Page 302 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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TheFutureofthe ThreeModels

restricted(Belgium,Denmark,France,Norway,Portugal,Spain,Sweden,
Switzerland, and the United Kingdom currently ban paid political
10
advertising on television) (Farrell and Webb 2000: 107). Stronger reg-
ulation of broadcast media in general may well also survive the “com-
mercial deluge.” (It is possible, in fact that certain aspects of European
regulatory regimes will increasingly affect U.S. regulation, as well as the
other way around, as the European market becomes increasingly im-
portant for U.S. companies. It may be, for example, that stronger EU
regulations on privacy will eventually affect U.S. regulation of the in-
formation industry.) The European welfare state has clearly been rolled
back as a consequence of the global shift to neoliberalism. But here again
many scholars doubt that complete homogenization is a likely outcome
of this process. Moses, Geyer, and Ingebritsen (2000: 18), for example,
conclude that “the Scandinavian model remains a potent indicator of
the limitations of the powers of globalization/Europeanization, the ca-
pabilities of individual nations to pursue distinct policy strategies, the
capacity of the Left to oppose and successfully counter international
market forces, and the ability of social democratic parties to adapt to the
demand of a changing international order.” The same logic may certainly
apply to Scandinavian media systems. Similarly, Blumler and Gurevitch
(2001) found that, although there were important signs of convergence
between U.S. and British styles of election coverage, the differences be-
tween the United States in the amount of campaign coverage actually
grew between the 1980s and 1990s, as commercialization intensified in
the United States and the culture of public service broadcasting persisted
in Britain.
It is also possible that some of the trends that have led to the conver-
gence of media systems would not only slow or stop but even reverse,
either in general or in particular countries. There is, for example, some
evidence that the decline of political polarization and of ideological dif-
ferences among parties that has taken place in most if not all of the
countries considered here, and which seems clearly to undercut political
parallelism in media systems, has been affected by countertendencies in
recent years. In the United States, for example, according to Jabobson
(2001), partisan consistency in voting and political attitudes declined

10 “In Britain, advertising is a lower-status occupation compared to the higher status that
politicians have traditionally enjoyed, and a legal ban on all political advertising and
radio remains in force despite the recent exposure of British broadcasting to market
forces in many respects” (Blumler, Kavanaugh, and Nossiter 1996: 59).

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