INTELSAT: Technology, politics and the transformation of a regime

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Abstract
The question arises whether “technological imperatives” or political considerations will guide the activity and determine the structure of regimes that support the use of technology on an international scale. In the case of communications satellites, the establishment of such a regime involves the search for structures that could satisfy technology and still remain responsive to political forces that desired to affect the decision-making process. The regime which has emerged resulted from the interplay of technology and politics. Initially it consisted of a single global agency, INTELSAT, but as the full potential of the technology became known, a single agency could not provide an adequate forum for the political interests that were associated with each new application that was discovered. Thus, the regime came to consist of a number of related organizations each dedicated to particular uses of the technology.

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