Naslov
Pushing the Croatian PBS over the edge? An assessment of the impact of state aid rules

Autori
Bilić, Paško ; Ondelj, Ivona

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, pp prezentacija, znanstveni

Skup
European Sociological Association / Research Network 18: Media and Communication Research

Mjesto i datum
Bukurešt, Rumunjska, 17.10.2014. - 18.10.2014

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
Institutional instability; organizational routines; unintended consequences; power relations

Sažetak
The media are a complex political, economic and cultural phenomenon that forms one of the foundations of modern societies (Thompson, 1995). A key achievement of democratic development in Europe was the establishment of public broadcasting services (PBS) of electronic communication. The PBS policy paradigm enjoyed the status of national monopoly in most European societies since World War II and until the 1980s (Van Cuilenburg, McQuail, 2003). After that period national policies focused on breaking PBS monopolies through privatization and market liberalization. However, PBS development in post-communist societies is somewhat different. While broadcasting services also enjoyed monopoly status in the communist era, the transition period of the nineties only implied the transformation from state television to public television. Market liberalization in the electronic media sector in Croatia came in the 2000s. The challenges of post-communist institutional change were met with the external environment of rapid liberalization and market expansion promoted by the European Union, regardless of the specificities of post-communist societies. The possibility to reserve special and exclusive rights for the provision of PBS as service of general economic interest (SGEI) has placed special burden of actual protection of general (public) interest when reserving such activity for certain operators. Furthermore, the narrow list of possibilities to remove the PBS from the competitive market arena, next to the wide discretion of the EU Member States when determining the organization and functioning of SGEI, raise the importance of issues set for the analysis. Taking an institutional (Meyer, Rowan, 1977 ; DiMaggio, Powell, 1983) and political economy of the media (Garnham, 1986 ; Mosco, 1999 ; McChessney, 2000) approach we will focus on how the EU policy enshrined in the State aid rules (more precisely in the application of the Article 107 and Article 108 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU – TFEU), tilted the public/private balance in Croatia, resulting in further destabilization of the local PBS in late 2000s and present time. This process shows how an externally formulated policy, not adapted to the actual internal needs and issues of the local PBS, can produce unintended consequences. The danger of poor balance between commercial and general interest was already noted by Habermas (1969) in his seminal book on the public sphere. However, the social context of transition from socialism to capitalism, paralleled with EU accession negotiations, has created an entirely different mélange of media systems in post-communist countries. In this presentation we will focus on the applicability and interpretation of State aid rules in relation to granting special or exclusive rights to provide PBS as SGEI on the EU level. Furthermore, the presentation will focus on the transposition of named rules into the Croatian legal framework, as well as on the practical effects in that regard. Finally, the presentation will elaborate the role and the influence of the Croatian legal framework towards market liberalization and other media policies promoted at the time of its introduction. Issues of institutional instability, organizational routines, and unintended consequences become crucial in explaining these mechanisms.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Sociologija

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