international comm

Media systems in transition: Poland, Russia, China

Colin Sparks*

University of Westminster, UK

This article discusses the transformation of the media system in three countries moving away from the classical ‘‘communist’’ model: Poland, Russia and China. Despite very significant differences, all three of these societies displayed similar starting points in terms of economics, politics and media. The dominant political science tradition has discussed post-communism as part of a more general theory of ‘‘transitology’’, seeing the processes involved in these cases as examples of a world-wide transition from dictatorial regimes towards western-style democracy. An alternative is to see the shift away from communism as an example of ‘‘elite continuity’’, in which the former bureaucratic ruling class attempts to restructure itself as the owners of private capital. The article tests the two theoretical views in these three cases. It is demonstrated that transitology gives very little insight into the prevailing situations, and that the theory of elite continuity accounts much better for major features of the media systems.

Keywords: media systems; comparative analysis; Russia; Poland; China

Introduction 1

After a decade and half of transformation, the former communist states of central

and Eastern Europe and the USSR present a very varied picture. If we widen our

lens and consider the contemporary situation in other states with a similar historical

legacy, most notably China, then the diversity is even greater. There are no agreed

criteria whereby we can measure change with any degree of scientific precision, but a

survey of a range of different approaches to the European cases found that there

were surprising uniformities across them (Berg-Schlosser, 2004). According to this

study, it is possible to group the various countries into four categories which run

through A (Full Democracy: examples include Poland), B (Almost Liberal

Democracy: examples include Bulgaria), C (Electoral Democracy: examples include

Russia) to D (Not Democratic: examples include Belarus). If we are to include non-

European examples, China, North Korea, and Cuba and so on, then we would

perhaps need another category – E (Exceptionally Not Democratic).

These differences, which are clear and obvious to any observer, are so substantial

as to demand explanation, particularly since the starting points, although of course

nationally-inflected, displayed such strong similarities. Why should it be that a group

of countries which 20 years ago shared a similar if not identical political system, a

similar if not identical economic system, and a similar if not identical media system,

today demonstrate such a wide range of political, economic and media forms?

Quirks of accident and individual influence aside, the problems involved are clearly

ones that demand a systematic answer.

*Email: [email protected]

Chinese Journal of Communication

Vol. 1, No. 1, April 2008, 7–24

ISSN 1754-4750 print/ISSN 1754-4769 online

� 2008 The Communication Research Centre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong DOI: 10.1080/17544750701861871

http://www.informaworld.com

This article begins by considering the dominant tradition of thinking about the

ending of dictatorial regimes, which finds its most elaborate theoretical exposition in

political science but which influences many studies that focus more narrowly on the

mass media. It then offers an alternative, the theory of elite continuity, developed in

the study of changes to the media in the western fringes of the former Soviet empire.

It attempts to test the explanatory power of these two theories by considering three

cases: Poland, Russia and China. The changes in the media systems in these three

cases are reviewed and compared with the claims of the two theories. Finally, the

article considers the implications of the findings for more general theoretical

considerations about social change.

Transitology

In political science, there is a well-established paradigm for studying the shift from

dictatorial to democratic regimes. It is usually known, accurately if inelegantly, as

‘‘transitology’’, and it has been developed to explain a wide spectrum of changes

from the end of European fascism in the 1970s, through Latin America and Southern

Africa to the contemporary problems of post-communism. The most famous, if not

the most original, theorist of this school is Samuel Huntington (1991). The aim of

transitology is to explain explicitly political change from dictatorial to democratic

regimes and for them; ‘‘What we refer to as the ‘transition’ is the interval between

one political regime and another’’ (O’Donnnell & Schmitter, 1986, p. 2). The

consensus amongst authors working in this tradition, however much they disagree

about other things, is to follow Schumpeter and to stress a ‘‘minimalist’’ conception

of democracy (O’Donnell, 2000, pp. 6–11). As one author put it: ‘‘a transition to

democracy is complete when: (1) there is a real possibility of partisan alternation in

office, (2) reversible policy changes can result from alternation in office, and (3)

effective civilian control has been established over the military’’ (Przeworski, 1992,

p. 105). In theory at least, issues of social structure are an obstacle to a proper

understanding of political transition: as one writer proudly proclaimed, transitology

‘‘deliberately excludes from [the] basic denotation of democratic government, as a

tactic of inquiry, any references to social structures and socioeconomic relations,

believing that their inclusion is likely to obscure rather than facilitate the scientific

comparative probing of political regimes’’ (Shain, 1995, p. 47). Even more critical

writers, who do acknowledge that democratisation has the potential of profound

social implications, distinguish these issues from the consideration of democratiza-

tion per se (O’Donnell & Schmitter, 1986).

In practice, the model of democratic society is taken from the ‘‘originator’’

countries of North West Europe and North America and it is against the prevailing

conditions there that the process of change in other countries is judged. Such

judgment inevitably involves at least some consideration of factors other than the

process of elections. The first non-minimal factor that is invariably assumed is that

there is an organic connection between democratization and the free market (Linz &

Stepan, 1996). Secondly, there is sometimes a consideration of media performance as

a factor in the exercise of democracy, albeit a rather cursory one. There are one or

two honourable exceptions (O’Neil, 1998; Pei, 1994) but ‘‘Students of democratiza-

tion often assert that a free press is one of the key ‘pillars of democracy’, but this idea

is rarely developed any further’’ (O’Neil, 1996, p. 3).

8 C. Sparks

Implicitly, at least, the model of political change advanced by transitology is that

there are observable twin process of democratic political change and the burgeoning

of market economies. Together, these factors are working to change previously

undemocratic societies in the direction of the political and economic conditions

prevailing in the USA. They are therefore best considered as teleological theories

which claim to identify two linked processes which are working towards a pre-

determined end.

This approach also strongly influences much of the writing about media in

former communist countries. While there are some very important exceptions

(Downing, 1996; Koltsova, 2006; Reading, 2003; Splichal 1994; Zhao, 1998) the

mainstream clearly argues that the key criterion to observe are the extent to which

the media in post-communist countries have evolved towards a state similar to that

prevailing in North America or Western Europe (for example, Gross, 2002;

Jakubowicz, 2003a; Mickiewicz, 1999). In other words, the really-existing media of

different countries are measured against what has come to be known as the ‘‘liberal

model’’ (Hallin & Mancini, 2004).

The problem for this approach is that a gathering body of evidence suggests that

the reality of social and political change is much more complicated, and indeed

contradictory, than is allowed for by the theoretical framework. As one

commentator noted, thinking about these problems should ‘‘start by assuming that

what is often thought of as an uneasy, precarious, middle-ground between full-

fledged democracy and outright dictatorship is actually the most common political

condition today of countries in the developing world and the post-communist world’’

(Carothers, 2002, pp. 17–18). As a consequence, there has been a proliferation of

what has been called ‘‘adjectival democracy’’. The end state has been redefined as a

‘‘liberal democracy’’, which is differentiated from a variety of other states, variously

classified by different authors as ‘‘electoral democracy’’, ‘‘feckless pluralism’’,

‘‘dominant power politics’’, ‘‘sultanism’’, and so on. The seemingly endless

proliferation of different intermediate stages between democracy and dictatorship

not only reduce the elegance of the paradigm but also bring into question its

explanatory power.

The theory of elite continuity

As an alternative explanation of the dynamics of post-communist media systems we

may consider the theory of elite continuity. When studying the complex and

protracted evolution of the media in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and

Slovakia in the first years after the fall of communism, it quickly becomes apparent

that the course of events did not follow the programmes outlined either by the

former dissidents who were now in power nor by the legion of consultants from

western Europe and the USA who were offering them advice as to how to restructure

broadcasting and the press. The very worthy aim shared by almost everyone

involved in the early years of transition might be summarised not too inaccurately as

an attempt to create newspapers like the New York Times and broadcasters like the

BBC (Sparks, 2001). In fact, what emerged were newspapers that were highly

partisan in their orientation and broadcasters that remained closely aligned with the

state rather than the public (Sparks, 1998).

Chinese Journal of Communication 9

In an attempt to offer a theoretical explanation offered for these realities, seven

major components were identified:

(1) The events in central and eastern Europe were genuine revolutions. In most

cases these revolutions were negotiated between a section of the dissident

opposition and the reform wing of the Communist Party, but even in those

cases they represented a clean break in the organisation of political life. The

monopoly of political power held by the Communist Party was broken

both formally and substantially; new political parties were formed and

contested for power.

(2) There was considerable continuity in both institutions and personnel

between the old regime and the new. Institutions like the civil service, the

army and the broadcasters remained substantially intact, both in their

social position and in terms of their internal structure. In broadcasting, for

example, the old state broadcasters were nowhere broken up or privatised.

They remained central to the media systems, and they retained a very high

proportion of their existing personnel.

(3) The shift towards a market economy was a highly political process, with

the award of favourable opportunities being very closely connected to

political power. The licensing of the new commercial broadcasters was a

case in point, where political connections were essential to the winning of

franchises.

(4) The media institutions that emerged from the process of transition were

everywhere strongly influenced by the political elite. This was particularly

obvious in the case of the broadcasters, where regulatory bodies were

recomposed to follow the shifting results of elections. The media had

changed from being a locus of power to one of the stakes of power.

(5) The revolutions were, following this logic, certainly political revolutions, in

that they transformed very rapidly the ways in which the countries in

question were governed, but they were not social revolutions in that they

did not pose any fundamental challenge to the social order in industry or

the state machine.

(6) The main dynamic of the revolutions was that it permitted the old elite

(roughly, the nomenklatura) to transform itself from one that rested upon

the collective ownership of state property, which it guaranteed through its

political monopoly, to one that rests on private property, acquired formally

or informally through the exercise of political power, but sustained

economically in the manner familiar from western capitalist societies.

(7) The degree of democratization, if any, is secondary in this model. While the

shift to individualised private capital certainly implies a pluralisation of

power in the society, it does not automatically follow that this will be

articulated through a democratic framework. In the cases studied during

the 1990s, there was indeed a considerable degree of democratization,

notably in establishing rights to free expression and political association,

but theoretically this remained a contingent feature of the new order, not

its essence.

This theoretical model, which lays its primary stress upon the social continuity in

societies in transition, rather than assuming that the process was essentially one of

10 C. Sparks

democratization, provided a good fit to the events in the first decade after the fall of

communism in the westernmost European communist states. The weakest parts of

the model were, first, that there was then little sociological evidence as to the

personnel shifts in the elite; and second, that the examples studied did not provide

any evidence to test the hypothesis that democratic rule was a contingent factor

rather than an integral part of the process. In all four cases considered, the outcomes

were sufficiently close to at least the Western European model of democracy as to

permit the countries to successfully apply for membership in the EC. In addition, it

was not clear whether the model was specific to its particular time-frame and

geographical focus, or whether it could be extended to explain more generally the

features of transition.

Poland, Russia, China

We may contrast briefly the two different explanations of change along two

dimensions. Transitology is primarily a political theory, but there is a twin process of

marketization and democratization whose outcomes will include independent media.

Elite continuity is primarily a sociological theory in which there is a process of

marketization, but democratization and independent media are contingent and

dependent. We may test the power of these theories by examining the evidence from

various post-communist states.

Comparative studies of the media in different countries face at least three major

problems: establishing the validity of the chosen examples; limiting the scope of the

comparison to allow due weight to distinctive national features; and the choice of

valid indicators upon which to make the comparison. We will consider these one by

one.

The countries selected for this comparison are Poland, Russia and China. The

first case is relatively unexceptional: it is the largest of the eight former communist

countries that have entered the EC. It is rated one of the highest in the classification

of democratic completion discussed above and thus seems to be a case of more or less

successful transition. Russia, again, can be easily justified. It was the core of the old

USSR and is the largest and most powerful of the successor states. It is rated in a

lower category of democratic completion than Poland. It is fairly easy to see how a

fruitful comparison might be made between these two examples.

It is the choice of the third country, China, which is probably the most

contentious; this is a society in which there has been no political transition. The

Chinese Communist Party still holds a monopoly of political power and vigorously

represses any movement that even appears to threaten it. China is, however, a society

that has advanced a long way down the road to marketization, particularly, as we

shall see, in the case of the mass media. In addition, there is strong evidence of a

similar dynamic at work in this case, but it is one that produces a quite different

outcome.

Although the countries had a common starting point in that they shared the

main features of a ‘‘communist’’ system of economic, social and political

organisation, there were, of course, very important differences. Although the ruling

elites in all three countries claimed allegiance to Marx and Lenin, they differed

significantly in their interpretations of what that allegiance signified: the differences

were so substantial that the Chinese used to accuse the Russians of ‘‘the all-round

Chinese Journal of Communication 11

restoration of capitalism’’ and relations were so strained that on several occasions

their respective military exchanged small-arms fire across their common central

Asian border. In both Russia and China, the regimes could make some nationalist

claims to legitimacy, whereas in Poland the Communist Party was widely perceived

as having been put in power by Russian tanks. Following directly from that, Poland

saw by far the largest and most enduring opposition to communist rule, culminating

in the mass movement led by Solidarnosc in 1980–81. On another dimension, Poland

was, as a consequence of Nazi crimes, most horribly the Holocaust, an ethnically

homogenous society. China has important national minorities, some of whom have

aspirations that are politically sensitive. Today’s Russia was then embedded in the

multi-national USSR, as its dominant nationality. Pressures to autonomy and

independence were a central feature of the demise of the old system and remain

major problems up to the present. Again, although none of these countries was rich

and urbanised in the way that the advanced societies of the West are, China was then

a significantly more rural and, as a consequence, poorer country than Poland or

Russia. Given these obvious differences, we would not expect to find a uniform

process of change in all three countries, whatever theoretical model we chose, and

any analysis must be sensitive to the fact that the observable differences need to be

accounted for.

While giving due weight to these factors, we believe that it is still legitimate to

make a comparison between the three cases since the similarities of starting point are

so strong, particularly with regard to media systems. There are several dimensions

upon which we might make comparisons, but the most obvious one is the extent to

which the media carry out the sort of ‘‘public sphere’’ role that is essential to any

theory of democratic polity. Following the hopes of the dissidents, we might ask to

what extent press and broadcast media are able to report and comment freely upon

the doings of the political and economic elites in the manner which, at their best, the

BBC and the New York Times are able to do.

Contemporary discussions of comparative media systems are heavily indebted to

Hallin and Mancini’s work, which was developed in order to consider the media

systems of Western Europe and North America. With some reservation, this

provides a useful starting point for considering how to operationalise our own

geographically and historically distinct concerns. They identify four key dimensions

of media systems along which they may be compared:

(l) The development of media markets, with particular emphasis on the strong or weak development of a mass circulation press; (2) political parallelism, that is the degree and nature of the links between the media and political parties or, more broadly, the extent to which the media system reflects the major political divisions in society; (3) the development of journalistic professionalism; and (4) the degree and nature of state intervention in the media system’ (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 21).

Of these, three seem particularly useful. The issue of the development of a mass

circulation press seems problematic even in their own account, and does not provide

much insight for our purposes: press circulation has been subject to such rapid

changes, in different directions, in all three of our cases, that it is difficult to see how

it might be taken as a distinctive feature. Political parallelism, on the other hand, is a

way of thinking about the extent and manner of the links between media and

political forces that are central to our concerns. Journalistic professionalism, in the

sense of journalists being able to act ‘‘autonomously’’, free from direct intervention

12 C. Sparks

from outside the newsroom is again a valuable consideration in our three cases. The

utility of considering state intervention is, we think, self-evident.

In using all three of these categories, we are not attempting to apply them in

exactly the same way, or with exactly the same content, as do Hallin and Mancini.

On the contrary, we think there are significant ways in which their categories are, no

doubt unconsciously, dependent upon a transitological conception of the media, but

it makes sense, in the interests of developing a common body of knowledge, to follow

them as far as is practicable in the very different environment that we wish to

consider.

Poland

The official media in Poland were, for most of the communist period, very tightly

controlled, but usually, there were also some independent media and independent

discussion tolerated. Since the 1950s, the Catholic Church was able to publish its

own newspapers, and according to Jakubowicz the opposition was able to have a

public presence from the mid-1970s (Jakubowicz, 1991). With the birth of

Solidarnosc, party control over the official press and broadcasting was seriously

challenged, and very radical ideas were put forward for democratising the media

(Goban-Klas, 1994; Jakubowicz, 1995). Martial law ended the open movement but,

according to one estimate, 2,077 underground periodicals were produced during that

period (Jakubowicz, 1991). As a consequence, the reformists inside the party were

able to enter Round Table discussions with the less extreme opposition and reach an

agreement on the transition that included allowing the opposition access to the mass

media (Goban-Klas, 1990).

The media system that emerged out of transition was marked by the survival in

legal form of some of the former oppositional papers, notably Gazeta Wyborcza, and

the controlled privatization of the existing press (Jakubowicz, 1995). The press which

emerged was overwhelmingly ‘‘political’’ in orientation, despite being dependent

upon the market for their survival; many new titles did not survive (Goban-Klas,

1996). The result was that the press: ‘‘helps air diverse views and opinions, but

usually of party elites, rather than their rank-and-file members or of groups in

society in general’’ (Jakubowicz, 2003b, p. 237). Broadcasting, too, has been strongly

marked by political control, particularly of the main regulatory body, the KRRiT.

One recent detailed study found that ‘‘The composition of the KRRit has been

systematically politicized, not only in the sense of who appoints its members but,

more importantly, in the fact that the members have been more or less clearly

affiliated to political parties’’ (Krajewski, 2005, p. 1144). This politicization has

proved not to be a passing phase associated with the immediate post-communist

period: the 2005 incoming Law and Justice (PiS) led government has changed

broadcasting law and imposed its own appointees to leading bodies (PISS, May 19,

2006).

In terms of three categories of comparison, the Polish media is characterised by a

high degree of political parallelism, journalistic autonomy is low, and state (more

properly, government) intervention is very high. The evidence from what is one of

the more successfully democratized post-communist countries does not show the

evolution of an independent media. The media in Poland is certainly highly

marketised and plural, and in that it marks a decisive break from the official media

Chinese Journal of Communication 13

of the communist era, but it remains subordinated to elite groups rather than

developing a public service orientation.

Russia

While there was certainly discontent and dissidence in the USSR, this was not on the

scale of Poland and the initiative for social change appears to have emerged from

inside the party (Ryabov, 2004; White, Gill, & Slyder, 1993). This led to a sharp

division between the reformers (around Yeltsin) and the conservatives (around

Ligachev), with Gorbachev attempting to balance in between (Gibbs, 1999). The

media were able to take advantage of this opening to act more independently, and

many observers see this as the ‘‘golden age’’ of the media, who could pursue self-

determined journalistic objectives while still enjoying the economic security provided

by subsidies (Hagstrom 2000; Ryabov 2004).

As the political crisis deepened after 1990, journalists began to take over their

papers and the failed coup of 1991, which inaugurated the ‘‘Second Russian

Revolution’’ and led to the end of the USSR, confirmed that process. The newly-

liberated press, however, faced serious difficulties. Politically, it owed its position to

the Yeltsin victory and thus found itself taking a partisan stance in his support.

Economically, costs rose sharply while circulation dropped away very quickly and

advertising revenues did not provide adequate compensation. The press faced the

real prospect of bankruptcy and one after another the independent newspapers were

bought up by the new oligarchs, who used the papers to promote their own interests

(Belin, 2002a; Fadin, 2002; Zassoursky, 1999). In broadcasting, the main state

stations fell into the hands of different sections of the political elite and when private

broadcasting began it was dependent upon the same group of oligarchs as controlled

the press. NTV, owned by the oligarch Gusinsky, did engage in some independent

reporting, notably of the first Chechen War, but in the longer term the convergence

of interests between the oligarchs and the Kremlin meant that the 1996 presidential

election saw an orchestrated campaign overwhelmingly in favour of Yeltsin.

In the first five years after communism, Russian media changed markedly, but

the new-found diversity did not necessarily reflect a greater degree of public service:

‘‘what differentiates this situation from the previous Soviet regime is that various

power groups compete in their struggle for resources, thus providing some pluralism

of interpretations that sometimes grows into fierce ‘information wars’’’ (Koltsova,

2001, pp. 322–333). To some observers, this seemed a retreat from the last years of

communism, since the media’s democratizing role had narrowed to that of

supporting Yeltsin and the interests of their owners (Ryabov, 2004).

The period after Yelsin’s re-election in 1996 saw a resurrection of the power of the

state, certainly with respect to the oligarchs whose fortunes had been established

through favourable deals with the weakened state of the previous period. As the state

moved to regain its dominant position, it also attempted to re-assert its own heavily

nationalist definition of the public interest against the private interests of big business.

Yeltsin and his chosen successor Putin launched a campaign aimed at bringing the

media, and in particular television, back under their own close control (Belin, 2002b;

Lipman & McFaul, 2005). The owners of the main national media are very closely

allied with the Kremlin. One consequence is that there has been relatively little critical

reporting of the Second Chechen War, despite its protracted horrors.

14 C. Sparks

The Russian case thus represents, in much more exaggerated form, the same

basic tendencies that are present in Poland. The media are now much more plural in

ownership and no longer depend on subsidy from the state. They are, however, very

clearly in the hands of different sections of the elite, who use their control of media

outlets to bargain with each other over the disposal of material assets and political

power. They demonstrate a very high degree of political parallelism, low journalistic

autonomy, and strong state intervention. Very far from representing the interests of

the public, they are entirely beholden to the state and its wealthy allies, and they are

used as political instruments to sustain the power of that bloc.

China

The obvious distinctive feature of China is that the Communist Party, with around

70 million members, is in rude health and continues to enjoy a monopoly of power.

At the same time, there has been a very rapid and highly successful move in the

direction of the market economy, with notable progress in the case of the media,

both press and television. The Party, through the Central Propaganda Department,

and its local branches at all levels, continues to control the content of the mass media

in considerable detail (Brady, 2006). At the same time, as all serious observers would

agree, the overwhelming majority of the Chinese media have become increasingly

market oriented, indeed market dependent (see, for example, Lee, Zhou, & Huang,

2006; Polumbaum, 1994; Wu, 2000; Zhao, 1998).

The route to this state of affairs dates from the initial opening of the economy to

elements of the markets in 1978. The social changes that this development entailed

generated a lively intellectual ferment, particularly amongst journalists, and the

reformists in the party encouraged more critical and investigative reporting (Pei,

1994; Polumbaum, 1990). This period is another one of those ‘‘golden ages’’ in which

journalists enjoyed increasing political freedom while retaining economic security,

and in which semi-independent newspapers like the World Economic Herald were

founded (Hsiao & Yang, 1990). This ferment culminated in the Tiananmen Square

events of 1989. The student-originated demonstrations quickly pulled in other

sections of society, including many journalists whose slogans included specific

demands for press freedom (Gittings, 2006; Goldman, 1994). China’s 1989

democratic movement however, unlike Poland’s, was crushed: the hardliners won

the internal party struggle and used force to clear the square. The dissident

journalists were fired and the semi-independent papers were closed down (Goldman,

1994).

The deaths, arrests and beatings did succeed in silencing the internal opposition,

but they did not end the process of marketization. Instead, there was a pause up to

1992 and then the process was renewed at an even faster pace. As the economy has

grown, the Chinese media have expanded to cater to a vast range of different tastes

in much the same way as any other media driven by advertising and circulation

revenues. Alongside domestic and imported entertainment shows, there is a well-

documented tradition of investigative reporting that survived the crackdown in 1989.

This reporting is not merely tolerated by the Party, albeit within carefully defined

limits, but actively encouraged by it: ‘‘In contrast to Western media portrayals of

maverick Chinese journalists challenging the Party line from below and from the

outside by discussing hot social issues and official corruption, the most significant

Chinese Journal of Communication 15

step towards the rise of watchdog journalism was initiated at the top of the Party’s

propaganda hierarchy’’ (Zhao, 2004, p. 55).

The question of professional orientation amongst Chinese journalists is a hotly

contested topic. At one pole there are those who see Chinese journalists as

influenced by western journalistic examples while attempting to find ways to reach

an accommodation between their professional desires and the concrete reality of

their situation. Younger journalists in particular ‘‘interact with the commandist

institution and ‘negotiate’ the boundary of the official ideology by broadening the

sources of symbolic resources and by diversifying social practices within the

official ideology’’ (Pan, 2000, p. 75). On the other hand, there are researchers who

argue that the Party has managed to reach an accommodation with journalists so

that as they ‘‘became economically privileged in the 1990s, they became

increasingly apolitical and contented with the status quo’’ (Lee, He, & Huang,

2006, p. 60). In between a position that recognises that while journalists in the

1990s and 2000s were among the beneficiaries of increasing wealth, and that this

had led many of them to confront, there remain many who are prepared to risk

punishment in order to carry out investigative reporting (Zhao, 2004). This is

particularly likely if the reports go beyond criticising individual abuses and expose

the weaknesses of the system (Zhao, 2005). What none of these authors claim,

however, is that Chinese journalists are able to exercise professional autonomy:

the arguments are over the degree to which journalists are both willing and able to

negotiate fleeting spaces for autonomous action that correspond to a professional

orientation.

The Chinese case, while displaying clear differences, thus has much more in

common with the Polish and Russian cases than might strike the casual observer.

Again, we find a pattern of political parallelism, although in this case there is only

one pole of legal political life upon which all media are dependent. We find an

absence of journalistic autonomy and strong state intervention in the media.

These three examples clearly bear some resemblance to Hallin and Mancini’s

‘‘polarised political model’’ or what Splichal, extending earlier work by Mancini, had

a decade before identified as the ‘‘Italian’’ model of media (Splichal, 1994). Despite

the different trajectories, and most notably the fact that the Communist Party

remains in power in China, there are some surprising parallels between the

developments of the media in the three countries.

Explaining the changes

The evidence confirms the increasing difficulties that are encountered in using the

model of transitology to account for current development. In particular, the claim

that there are two closely related developments – democratization and marketization

– cannot be sustained. In all three cases there has been a strong marketization, and

this may in fact have gone further in China than in the other two cases, and in Russia

there has been something of a retreat towards state media. On the other hand, this

has not correlated with any clear pattern of democratization. Even in the best case,

Poland, the media remain intensely politicized and partisan, and there is little

pretence at public service. In Russia, the media is dependent either upon the political

elite or upon its closest business associates and they use this control for their own

factional purposes. In China, the party retains ideological control of the media and

16 C. Sparks

continues to use it for its own dictatorial ends. It is thus difficult to sustain any of the

three main claims of transitology:

(1) There is no clear and unequivocal evidence of ‘‘progress towards

democracy’’. If anything, the Chinese case demonstrates how enduring

dictatorial regimes can be even in the face of rapid social change, and the

Russian case suggests that there are circumstances in which the increased

democratic role of the media can be halted or even reversed.

(2) There is no clear and unequivocal evidence of ‘‘progress towards market

reform’’. There has certainly been a great deal of movement in this direction

in China, but in both other cases large sections of the mass media do not

follow market logic in any serious sense. Again, the Russian case suggests

that this process is a reversible one.

(3) There is no evidence whatsoever of any correlation between marketization

and democratization, at least with regard to the mass media. The Chinese

case demonstrates that one can have rapid marketization, including the

floating of important parts of the media system on the stock market,

without having any relaxation of authoritarian control. The evidence,

indeed, is that in the last couple of years, alongside a continuation of

marketization, there has been an increase in political control.

To note these realities is not to claim that in any case either the societies under review

or their media system have reached any stable and enduring conclusion to the

process of change. On the contrary, there is every sign that in all three cases there

remain powerful, if contingent factors that could transform the situation.

Particularly noteworthy in this respect is the evidence of mass discontent in China,

particularly in the countryside and among laid-off workers, who regularly and

frequently break out into demonstrations and rioting. According to one report,

‘‘demonstrations of discontent are on the rise. In 2004, the Public Security Bureau

reported that the number of ‘mass incidents’ had risen to 74,000. In 2005, the

number jumped another 13%’’ (Kwong, 2006; Liu, 2005). Similar upheavals are

naturally also possible in the other two cases, although the new regimes there have

been remarkably fortunate in avoiding mass opposition from the victims of market

reform (Crowley, 2001; Ost, 2001).

The elite continuity model works very much better to explain some but not all of

the changes in these three cases. The notable failure is in the claim of the necessity of

a political revolution to break the power of the Communist Party. The case of China

conclusively demonstrates that it is possible to move from state-based property to

privately held property while the Communist Party continues to hold a monopoly of

political power. The other (partial) failure lies in the claim that it would be the

political elite who influenced the media in this process of change. While that

hypothesis is clearly supported by the Chinese case, it is contradicted by the Russian

case. While it is true that the economic and political elite are very closely linked in

the Russian case, it is clear that in any power struggle between the two it is the

political elite that is triumphant, but they are clearly distinct groups. We are

therefore obliged to abandon the hypothesis that a political revolution is essential to

the ending of communist regimes, and to modify the hypothesis of the influence of

the purely political elite to allow for the influence of both political and economic

elites. The latter can be understood as being characteristic of the initial phase of

Chinese Journal of Communication 17

transition, when state property must be converted into private property. This can

only be carried out with consent, either through positive legitimation or negative

indifference of the state machine and thus of the political elite who control it. As the

private ownership of what was previously state property becomes naturalised in the

hands of the economic elite, so that group develops an increasing degree of

independence from the political elite and their interests, as articulated through the

mass media, can come to diverge and even clash.

The group of hypotheses that deal with continuity have, in general, been

confirmed. There is clearly strong institutional continuity in the media systems in all

three cases. The evidence now available also demonstrates not only was there

considerable continuity amongst the media personnel in all three cases but at the

same time there was a high degree of elite continuity throughout the societies,

demonstrating a shift from political to economic power. Empirical studies in Europe

have as their main finding a high degree of elite continuity (Higley, Kulberg, &

Pakulski, 2002). In the case of Poland, a study based on data from 1999 found that

‘‘the present elite has its roots in the former system’’ (Wasilewski, 2000, p. 214). The

degree of continuity is much more marked in the business than in the political elite,

and the new elite were mostly drawn from the second rank of the old nomenklatura,

but the degree of continuity is marked in all spheres. In the case of Russia, the degree

of continuity was even higher than in Eastern Europe (Steen, 2003). By the mid-

1990s, ‘‘The distribution of power … appears to have been completed and with the

‘‘Second Russian Revolution’’ has come to an end. It was a revolution in which the

younger generation of the nomenklatura ousted its older rivals. In effect, it was a

bourgeois revolution, in that it led to a change in the socio-political system in the

direction of private property and political pluralism’’ (Kryshtanovskaya & White,

1998, p. 98). In China, too, the evidence is that Party officials have systematically

used their power to enrich themselves, their friends and their families (Greenfield &

Leong, 1997; Ho, Bowles, & Dong, 2003; Lau 1999). According to one survey, 30%

of private entrepreneurs were party members (as opposed to around 5% of the

population as a whole) and ‘‘roughly half the privatised firms may have ended up in

the control of CCP members’’ (Pei, 2006, pp. 93–94). Liu reports that:

A research report entitled ‘‘The Present Economic Situation of All Classes of Society’’ was recently produced jointly by the Central Research Office, State Council Research Office and Chinese Social Sciences Academy. The version for internal circulation reveals that at present China have 5 million people with assets of 10 million Yuan or more. Of these, 20,000 people have assets of at least 100 million Yuan. Among those with assets of at least 10 million Yuan, the report’s survey found that more than 90% were from the elite clans of the Chinese Communist Party. Only 5.5% were rich by virtue of being related to persons or operating businesses outside of China and only 4.5% became rich from their own efforts. According to scholars who specialize in researching the highest levels of government, more than 200 ‘‘Princelings’’ currently hold positions in the upper levels of the government (Liu, 2003, p. 75).

Overall, in all three cases, there is strong evidence not only that the institutions of

social power survived the different processes of change but that the personnel who

inhabited them, notably the institutions of economic power, also remained

remarkably similar.

One criticism that might legitimately be levelled at the continuity thesis should

be noted here. While the thesis is correct in emphasising continuity both of

institutions and of elites, it did not give due recognition to the degree to which

18 C. Sparks

there was also renewal. It is obvious from the figures above that the new elites,

while heavily drawn from the old nomenklatura, also involve new forces who were

previously outside of the circles of social power. Similarly, we can point to new

institutions – Gazeta Wyborcza for example, or the metropolitan dailies in China –

that have developed as a result of the process of transition. What remains

unknown, at least for the time being, are the origins and trajectories of these

newcomers. In some cases, they will certainly be relatives, friends and business

associates of the old elite, but a complete picture would certainly reveal other

interesting dynamics of the process of transition.

The hypothesis that democratization was only a contingent element in this

process has, rather unfortunately, been confirmed. Even if we accept that Russia

would meet the formal ‘‘minimalist’’ definitions of democracy beloved of

transitologists, this is certainly not the case with China. The social nature of

transition, the shift from state control of productive property to private control of

productive property, and the consequent direct introduction of market relations into

the internal working of the economy are clearly parts of a political process in which

the state sets the rules for privatization (or neglects to notice wild privatization –

a.k.a. theft). What is not the case, however, is that this requires the formal political

processes that are entailed in democratic government: in fact they can be achieved by

more or less informal bargaining process. In China, these have been conducted

entirely under the auspices of the Communist Party, and in Russia they took place

out of public view in the chaotic years around 1991. Poland, and by extension other

Eastern European countries, emerges not as the normal pattern of post-communism

but as one particularly privileged variant of a process that can, and often does, take

darker forms.

Conclusions

The attempt to test the relative explanatory power of transitology and the continuity

thesis with regard to post communist societies demonstrates the superiority of the

latter. It is possible to extend its range to cover both a broader group of countries

and a longer time span than were considered in the original formulations, and it

appears to be predominantly successful in explaining important features of

transition. It offers a way of understanding change in general, and change in the

media in particular, which allows for the range of observable outcomes and provides

an explanation as to why they have such strongly marked common features. To the

extent that it must be modified to account for the evidence, it is in a direction that

strengthens its explanatory power: the fact that the existence of a revolutionary end

to communist power and the consequent installation of democratic procedures are

not a necessary element in the transitional process gives greater weight to the

dimension of continuity. In contrast, the transitology model provides very little

purchase on the cases under review and fails particularly miserably in its assertion

that there is a necessary link between democratization and marketization.

The theory of elite continuity thus seems right for extension. So far it has only

been applied to cases originating in communism, but these are far from being the

only examples of transition that require analysis. Indeed, as we saw, transitology was

born from the consideration of quite different cases (notably in Southern Europe and

Latin America) and it is logical to examine whether elite continuity theory can

Chinese Journal of Communication 19

successfully challenge transitology on its own ground, so to speak, or whether the

processes are so distinct as to require different theoretical frameworks in order to

explain them. At first glance, it is likely that in these cases the fact that there already

was a separation of political and economic power before the fall of the dictatorships

(i.e. they were, in the jargon of transitology, authoritarian rather than totalitarian

regimes) means that evidence of elite continuity in the economic and social sphere

would be more prominent than in the cases we have considered here.

Finally, the success of the theory of elite continuity raises a very general question

of social theory. The majority of accounts, from Brzezinski on the right to Mandel

on the left, have held that communism and capitalism are fundamentally

antagonistic social systems with nothing significant in common. One might expect

to find within a stable, democratic capitalist society, the USA for example, that there

would be considerable elite continuity over time, since there is no question of

systemic change. But if transition means the shift between different systems, then

findings of elite continuity should be puzzling, as indeed many commentators have

found it: ‘‘To the surprise of most observers, the collapse of communist rule involved

no comprehensive turnover of elites. The founding of democratic regimes has instead

been accompanied by a marked continuity in elite composition’’ (Higley, Kullberg, &

Pakluski, 2002, p. 35).

If, as we have seen, the transition from one to another can be managed, not

without great misery and too many deaths, but without fundamental social turmoil,

then we have to ask whether the theorists who stressed the fundamental

incompatibility between communism and capitalism were in fact correct.

Obviously, the systems have differences, but if the main common feature of the

transition is that the new elite is derived so substantially from the old elite, then to

what extent can it be maintained that the systems are antagonistic? If the communist

editor or producer can so easily become the capitalist editor or producer, if the same

stations and the same papers can continue to thrive under both regimes, to what

extent are we dealing with fundamentally different forms of society? If, as it

transpires, we do not need to hypothesise a revolution for one system to be

transformed into the other, perhaps it might be better to consider their similarities

rather than their differences. Answering these questions is far beyond the scope of

this article, but they go to the root of our understanding of the last century and the

prospects for this century. Within our narrower field of concern with the media, they

strongly suggest that a great deal of the debate over the relative merits of state and

market in the provision of democratic information were, not so much mistaken, but

certainly over-inflated. The search for a media system that does not, in one way or

another, answer to the elites in society demands a different starting point.

Note

1. This article includes material from three widely different countries. I should like to make it

clear at the outset that I am making no claims to being an expert on the media systems of

the countries in question, and indeed I am unable to speak their respective national

languages. I am greatly indebted to the following colleagues, who can claim to be experts in

particular fields, and who gave generously of their time to comment on my drafts and to

correct some of my more egregious errors: Dr Karol Jakubowicz, Dr Olessia Koltsova,

Professor Miklos Sukosd and Dr. Xin Xin. They are not, of course, at all responsible for

any remaining errors, or for the judgments expressed in this article.

20 C. Sparks

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