One of the most outstanding features of making politics in a shrinking world and interdependent economies is the creation of “International Policy Regimes” (IPR) for the governance of “micro” arenas of International politics. This is a stimulating development for comparative public policy analysts as it enables (and requires) us to extend our traditional cross-national, cross-sectorial and cross-issue analyses so as to include also a cross-international analysis. This paper compares two international policy regimes for the regulation of international competition in the sector of telecommunications. The first regime deals with the regulation of terminal equipment (type-approval processes) and the second with network interconnection (the integration of different and competing networks into one system). While the terminal type-approval regime involves deregulation, and was found to be narrow in scope and fairly effective, the network interconnection regime involves reregulation and was found to be broad in scope and relatively weak. These variations are particularly interesting because they refer to “most similar cases”. They were shaped by the same actors, at around the same time, and with respect to same policy problem and the same sector. The paper suggests that these variations in the regulation of international competition are best explained by juxtaposing the “policy determine politics” approach to the “politics determines policy” approach.
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