A new institutional economics analysis of the history of the regulation of the .au country-code top-level domain from 1986 to 2002

摘要

Abstract: This dissertation investigates the explanatory power of the interdisciplinary New InstitutionalEconomics theory against case studies of the events which occurred in the history of the management of the .au domain name space between 1986 and 2002. Through a series of qualitative case studies distilled from publicly-available materials, analysis of documents located in three never-before studied private archives belonging to Jon Postel, Paul Twomey and Kimberley Heitman, and a small number of interviews with key stakeholders, this dissertation tests a series of hypotheses derived from New Institutional Economics theory. Evidence was gathered which enabled the first comprehensive analysis of the path through which the right to manage the .au domain name space transitioned from the USC-ISI/Jon Postel to Robert Elz to auDA. These events are situated within a broader historical context of shifts in stakeholder perceptions of the appropriate boundary of government regulation resulting from the once-dominant cultural norm of modernism (supporting command-and-control regulation) being supplanted by post- modernism (supporting self-/co-regulation). In the context of these case studies, New Institutional Economics theory is generally found to have significant explanatory power. In particular, the theoretical concepts of the institutional environment, institutional hierarchy, stakeholder behaviour, institutional formation, institutional evolution and institutional change proved to be useful tools with which to analyse these events. However, the evidence in one case study does not support the strong form in which one claim by Oliver Williamson is currently expressed, namely that higher level institutions constrain lower level institutions. An instance where two higher-level institutions (the Australian Constitution and Regulatory Impact Assessment) did not constrain a lower-level institution is identified. The reasons why those constraints did not apply as intended are analysed and a weaker form of Williamson's claim proposed instead. A model that synthesises two concepts, institutional evolution and institutional change, into a new tool for presenting theoretical analysis, the Institutional Life-Cycle, is proposed and tested. That model is found to be effective in synthesizing the evidence found in the case studies. New Institutional Economics theory is found to offer a powerful, yet imperfect, toolset with which to undertake legal research.