Information Capacity and Power in North-South Relations: Transborder Data Flow and the Case of Brazil

Broadly defined, TDFs are movements across national boundaries of machine-readable data for processing, storage or retrieval. While such movements can be effected by non-electronic means, such as magnetic tapes, discs, punched cards or other media, electronic means are increasingly being used. By such means, international data transmissions are made on computer-communications systems. In this article, only TDFs which involve point to point delivery of messages normally of a proprietory nature and based on contractual relations between parties will be considered. Media products which involve mass diffusion - especially broadcasting and television - are therefore not considered, although the issues involved in these areas also bear upon North-South relations. An important study of the implications involved in international media flows is contained in the McBride Commission Report to UNESCO, Many Voices. One World: Towards a New, More Just, and More Efficient World Information and Communications Order, Report by the International Commission for the Study of Communications Problems (Paris: UNESCO, 1980).

With regard to the socio-economic impact of the new information technologies, numerous studies have been undertaken in the social sciences from a wide spectrum of viewpoints. Some landmarks in this considerable body of literature include: Daniel Bell , The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (London: Heinemann, 1974); E. Parker , 'Implications of the New Information Technologies', in W.P. Davison and F.T.C. Yu (eds.), Mass Communication Research (New York: Praeger, 1974); Herbert 1.Schiller , 'Critical Research in the Information Age', Journal of Communications (Vol. 28, No. 4, Autumn 1978); E. Mandel , Late Capitalism ( London : New Left Books, 1975).

Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye (eds.), Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), Conclusion.

Robert O. Keohane , After Hegemony: Co-operation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press , 1984), p. 40 and p. 183. A similar perspective is taken by A.G. Oettinger , et al., High and Low Politics of Information Resources for the 80s (New York: Ballinger, 1977).

S. Dedijer , 'Multinationals, Intelligence, and Development', in F.G. Foster (ed.), Informatics and Industrial Development, Information Technology and Development Series, Vol. 2 (Dublin: Tycooly International Publishing Ltd, 1981), p. 325.

Quoted by G. Russell Pipe in, 'Transnational Data Regulation: Reviewing the Issues', in Transnational Data Regulation: The Realities MA: Information Services Ltd., 1979), pp. 42-3.

Rita Cruise O'Brien and G.K. Helleiner , 'The Political Economy of Information', in Rita Cruise O'Brien (ed.), Information. Economics and Power: The North-South Dimension (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1983), p. 10.

Anthony Smith , The Geopolitics of Information (London: Faber and Faber, 1980), p. 126.

Ibid, p. 128.

OECD , TBD Flows in International Enterprises (Paris: OECD, 25 October 1983). This study is based on a joint BIAC/OECD survey and interviews with firms.

Robert Gilpin , US Power and the Multinational Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1975), p. 166; C.V. Vaitsos , 'Power, Knowledge, and Development Policy: Relations between Transnational Enterprises and Developing Countries', in G.K. Helleiner (ed.), A World Divided ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 140.

B. Nanus , 'Business, Government, and the Multinational Computer', Columbia Journal of World Business (Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 1978), p. 24.

Anthony Smith , op. cit, p. 142.

G.K. Helleiner , 'Transnational Corporations and Transborder Data Flow', in Rita Cruise O'Brien, op. cit , p. 57.

Ibid, p. 62.

A detailed study of the effects of the new information technologies on industrialised economies can be found in Marc Uri Porat's study, The Information Economy: Definition and Measurement, US Department of Commerce, Office of Telecommunications, May 1977.

Peter Robinson , 'Some Economic Dimensions of Transborder Data Flow', in Transnational Data Report (Vol. 3, July-August 1980), pp. 18-19,

Special Secretariat of Informatics , Transborder Data Flows and Brazil. prepared in co-operation with the Ministry of Communications in Brazil (New York: United Nations, 1983), p. 138.

Keynote address to the 1980 Intergovernmental Bureau of Informatics World Conference on TDF Policies, in Transnational Data Report (Vol. 3, July-August 1980), p. 33.

Alan Gottlieb , Charles M. Dalfen , and Kenneth Katz , `The Transborder Transfer of Information by Communications and Computer Systems: Issues and Approaches to Building Principles', American Journal oflnternationall,aw (Vol. 68, No. 2. 1974), p. 236, 21. J. Hugh Faulkner , quoted by G. Russell Pipe , in op, cit, pp. 42-3.

Special Secretariat of Informatics, op. cit., p. 133.

Joan Spero , 'Information and the Policy Void', Foreign Affairs (Vol. 61, No. 1, Fall 1982), p. 148.

Special Secretariat of Informatics, op. cit., pp. 131-2. This document provides the bulk of the information used in this section.

Ibid., passim.

Ibid, p. 146.

Ibid, p. 187.

Ibid, p. 179.

Ibid, pp. 178-80.

Raymond Vernon is a leading influence within the bargaining school and has chronicled the increasing power of developing countries over TNCs first in natural resource industries and later in a variety of manufacturing industries; see Sovereignty at Bay: The Multinational Spread of US Enterprises (New York: Basic Books , 1971); and Storm Over the Multinationals: The Real Issues (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). Also influential in this school is Theodore Moran, Multinational Corporations and the Politics of Dependency: Copper in Chile (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1974 ).

Early statements of this general perspective were made by Paul A. Baran , 'On the Political Economy of Backwardness', and Andre Gunder Frank, 'The Development of Underdevelopment ', both in Charles K. Wilbur (ed.), The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment ( New York: Random House, 1973). A recent review of this literature is contained in James A. Caporaso , 'Dependence, Dependency, and Power in the Global System: A Structural and Behavioural Analysis ', in James A. Caporaso (ed.), Dependence and Dependency in the Global System, a special issue of International Organisation (Vol. 32, No. 1, Winter 1978).

C. Fred Bergsten , Theodore Moran and Thomas Hirst , American Multinationals and American Interests ( Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1978), p. 380.

Peter Evans , The Alliance of Multinational, State and Local Capital in Brazil ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press , 1979), p. 200.

Ibid, p. 201.

Ibid, p. 286.

Douglas Bennett and Kenneth Sharpe , 'Agenda Setting and Bargaining Power The Mexican State versus the Transnational Automobile Corporations', in World Politics (Vol. 32, No. I, October 1979), pp. 57-89.

Keynote address at the opening session of the Intergovernmental Bureau of Informatics World Conference on TDF Policies, in Transnational Data Report (Vol. 3, July-August 1980), p. 33.

Joan Spero , op. cit, p. 147.

Ithiel de Sola Pool , Technologies of Freedom ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 195.

J. Hart , 'Three Approaches to Power in International Relations', in International Organisations (Vol. 30, No. 2, Spring 1976), pp. 289-90.