Regulatory convergence?

Abstract

The Communications Act 2003 can be seen as yet another attempt to reconcile the contradictions resulting from the great schism between Market and Social Liberalism that dominated twentieth-century political discourse in the West, in this case applied to the intricacies of media regulation. In this respect, the Act is simply the latest manifestation of an on-going process of philosophical accommodation that has been characteristic of British media policy, at least since World War II, if not before. This accommodation has always been imperfect, and the debates over the Act's more controversial provisions indicate that the tensions between the competing schools of liberalism will persist well into the twenty-first century.