Page 49 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

P1: kic/kaa/Ivo P2: KaF
0521828317agg.xml CY425/Esser 0521828317 May 22, 2004 10:57

Americanization, Globalization, and Secularization

communication is being transformed, this cannot be understood with-
out reference to the collapse of this old political order, and its displace-
ment by a more fragmented and individualistic society. Another term
that might help to capture the nature of the change is secularization.Just
as the Church is no longer able to control the socialization or behavior
of populations now attracted to values and institutions that transcend
the field of faith, so parties, trade unions, and other institutions that
structured the political order Lipset and Rokkan (1967) once described
as essentially “frozen” now are not able to hegemonize the course of a
citizen’s community life.
The “depillarization” of Dutch society is perhaps the classic exam-
ple of this change. So-called pillarization indicated the subdivision of
Dutch society into several religious and political subcommunities. The
socialization of Dutch citizens was carried out within these communi-
ties, and they structured both political life and the mass media. “These
pillars have their own institutions: schools, universities, political parties,
hospitals, sport clubs and other associations. It goes without saying that
these various pillars also wanted to have their own daily newspapers and
periodicals (Nieuwenhuis 1992, 197).” “Each member of each minority
couldoperatewithinthewallsofhisorherownconfessionalpillar,which
had its own schools, social facilities, unions, political organizations and
institutions (McQuail 1993, 76).” By the 1970s, “the average Dutch citi-
zenhad become primarily an individual consumer rather than a follower
of a particular religious or political sector” (Nieuwenhuis 1992, 207).
Italian society has gone through a similar change, although at a lower
level of institutionalization. For years political subcultures had highly
developed institutions of socialization, including education, communi-
cation, and entertainment. In the Italian case, this mainly applied to the
Communist and Catholic subcultures (Bagnasco 1977; Marletti 1999).
The first was built on the basis of political and ideological membership,
the second on political and religious membership. Both had ramified
structures that organized the participation of citizens in community life,
often in a clientelist or semiclientelist fashion. The two subcultures had
their own organizations for entertainment and sports and were con-
nected with educational structures; many of their structures served as
vehicles of communication. Over the years, these subcultures progres-
sively weakened, surrendering most of their functions to other institu-
tions, including the mass media.
European societies differed in the extent to which different social
groups developed their own organizations, as well as in the exact form

29