A Political Scientist’s Contribution to the Comparative Study of Media Systems in Europe: A Response to Hallin and Mancini, paper at workshop at Institute for Mass Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich, Switzerland

The paper provides an overview of the development of theoretical approaches to comparing media systems since Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm’s classic Four Theories of the Press (1956) and in particular provides a critique of Hallin and Mancini’s Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics (2004). The paper accepts that their typology makes a very important scholarly contribution to the systematic comparative study of the relationship between media systems, society and politics. However, it identifies some key weaknesses. In particular, it argues that media systems are not so easily fitted into identifiable models, arguing that they are often more ‘sui generis’ than Hallin and Mancini have allowed. The paper suggests, therefore, that rather than expend time and energy on producing neat typologies, it is better to explore in depth a more comprehensive range of salient political, legal and economic variables that bear on the media system. It applauds Hallin and Mancini’s history-informed approach but suggests that historical institutionalist (HI) theory from political science might be more explicitly employed for the study of the relationship between often highly idiosyncratic national media systems and the socio-cultural and political system in which they embedded.