Page 37 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third 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
• Discusses how the media of mass communication may
contribute to the smooth functioning of such societies
• Presents some of the main criticisms of the media’s role in
modern democracies.

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

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