How media and politics shape each other in the new Europe.

• Author: Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina
• Position: DEFECTIVE DEMOCRACIES - Report

Line of inquiry

How well do media theories from the developed West fit postcommunist Europe? Surely since the late eighties of the 20th century to nowadays the evolution of the media in Eastern Europe (EE) was spectacular and often unpredictable for media theorists. In their classic Four Theories of the Press, authors Sibert, Peterson and Scramm (1) famously claimed that 'the press has always taken on the form and coloration of the social and political structures within which it operates. Especially, it reflects the system of social control whereby the relations of individuals and institutions are adjusted'. How does this fit the role that media seems to play in prompting revolutions, insurrections and other forms of rapid political change, a role so obvious in Eastern Europe that it shaped the budgets of democracy promoters donors everywhere for the last two decades? The ascension of Al-Jazeera, ignored for many years by the American government also opened the door to fresh reflection on the influence of media. Some believe that have entered an age where electronic transnational media can be more influential than any government. It can mobilize or discourage government action, but can also play a role towards other politically influential groups: political oppositions, subversion movements and civil society. In American military academies media studies re-experience the flourishing of the Vietnam War days, the previous war lost by US in newsrooms prior to being settled in the battlefield. Media researchers side either with classical theory, which denies much political influence to the media, or new, post-CNN theory, which goes to great length emphasizing it. It is only fair to say that history moved faster than theory and there is considerable catching up to do by scholars in this field.

The history of the media in postcommunist Europe in the last two decades could find an equivalent in a history of the French media between 1788, with the invitation by the King to citizens to address pamphlets to the General States and 1800, with Bonaparte's law, which reestablished control. In between, one can find moments of triumph and moments of agony, journalists rising to be heads of legislatures as well as journalists sentenced by revolutionary tribunals. One needs a broad historical framework to examine the relationship between media and politics before, during and after times of upheaval, or, depending on the point on the time curve a study focuses (ascending-revolutionary or descending counter-revolutionary) results may seriously distort the general picture. Alexis de Tocqueville famously said that the Revolution that began in 1848 was not another one, but another chapter of the one which had started in 1789. This sheds some light on what could be a good time frame to study revolutionary times.

The new era of media influence we entered with the 1989 revolutions is certainly related to technology progress. The main newspaper of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution, Ukrayinska Pravda, was an Internet based publication which had 1.5 million hits a day during the 2004 elections. When Serb authorities cracked down on Belgrade B-92 radio station it could move to the Internet and continue to broadcast. Classic media consumption may be path dependent of the national context (2): however, it is the 'new' media which has a growing public, and the exchanges between the new and the old, as well as directly between new media and politics allow a media system presently to develop more independently from the local circumstances. This gives the media higher potential for playing an influential role and makes it harder to control by traditional means.

To understand the relation between media and politics in postcommunist Eastern Europe this paper builds on scholarship that presumes a two-way relationship (3) and discusses a circular model. It also looks at a broad timeframe, to cover revolutionary aftermaths as well as revolutions themselves. I attempt initially to propose a historical explanation for the birth of free media in postcommunist Europe, and the different paths that national media systems travel from a moment on, as well as the causes of this divergence and of change more generally. Once this framework established, I discuss the direct influence of media over politics looking at two different periods. For revolutionary times, and the influence of media on changing governments, I review briefly the role of the media in the recent 'colored' Revolutions in non-European Union accession countries Georgia and Ukraine. For aftermaths, and the role of media in 'normal' policymaking, I use a survey of cabinet members in ten (postcommunist) new EU member countries.

Divergent Development Paths The fall of Communism triggered intense processes of change across Eastern Europe, especially the part geographically closer to the West and subjected to greater Western influence. The transitions that followed were supposed to accomplish transformations from command economies to market economies and from authoritarian/totalitarian regimes to liberal democratic ones. In fact, even more complicated processes were initiated in order to accomplish these goals. These can be defined as nation-building (agreeing who belongs to the political community), state building (moving from despotic to infrastructural power), and, last but not least, society-building. Out of the social standardization imposed by Communism new social categories were needed to emerge during transition, in order to build capitalism and democracy, the entrepreneurs, the politicians, the journalists. Politicians and journalists are therefore equally newcomers on the public scene of Eastern Europe, at least in the democratic framework, and both the political system and the media system had to be created from scratch.

To what end? Following the fall of Communism, nearly all East European countries embarked in the building of a new, free media. Countries that have made the most rapid progress with the reforms did also privatize the state media, took it off the budgets of the national and regional authorities, and pursued economic and regulatory policies aimed at creating an environment in which the media business could take hold. As in Western Europe, there was one great exception to this- state broadcasting. In the same time, an alternative, unauthorized and unregulated media erupted in many of these countries soon after the fall of the wall, sometimes preceding the privatization of state media.

By 2006, the Freedom of the Press survey captured a mixed picture of postcommunist Eastern Europe. Less than half of the former communist countries are free (EU new members plus a few Balkan countries), with the rest stranded between partly free and not free. If we look back in time, we find Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic evolving from not free to free in the space of only two years (1989-1991), with a year of 'partly free' in between. This is 'revolution'. Countries that secede from federal USSR (Baltics especially) or Yugoslavia also record the greatest evolution for the media during the political upheaval. But later the trends become more mixed, and even revert in some cases. Countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Belarus, the Ukraine have known alternate periods of progress and regress. So trends do not only vary across countries, but also over time for some of them.

By and large, we can identify two first phases common to all the countries, liberalization, or the passage from total control to limited pluralism, with censorship and repression replaced with self-censorship and partial control. The second phase is of deregulation, mixing planned and spontaneous elements. From here on, national paths travel in different directions. The explanation of these divergent paths far exceeds the role of the media and falls within more general democratization theory. The trajectory of a country is greatly influenced by its proximity to the West and all that derives from it (Western interest, affluence of FDI), and of its own social pluralism (development of civil society, itself influenced by a range of other factors). However, it is fair to say, as Way does (4), that a phase of pluralism by default of the early nineties (due mostly to the inability of incumbents to enforce authoritarian rule) is followed by a divergence of paths, postcommunist countries becoming either more democratic or, indeed, more autocratic. I do not discuss...