Date: 2016
Type: Thesis
Internet privacy in the European Union and the United States : three essays on privacy, the Internet, politics, implementation, business power, and surveillance in the European Union and the United States
Florence : European University Institute, 2016, EUI, SPS, PhD Thesis
ROSSI SILVANO, Agustín, Internet privacy in the European Union and the United States : three essays on privacy, the Internet, politics, implementation, business power, and surveillance in the European Union and the United States, Florence : European University Institute, 2016, EUI, SPS, PhD Thesis - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/43369
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This dissertation is a collection of three stand-alone papers each making distinct contributions and addressing different, but closely related, empirical puzzles that contribute to the literature on Internet privacy. The first article starts by exploring some of the tangible consequences of the Snowden revelations and challenges the common-wisdom culturalist theories of Europe’s privacy regime. Then, the second article offers a new explanation of the origins of America’s privacy framework that also defies conventional culturalist explanations. Finally, the third article closes by offering a novel implementation and policy design analysis of the American and European privacy regimes. Each article employs slightly different research methods and uses different yet compatible and complementary theoretical frameworks. In general, this dissertation adopts an institutionalist perspective studying how and why certain institutions change, and “why some flourish in some context and/or why some die out in others” (Steinmo, 2003a). The first article focuses on institutional reform, and resistance to institutional reform by corporate actors, following Culpepper’s quiet politics framework (2011). The second article, borrowing from Steinmo (2003b) and Blyth (2002, 2011), discusses the interaction between ideas and institutions, following perhaps the clearest institutionalist narrative of all the pieces of this dissertation. The third article, building on Rothstein’s general theory on implementation (Rothstein, 1998) discusses the implementation and policy design of the European and American institutions for the protection of privacy.
Additional information:
Defence date: 19 September 2016; Examining Board: Professor Sven Steinmo, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Alexander Trechsel, European University Institute; Professor Henry Farrell, George Washington University; Professor Bastiaan Van Apeldoorn, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/43369
Full-text via DOI: 10.2870/587160
Series/Number: EUI; SPS; PhD Thesis
Publisher: European University Institute
LC Subject Heading: Privacy, Right of -- Europe; Privacy, Right of -- United States; Data protection -- Europe; Data protection -- United States; Internet -- Social aspects