Postal System, World

The UPU and International Postal Stability

The rise of the nation-state led to the creation of the PPO. A monopoly service was organized within [Page 1360]government, primarily for reasons of national security but also as a source of state income. As nation-states protected their postal self-interests, they interfered with the international commercial aspects of the postal process. The leading commercial nations—Germany, France, Britain, and the United States—collaborated to undo the maze of bilateral postal arrangements that had been inhibiting international trade and commerce in the late 19th century. The Treaty of Bern (1874) created the Universal Postal Union (UPU)—the world's second oldest international government organization (after the International Telegraph Union). The UPU accomplished what individual states could not: It standardized and simplified the postal market and rates, it created a single postal territory for the free transit and the reciprocal international exchange of letters in a uniform manner, and it established and managed a system of financial accounts for balancing asymmetrical international postal traffic. This allowed for the smooth, predictable, and crisis-free growth and development of international postal services and markets. From a founding membership of 22 countries, the UPU now includes virtually all nations. Its stable and successful history is an outstanding example of effective international political and economic collaboration.

Globalization Weakens the Public Postal System

The stability and effectiveness of the international postal regime resulted primarily from the fact that the postal regime was a “public” or government one. The limited set of state postal monopolies at the domestic level and the closed “club” of UPU states at the international level made collective rules and initiated collaborative processes that simultaneously respected their mutual interests. This in turn perpetuated the system and their postal authority while maintaining system stability. This state-based postal regime and its public culture and processes dominated and stabilized the postal world for a century. However, this postal regime—in the advanced countries, at least—has changed dramatically since the 1960s. Under the interrelated impacts of technology, ideology, and globalization, the world postal system has changed increasingly to a private, competitive, and commercial one.

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