ’70s. In essence, the regulatory process was set up to automatically reflect prevailing political preferences without any interference by Congress; see McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast, “Administrative Procedures,” 271. However, Glen O. Robinson, a former FCC commissioner, seriously doubts their thesis. See his “Commentary on ‘Administrative Arrangements and the Political Control of Agencies’: Political Issues of Structure and Process,” Virginia Law Review75 (1989): 491–492.
19. I tease this conclusion out of a number of studies of FCC decision making conducted by political scientists, historians, and legal scholars. See, for instance, Derthick and Quirk, The Politics of Deregulation; Alan Stone, Wrong Number: The Breakup of AT&T (New York: Basic Books, 1989); Michael J. Zarkin, Social Learning and the History of Telecommunications Policy, 1900–1996 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003); Michael J. Zarkin, “Organizational Learning in Novel Policy Situations: Two Cases of United States Communications Regulation,” Policy Studies 29 (2008): 87–100; Slotten, Radio and Television Regulation; Wenmouth Williams, Jr., “Impact of Commissioner Background on FCC Decisions, 1962–1975,” Journal of Broadcasting 20 (1976): 239–260; LeDuc, Cable Television and the FCC.
20. For instance, John Kingdon defines ideas in part as “theories that individuals hold about how the world works … that can be used to further self-interest as well as other goals.” See his “Agendas, Ideas, and Policy Change,” in New Perspectives on American Politics, ed. Lawrence C. Dodd and Calvin Jillson, 221 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1994).