Page 83 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Political Context of Media Systems

on comparative politics and political sociology, can be summarized in
terms of five principal dimensions: the relation of state and society, and
particularly the distinction between liberal and welfare-state democracy;
thedistinctionbetweenconsensusandmajoritariangovernment;thedis-
tinction, related to consensus and majoritarian patterns of government,
between organized pluralism or corporatism, and liberal pluralism; the
development of rational-legal authority; and the distinction between
moderate and polarized pluralism. We believe that these, and the re-
lated characteristics of political structure and culture summarized here,
have regular patterns of association with important characteristics of
the media system, and we have summarized the patterns of association
that emerged in our research. The relationships proposed here must be
considered as hypotheses, given the preliminary nature of this research.
Nevertheless we will make as strong a case as we can for them as we
discuss the development of particular media systems in Part II. We have
also argued that these relationships can be traced in large part to com-
mon historical roots that underlie the development of both media and
political systems, including, most centrally, the early or late development
of the bourgeois institutions of market and political democracy.
In the following chapter we introduce the three media system models
that will organize our discussion of the development of particular sys-
tems, and discuss some broad theoretical issues that underlie the analysis
of these three media systems.

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