More than a decade has now passed since the implementation of the decision to privatise or restructure the world’s most prominent intergovernmental satellite organisations, namely, the International TelecomA? munications Satellite Organisation (INTELSAT), the International Mobile Satellite Organisation (INMARSAT) and the European Telecommunication Satellite Organisation (EUTELSAT). The ramifications of these notable alterations of international institutions have yet to be fully evaluated. This book, The Transformation of Intergovernmental Satellite Organisations: Policy and Legal Perspectives, is intended to fill this void by analyzing the complicated processes and associated corollaries of the structural reform of these international satellite organisations. It is further considered that the perspectives acquired from the passage of time since these decisions were undertaken facilitate this research endeavour, as distance fosters a clearer assessment of the procedures pursued and their resultant effects. The first chapter, “Neo-liberalism: A Contextual Framework for Assessing the Privatisation of Intergovernmental Satellite Organisations,” seeks to situate the privatisation and restructuring of the ISOs within the larger context of neo-liberalism. In the span of a few short years, these intergovernmental satellite organisations were essentially disbanded as they were simultaneously transformed into private corporate enterprises, owned, no longer by governments and by extension, citizens, but now, in some cases, by mutual fund management companies. This is an expansion of the application of neo-liberal principles, which in the 1990s was evident in the global diffusion of policy to reform and privatise national telecommunications entities. In tracing the evolution of neo-liberal tenets from the 1980s onward, noting its affects on the global economy, developing states, and international institutions, this chapter seeks to employ an international political-economic framework to critically examine the transformation of the former intergovernmental satellite organisations.