Page 33 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

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POLITICS, DEMOCRACY AND
THE MEDIA

This chapter outlines the ideal type of society and polity postulated
by liberal democratic theory and how the media of mass
communication may contribute to the smooth functioning of such
societies. We then consider how this ideal has been realised in practice,
a discussion which inevitably requires a critique, both of actually
existing democratic systems, and of the media’s role within them.

THE THEORY OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

The principles of liberal democracy as we understand them today
grew out of the bourgeois critique of autocracy in early modern
Europe, beginning in the sixteenth century and culminating in the
French Revolution of 1789, with its slogan of ‘Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity’. In the political structures of autocratic societies, such
as those typical of the absolutist monarchies of European
feudalism, power resided in the king or queen, whose right to
rule was divinely ordained by God. Subordinate classes—the
peasantry and artisans— were subject to divine order, lacking
political rights of any kind. Even the aristocracy, ‘lording’ it over
the lower classes in society, owed unquestioning allegiance to the
monarch. The institutions of state were directed primarily to the
maintenance of this hierarchical system, and to the suppression
of dissent, from wherever it came.
The emergence of the bourgeoisie (or capitalist class) as the
dominant economic force in Europe and America required the
overthrow of autocracy and its monopolisation of political power.
For capitalism to develop freely there had to be freedom of thought
and action for those with entrepreneurial skills and the wealth to
use them. There had, therefore, to be freedom from the arbitrariness

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