Page 73 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Political Context of Media Systems

Britain forbade the granting of licenses to churches and political parties.
Scandinavian countries expressly included them (De Bens and Petersen
1992). It should be noted, finally, that in societies that typically have
strong, centralized organizations representing social groups, journalists
will also have such organization. As we shall see, the democratic corpo-
ratist societies of Northern Europe are characterized by a particularly
strong formal organization of the profession of journalism.

RATIONAL-LEGAL AUTHORITY AND CLIENTELISM

Max Weber defined rational-legal authority as a form of rule based on ad-
herencetoformalanduniversalisticrulesofprocedure.Thecharacteristic
institution of a rational-legal system, for Weber, was bureaucracy – that
is, an administrative apparatus that is autonomous of particular parties,
individuals, and social groups, acts according to established procedures
and is conceived as serving society as a whole. Among the key char-
acteristics of autonomous administration are civil-service recruitment
based on merit, adherence to formal rules of procedure, and “corpo-
rate coherence” within the civil-service corps, which enforces adherence
to established procedures and protects the administrative process from
2
outside interference not in accordance with them. The key institutional
development in the formation of autonomous public administration is
the establishment of a civil-service system that governs the hiring, pro-
motion, and tenure of administrative personnel, separating that process
frommonopolizationbyparticularstatusgroupsandfrompartypatron-
age. Historically, according to Shefter (1977), bureaucratic autonomy
originated in the United States and Europe in one of two ways. In some
countriesitbegantodevelopintheseventeenthandeighteenthcenturies,
as monarchs felt the need for larger-scale armies and regulatory appa-
ratuses, and attempted to create “a modern, centralized bureaucratic
state to replace the decentralized standestaat [which involved monopo-
lizationofadministrativepositionsbythetraditionallandholdingclass]”
(417). In other countries it was established in the nineteenth century by a
“rationalizing bourgeoisie,” which sought to provide the kind of flexible,

2 Despite its importance in the seminal work of Weber, the notion of rational-legal
authority does not seem that strongly developed in the contemporary literature on
West European politics. One important recent statement, on which we have drawn
here is Evans (1997). Evans, however, is primarily interested in the development of the
“Weberian state” in newly industrializing countries, and does not deal much with its
different patterns of development in Western Europe or North America.

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