The Politics of Good Enough: Rural Broadband and Policy Failure in the United States
The Politics of Good Enough: Rural Broadband and Policy Failure in the United States
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足够好的政治：美国的农村宽带和政策失败
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发表时间：
2020
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Christopher Ali
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作者：
Christopher Ali
十多年来，美国城乡数字鸿沟一直是一个政策问题。随着COVID-19大流行和人们在家生活、工作和学习的要求，这个问题变得更加严重。对于4200多万美国人来说，这是不可能的，尤其是那些生活在农村社区的人，他们无法接入高速互联网（宽带）。尽管实施了普及服务的政策，并投入了数十亿美元用于部署，但政策制定者仍无法弥合城乡数字鸿沟。为了理解政策和部署之间的脱节，本文分析了目前由联邦通信委员会制定和实施的美国农村宽带政策。借鉴关键的政治经济学和政策失败理论，我认为农村宽带政策在三个方面失败了：意义、地图和资金。这些失败的发生是因为“足够好”的政治主导了美国农村宽带政策。
The U.S. rural–urban digital divide has been a policy concern for more than a decade. The issue has intensified with the COVID-19 pandemic and the requirement that people live, work, and study online from home. This is not possible for more than 42 million Americans, most notably those in rural communities, who lack access to high-speed Internet (broadband). Despite a policy of universal service and billions of dollars for deployment, policy makers have been unable to close the rural–urban digital divide. To understand this disjuncture between policy and deployment, this article analyzes current U.S. rural broadband policies as developed and implemented by the Federal Communications Commission. Drawing on critical political economy and theories of policy failure, I argue that rural broadband policy has failed in three capacities: meaning, mapping, and money. These failures occur because of a “politics of good enough” that dominates U.S. rural broadband policy.