The Ecology of Games Shaping Telecommunications Policy

A game is an arena of competition and cooperation structured by a set of rules and assumptions about how to act in order to achieve a particular set of objectives. An ecology of games is a larger system of action composed of two or more separate but interdependent games. Defined in this way, the idea of an ecology of games is a sensitizing concept, developed within a participant-observer, case-study mode of inquiry. It helps make sense of the dynamics of communication policy processes. Aspects of an ecology of games—games, rules, strategies, and players—offer a grammar for describing the system of action shaping public policy. As a framework for analysis, it overcomes some limitations of sector-specific policy studies and some weaknesses of other frameworks for the study of public policy, including group, pluralist, and elite theories of decision making. This article develops the concept of an ecology of games as an approach to the study of communication policy. It also illustrates its application by sketching the ecology of games surrounding telecommunications policy in the United States and some of the principal ways it differs from the ecology of games in other nations.