Page 156 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

forsecuritiestradingirregularitiesafterfallingoutoffavorwithPresident
Aznar, who had installed him in that position. Berlusconi has faced
charges on a number of occasions in Italy. This obviously increases the
stakes for media owners – as for other private actors – in having strong
political ties and in seeing the appropriate faction prevail politically. On
the other side, media actors have the ability to pressure political fig-
ures by selectively exposing corruption, thus increasing incentives for
politicians to be concerned about control of the media. The patterns of
politicization, instrumentalization, and state intervention we have seen
previously are clearly rooted to a significant extent in these characteris-
tics of Southern European politics. As the example of Berlusconi’s ties to
the Socialist party suggest, the persistence of clientelism also means that,
although the state aspires to intervene strongly in the media sphere in the
Mediterranean countries, it often fails to act effectively: particularistic
ties weaken its ability to act in a centralized and consistent fashion, thus
contributing to the pattern of “savage deregulation” of broadcasting.
Clientelism is also connected with a political culture that is relatively
cynical about the notion of a general public interest transcending partic-
ular interests. “Savagely closed to the external world,” as Bellah (1974)
putitinananalysisofItaly,thisculture“impliesformsofloyaltytofamily
and clan, to groups of pseudo family like the Mafia, to village and town,
to faction and clique . . . weakening every real commitment to liberal
democratic values.” This view of Italian political culture has been widely
criticized as too simplistic (e.g., Sciolla 1990). It ignores the high (though
uneven)levelofpoliticalengagementdiscussedpreviouslyandthestrong
value placed on plurality and debate, characteristics of Italian political
culture that were just in some sense reaching their peak when Bellah’s
essay was written. Nevertheless it is correct that an important element of
particularism in the political culture of Italy, as of other countries with
strong histories of clientelism, tends to undermine the notion of a tran-
scendent“publicinterest.”This,webelieve,isanimportantreasonforthe
slower development of journalistic professionalism in Southern Europe.
As we shall see in the following chapters, professionalization is connected
in the Liberal and Democratic Corporatist systems with the displace-
ment of earlier patterns of clientelism by rational-legal institutions.

CONCLUSION
The long and conflicted transition to capitalism and bourgeois democ-
racy in Southern Europe produced a media system closely tied to the

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