Building on a survey of media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies, Hallin
and Mancini identify the principal dimensions of variation in media systems and the political variables which have
shaped their evolution. They go on to identify three major models of media system development (the Polarized Pluralist,
Democratic Corporatist and Liberal models) to explain why the media have played a different role in politics in
each of these systems, and to explore the forces of change that are currently transforming them. It provides a
key theoretical statement about the relation between media and political systems, a key statement about the methodology
of comparative analysis in political communication and a clear overview of the variety of media institutions that
have developed in the West, understood within their political and historical context.
First work to offer a broad comparative analysis of media systems
Worthy successor to the 1950s classic, Four Theories of the Press
Challenges many common assumptions about media systems
Table of Contents
Part I. Concepts and Models:
1. Introduction
2. Comparing media systems
3. The political context of media systems;
4. Media and politics and the question of differentiation
Part II. The Three Models:
5. Mediterranean or polarized model
6. North/Central European or democratic corporatist model
7. North Atlantic or liberal model
