Abstract
Despite the growing interest in the organization and regulation of media industries, there is relatively little public discussion of the material processes through which media policy is developed. At a time of considerable change in the global media environment, new actors and new paradigms are emerging that are set to shift the balance of power between public and private interests in the policy-making process. This article focuses on some core challenges to the pluralist conception of public policy-making that still dominates today and considers whether key aspects of UK and American media policy-making can be said to be competitive, accessible, transparent or rational. Based on interviews with a wide range of ‘stakeholders’, the article assesses the power dynamics that underlie media policy-making and argues that the process is skewed by the taken-for-granted domination of market ideology.
Highlights
The trend in policy-making is towards a more ‘open’ and ‘accountable’ process involving a variety of ‘stakeholders’ engaged in a ‘conversation’ about the future of the media industries
Public policy influence is simultaneously dispersed and contained within these sub-systems. These pluralists argued that any danger of undue private interest group influence would be countered by the openness of, and multiple access points into, the policy-making process, which would add to the stability of the system
In a system described by Theodore Lowi (1979: 51) as ‘interest-group liberalism’, the notion of subgovernments and sub-systems was seen as too rigid and narrow to articulate the pervasiveness of private interests as they were thoroughly mobilized throughout the policy process
Summary
The trend in policy-making is towards a more ‘open’ and ‘accountable’ process involving a variety of ‘stakeholders’ engaged in a ‘conversation’ about the future of the media industries. The policy process is a mirror of US society, itself described as a fairly open ‘mosaic of overlapping groups of various specialized sorts’ (Truman, 1951: 43) This picture of an open yet stable policy system relies on a conception of power as decentralized and multi-faceted: both formal and statutory (as in executive power) and, as Cater puts it (1965: 4), ‘mobile and transitory’ in the bargaining-led atmosphere of sub-government. Despite their emphasis on the dispersed nature of power, the pluralists did not deny that there were inequalities in the political process, that some participants were better resourced and connected than others. These highly specialized ‘issue networks’ were not replacing the more formal and consensual sub-government model but were complicating policy scenarios and increasing unpredictability with their more ad hoc, dynamic and non-consensual style
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