Page 208 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

not necessarily “radical,” nor necessarily as democratic as the ideal he
puts forward: the ties between media and social organizations have pro-
duced pluralism and have guaranteed the representation of a substantial
rangeofinterestsintheDemocraticCorporatistcountries,tobesure,but
also they often have limited pluralism within established organizational
forms. Like other systems explored in this book, the Democratic Cor-
poratist system must be seen simultaneously as a system of democratic
communication and as a system of social and political power.
THE ROLE OF THE STATE. There are two sides to the role of the state in the
Democratic Corporatist countries. On the one hand, traditions of local
liberties and the early triumph of liberal institutions mean that there is
a strong philosophy of limits on state power. This is manifested both
in the early development of press freedom and in the strength of laws
on public access to government information. This tradition was rein-
forced by the emphasis in democratic corporatism on the role of social
organizations, which often assume responsibilities that would otherwise
fall to the state. In the media field, this is evident both in Dutch pub-
lic broadcasting, where responsibility for broadcasting was delegated to
the “pillars” through their broadcasting organizations, and in the sys-
tem of self-regulation of the press, which is shared by almost all the
Democratic Corporatist countries. On the other hand, democratic cor-
poratism involves a partnership between social organizations and the
state, and the social agreement that emerged along with the corporatist
system involved a major expansion of the role of the state in society,
through an expanded welfare state, active industrial policy, and other
forms of intervention. The Swedish concept of the folkhem or the “peo-
ples’ home,” based originally on conservative concepts of national unity
and adapted and popularized by Social Democratic leader Per Albin
Hansson in 1928, as the Democratic Corporatist system was beginning
˚
to emerge in Sweden (Asard and Bennett 1997), was based on the idea
that the state had a responsibility to intervene in the economy and in
many spheres of life to ensure progress and equality. The strength and
the forms of the welfare state and other forms of state intervention have
varied from country to country, and the welfare state has been cut back
since the 1980s, but in general the Democratic Corporatist countries
are marked by an active state. In the 1990s Sweden was first among Eu-
ropean countries in expenditures for general government as a percent
of GDP, followed by Denmark and the Netherlands (Lane and Ersson
1991: 328). As we have seen, this general characteristic of Democratic
Corporatist societies is manifested in strong public broadcasting and

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