Page 88 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Concepts and Models

Figure 4.1 Relation of Individual Cases to the Three Models.

a particularly contradictory media history, marked by dramatic ups and
downs in the development of the mass-circulation press. Belgium might
be said to have important similarities with the Mediterranean countries
on certain dimensions – the relatively strong involvement of political
parties in public broadcasting, for example. Sweden might be said to
have certain similarities with the Liberal systems – strong insulation of
public broadcasting from political party control, for instance – but also
differsparticularlysharplyinsomeways.Germany,whichwasverymuch
a polarized pluralist system until the stunde null of 1945 (when both the
political and media systems were rebuilt from the ruins of Nazism), is
distinct in important ways from the small democratic corporatist states
of Northern Europe. Spain and Portugal, which had consolidated dicta-
torshipsforhalfthetwentiethcentury,havetobedistinguishedfromItaly
and France, which have a much longer history of democratic politics. We
will deal with some, though certainly not all of these variations among
individual countries in the chapters that follow, and try to show how they
can be understood, in many cases, in terms of the variables introduced
in the preceding chapters.
Figure4.1representsthesevariationsgraphically,showingeachmodel
as one corner of a triangle, and the various countries as points in a space

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