Political Culture Ainius Lašas Senior Research Fellow ‘Media a d De ocracy i Ce tral Easter Europe‘ ERC funded project Pillar 4 – Final Report September 2013 This report summarizes the main findings of the research conducted within Pillar 4 of the MDCEE project, entitled Political Culture The primary focus of this research area was to map out popular values and attitudes related to democratic governance among Central and Eastern European countries and to examine to what extent and how these are manifested in the democracy-media nexus. The findings indicate that the democratic cultures of Central and Eastern European countries do not fall into a single and unique post-Communist category, but are distributed along a continuum also encompassing older EU democracies. Still, in the ‘average’ CEE democracy, informal rules and practices compete with formal rules and laws in defining the day-to-day nature of interactions between political and media elites. The case study of Lithuania is used to illustrate how these informal competing practices function in reality. The evidence suggests that the locally owned mass media of the majority of new EU democracies lack transparent and ethical standards of practice. They are not only the object, but also the subject of political instrumentalisation and corruption. With foreign media leaving the region en masse since the 2008 financial crisis and local businessmen taking over their assets, the prospects for the media to act as an independent and professional watchdog one of the key normative functions in a democracy - look increasingly grim. At the same time, the case of Estonia demonstrates that positive and sustainable change is possible. Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe An ERC Project based at the Department of Politics and International Relations of the University of Oxford in collaboration with the Department of Media and Communications, The London School of Economics and Political Science http://mde.politics.ox.ac.uk/ MDCEE Final Reports 2013 1. Introduction This report represents Pillar 4 of the MDCEE project, entitled Political Culture. This pillar was not a part of the original proposal. Although an appreciation of the relevance of political culture in the media-democracy nexus was common to all project participants from the very start, its importance grew exponentially as research progressed. In March 2012, the project Page | 2 team organized a conference on Media, Democracy and Political Culture at the University of Perugia in order to explore how cultural norms and practices inform the qualities of media and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond. Following the conference, Pillar 4 emerged as a distinct line of research for the MDCEE project. The research agenda of this pillar was driven by two fundamental observations made by the research team, which are broadly in line with academic literature on democratization. First, informal rules and practices lie at the core of policy formation in the majority of CEE countries. Second, in many cases these practices are in competition with formal laws and rules, creating and imposing alternative rules of policy and business making. The exploration of informal CEE political and media cultures and their impact on democratic governance presented unique research challenges because of the hidden nature of the phenomenon and the scope of the comparative analysis. To overcome these and other constraints, it was decided to pursue a mixed methods strategy. On the one hand, using publicly available survey data, Pillar 4 mapped out popular democratic values for all EU countries over the last 20 years. This work provided an understanding of the nature of CEE democratic culture, the patterns of its distribution over time and space, the degree of its similarity to older EU democracies and how popular values related to political and business elites. On the other hand, the pillar presented an in-depth case study of informal politics- and media-related practices in Lithuania. The country represents a rather typical CEE mass democratic culture and as such provides an illuminating example of how the politics-media nexus functions in practice. Although the specific patterns of observed behaviour may not always be illustrative of other CEE countries, the underlying behavioural norms and dispositions seem to permeate the majority of CEE countries. Because of that, this report provides important insights concerning the nature of effective democracies in the region. 2. Informal vs. formal The Eastern enlargements of the EU and of NATO have become symbols of the relatively fast and successful democratic transition of ten Central and Eastern European countries. Their accomplishments have been favourably compared to those of a number of South American countries which underwent a similar transition, but with less impressive results (Hochstetler 2010; Schneider and Schmitter 2004). While many challenges remain in the new EU countries, the overall democratic progress since the early 1990s appears to be undeniable in both absolute and relative terms. Many traditional quantitative measures of democratic institutionalization find relatively small differences between CEE and older EU countries. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Based on these numbers, it may be tempting to extrapolate a trend of growing similarity between the two regions in terms of the underlying democratic and media cultures. At the same time, the electoral successes of populist political leaders (and their parties), who seem to have little respect for democratic norms and values, regularly tarnishes the perception Page | 3 of successful CEE transition. And this is the case not just with such almost ‘inherently’ problematic cases as Romania, but also with Poland, Hungary, Slovenia or Lithuania, which in the late 1990s many political scientists considered to be classic success stories. So what exactly has happened or not happened which led to these various kinds of reversal? Why have CEE media remained highly vulnerable to political pressures and willing to embrace various illicit practices? Why are the transition success stories in CEE prone to sudden shifts towards populism and even authoritarianism? This is especially puzzling because immigration – one of the usual culprits blamed for the rise of populism in Western Europe (Goodwin 2011) - is a non-issue in CEE domestic politics. Migrant flows to CEE have remained relatively low and been mostly from poorer neighbouring countries (Mudde 2012: 13). I shall argue that extrapolations of a growing similarity between the new and old EU countries (excluding Southern Europe) are premature. The diminishing presence of Westernbased media companies (Stetka 2012), which were more likely to act as independent watchdogs on CEE governments, only further compounds the problem. The formal rules and institutions may have undergone significant positive changes during the last twenty years of transition, but the informal (actual) political culture of CEE is far from converging with that of Western Europe. The crucial importance of informal practices, especially those in competition with formal rules, can best be illustrated by mapping effective and institutional measures of democracy against Press Freedom scores.1 Following Welzel (2007), the effective democracy measure is constructed by multiplying the Freedom House Democracy Index by the Corruption Perception Index. This allows us to weigh formal institutional change against changes in political practices. Figure 1 illustrates the difference between the two measures of democracy in relation to press freedom for 2008. The Freedom House Democracy Index registers relatively few institutional differences between countries in CEE and in the rest of the EU, which is reflected in overlapping square-shaped data points. This is in line with findings that only three CEE countries – Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania – can be regarded as still in the process of democratic consolidation (Merkel 2011: 65). 1 Helkme and Levitsky (2004) distinguish four types of informal institution: complementary, accommodating, competing and substitutive. Competing informal institutions are conceptualized as resulting from a combination of the ineffectiveness of formal institutions and divergent outcomes. While this report focuses on a more general level of analysis, i.e. popular democratic culture and its linkages with informal elite practices, the case study of Lithuania (presented later in the report) also bears witness to the existence of rudimentary informal institutions, with their own shared rules and enforcement mechanisms. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Figure 1. Press Freedom vs. Effective Democracy/FH Democracy Index(*), 2008 50 45 RO RO* Press Freedom 2008 40 BG 35 BG* IT GR PL 30 25 SK HU CZ LV 20 LT 15 SI ES PT IT* GR* AT FR EE 10 DE IE BE LV* ND DK LU SE FI 5 0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Effective Democracy & FH Democracy Index* 2008 However, the incorporation of the corruption measure noticeably alters the picture. The apparent convergence in democratization becomes more heterogeneous, but maintains a strong linear relationship to press freedom scores.2 This illustrates the importance of informal practices in understanding and explaining the relationship between the media and democracy. Where informality is minimal, institutional structures and rules are a fair reflection of the actual situation on the ground. But as competing informality becomes an increasing part of the (mass and elite) democratic culture, political and economic elites engage in practices that distort and undermine the democratic system of governance. In the same way, despite popular expectations of the mass media as an independent watchdog on “the full range of state activity” (Curran 2002: 217), this cannot be approached in isolation from broader democratic practices. 2 The relationship looks similar in adjacent years since annual changes in scores are incremental. Page | 4 MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Informal competing practices are conceptualized as being in a trade-off relationship with formal rules, i.e. they offer alternative paths of decision-making and lead to different outcomes (Helmke and Levitsky 2004: 729). The nature and dominance of the former define the relevance of the latter to state-media relations. Informal competing practices may or may not involve illicit behaviour, but, when present, they always become alternatives to formal rules. This is especially symptomatic of the situation in Central and Eastern Europe, where Page | 5 most institutional rules and structures were adopted en masse following the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The same did not happen at the level of societal values. The process of cultural change was much more gradual and chequered both among ordinary citizens and among political elites. CEE societies represent systematically mixed democratic and political cultures, which, using Almond and Verba’s (1963: 23-26) categorization, can be defined as variants of subjectparticipant cultures. These are cultures where “a substantial part of the population has acquired specialized input orientations and an activist set of self-orientations, while most of the remainder of the population continue to be oriented toward an authoritarian government structure and have a relatively passive set of self-orientations” (25). As discussed later, this also applies to political elites. In such a society, and especially in its more extreme subjectdominated manifestation, the efficacy of the chosen formal structures depends less on their intrinsic features and more on the nature of informal practices and norms. As noted by Almond and Verba, these can also be quite politically unstable since the electorate and political elites shift back and forth along the subject-participant continuum. This framework rejects a standard assumption that media systems are largely shaped by the nature of political systems (Hallin and Mancini 2004: 49-51). In Central and Eastern Europe, the two systems co-evolved following the collapse of the Soviet bloc and their actual practices depended on broader democratic values and the presence of alternative business (and media) cultures in the form of committed Western investors. While political elites had formally been in charge of legislative processes and shaped business and media environments, their actual practices of law-making and oversight varied in accordance with the modes of media ownership. In public broadcasting, political elites had more opportunities to act unilaterally, while private-sector actors were able to flatten the hierarchy and influence politicians on their own terms or to cooperate with them. Foreign-owned private media had the additional potential advantage of being in a financial and cultural bubble, which partly sheltered them from local political and economic pressures. Figure 2 presents a general conceptual framework of how CEE media-state relations evolved and how media and state co-defined each other. Dashed lines indicate indirect effects, while unbroken lines indicate direct effects. I shall argue that mass values inform the practices of political and business (including media) elites. The shared cultural context defines both elements, while elections, protests, etc. are an additional form of influence on the practices of political elites. As mentioned earlier, private media, and especially foreign-owned media, have more freedom of MDCEE Final Reports 2013 choice as to how to respond to political practices, while public broadcasting is largely dependent on opportunity structures available to the political establishment. The former can even actively shape political practices and put political pressure on their own terms, while the latter, due to financial and legal constraints, can at best hope to withstand political pressures. 3 In addition to this, there are indirect feedback loops in this triangular model. The behaviour of political elites has an impact on societal values, especially on such variables as trust in Page | 6 public institutions. Also, exposure to traditional and new mass media indirectly impacts societal values in its own right. Such values may include, but are not limited to, popular attitudes concerning women rights, homosexuality, divorce, etc. In order to demonstrate this complex interdependent relationship at work, I first map out democratic culture in CEE by examining data from three European Social Values surveys 1990-1993, 1998-1999 and 2008-2009. For comparison, I also provide calculations for Western European and Southern European countries. This exercise is crucial for understanding both the intricacies of the CEE democratic culture and how it has evolved since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Figure 2. General theoretical framework Democratic popular culture & values Locally owned private media 3 Practices of political elites Foreign-owned private media Public broadcasting An obvious exception to the observed tendencies is private media owned by politicians. In such a case, media outlets serve as propaganda tools for the politician-owner, his/her political party and for the promotion of any other political or business interests of the owner. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Second, I explore the relationship between popular and elite levels in terms of democratic culture in order to understand the extent to which popular values are reflected among political elites. Since the corruption measure, used in calculating effective democracy, is one of the Page | 7 very few quantitative measures of informal institutions, I also use the case study of Lithuania to examine the practices of political and business (media) elites.4 The data was collected through confidential interviews with high-level former and current PR specialists, former politicians and managing editors. At the same time, the case study is used to demonstrate how political elites interact with mass media management and owners, and how media content is affected by this interaction. I argue that specific informal practices that are a part of popular culture and elite culture in Lithuania play a decisive role in the ability and willingness of the media to carry out their statutory watchdog functions. Having explored the interconnectedness of popular values and the practices of the mass media and of political elites, I pose a more normative question: what kind of democratic culture is necessary for the mass media to carry out their statutory functions? I base this answer on the case of Estonia, which is arguably one of the most successful and robust cases of democratization in Central and Eastern Europe. 3. Democratic culture In one of the latest progress reports on Romania and Bulgaria under the Co-operation and Verification Mechanism, the European Commission (2013) reiterates its concerns about the enduring disrespect for the rule of law among political elites. This is ‘old news’ for most scholars who closely follow developments not only in Romania, but also in the rest of the post-Soviet region. Concerns over improper political practices in Central and Eastern Europe have been voiced since the start of the transition (Karklins 2005; O’Dwyer 2004; Rose 2001; Schopflin 1991). And the issue has not lost any of its acuteness in recent years. However, the systematic measurement of such practices and the tracking of their longitudinal dynamics have proved challenging due to their covert and sometimes idiosyncratic nature. Since investigations of political informality in CEE require specific expertise and substantial resources, many scholars and analysts prefer to rely exclusively on quantitative indices, Following institutionalist tradition, I conceptualized institutions as “game rules” (North 1990). In contrast to formal institutions, informal institutions are not officially codified, but actual behavioural patterns. For the purposes of this study, I am interested in two informal institutions – clientelism and corruption, which are in a conflicting relationship with formal ones, i.e. where the former displaces the latter (Lauth 2000: 25). 4 MDCEE Final Reports 2013 which are mainly based on expert evaluations. Another approach to the examination of the quality of democracy and democratization is the analysis of value orientations. What do these have to do with informal political and business (media) practices? More than may appear at first sight. Page | 8 Informal practices are often a product of societal values. And values in turn are a part of culture. In this particular case, the focus is on the aspects of the culture that reflect the nature of society-state relations. The preferred term ‘democratic culture’ thus refers not only to purely political orientations, as does the widely used term ‘political culture’ (or its subcategory ‘civic culture’), but also to other related attitudinal and behavioural dispositions with regard to the role of self and others within a society. Whether it is a matter of trust in political institutions, cheating on taxes or gender equality, each of these elements directly relates to the nature of democracy in practice or, in other words, to democratic governance. While the list of relevant factors may never be fully defined, some of its key elements are discussed later on the basis of current literature. The underlying assumption behind the relevance of democratic culture in understanding the functioning of the state is twofold. First, mass values directly shape democratic election outcomes, which ‘produce’ a significant part of national political elites. Second, and related, political elites in turn tend to reflect dominant societal values, or at least the values of their electorate. As decision-makers, they practice on a daily basis beliefs and values whose impact is proportional to the scope of the issues at hand. Thus, dominant societal values are amplified and intensified because of the access to power. This acts as a multiplying effect. If a given society, for example, tends to tolerate and accept bribery, the likelihood of such practices among political elites becomes a certainty. And this is not only because voters will not bother to ‘kick the rascals out’ in the next election cycle, but also because the overall risks of being caught and then punished according to the letter of the law are relatively low. The reverse is also true. In societies with very low levels of tolerance for competing informal practices, corrupt politicians risk not only their lifelong reputations and careers, but also their personal freedom and even the confiscation of their material assets. The same logic applies to business elites, which include mass media management and owners. To the extent that a given media market is dominated by locally owned media outlets or indifferent foreign owners, its practices should largely reflect prevalent societal values. Formal rules are of secondary importance because they do not define actual media behaviour. As Dennis McQuail (1992: 111) notes, “media freedom cannot be established by constitutional or legal decree, but has to be constantly developed and re-affirmed in daily practice.” Thus the first challenge is to map the kinds of democratic practices or cultures that exist in the CEE region and, for comparative purposes, in the whole of the EU. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Which particular aspects of democratic culture are the most relevant? Building on Wenzel’s typology (2007), I single out nine attitudinal dimensions: trust in state institutions, tied to sociotropic associations, solidary behaviour, personal autonomy, gender equality, lifestyle tolerance, people’s voice, political interest, and pro-democratic preferences.5 Each of these Page | 9 represents a set of studies that has demonstrated the relevance of these value orientations to the nature of the state regime and the functioning of the state. A number of studies on CEE mass attitudes have touched upon some aspects of these dimensions (Halman and Voicu 2010; Klingemann, Fuchs and Zielonka 2006). However, to date there is a dearth of systemic research on the longitudinal dynamics of democratic culture in CEE countries and how they compare to older EU democracies. To what extent and in what direction has democratic culture changed in CEE over the twenty years of transition? How do these cultural changes (or does their absence) compare with the dynamics in older benchmark democracies? Is CEE becoming more or less like older European democracies in terms of its democratic culture? What are the major vulnerabilities and strengths of CEE democratic culture? Which particular CEE countries exhibit most ‘progress’ on these four meta-dimensions? Are there any regional or legacy-based patterns? Over the last twenty years of transition, CEE democratic culture has remained largely unchanged. There are only two aspects out of the nine measured – gender equality and interest in political affairs – where clear region-wide changes have taken place. In the latter case, the marked contraction of political interest in the 1990s may be attributed to the political euphoria of the 1980s. The fact that the CEE numbers remained quite stable in the last two EVS surveys seems to confirm this impression. On a positive note, most CEE countries have made significant progress towards convergence with Western Europe in terms of gender equality. As is evident from Figure 3, the largest leap took place in the 1990s, and since then progress has slowed. Throughout the whole period of transition, Slovenia has maintained the most progressive stance on gender equality, with Lithuania and Poland trailing at the rear of the pack. There is also a slight positive change in trust in state institutions at the regional level. Since the change primarily occurred in the 2000s, when most CEE countries experienced rapid economic growth, its long-term sustainability remains in question. In principle, there are only two countries – Latvia and Estonia – where trust in state institutions has grown consistently over the last twenty years. Slovenia deserves a mention as well because of its relatively high levels of trust. Granted, the Baltic republics started from a very low position in 1990, but their progress appears to be the most robust. Estonia in particular stands out from the crowd, since its 2008 levels of trust are the closest to the WE average. On other hand, Bulgaria is the 5 See Appendix A on how each set of attitudes has been constructed. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 most problematic case, since its levels of trust have contracted by half over the twenty years, with no signs of recovery. While the average number, for those people tied to sociotropic associations in the CEE region overall, indicates no meaningful changes, the country-level data deserves closer attention. Page | 10 Estonia and Slovenia noticeably increased their percentages of people tied to sociotropic associations, while the Czech Republic managed to maintain relatively high levels as well. In all three cases, the numbers do not quite reach the WE average (which is skewed by very high Danish and Dutch percentages), but they fall within the lower range of the WE distribution. On the other side of the continuum are Poland and Hungary. While both started with very low figures in 1990, they managed to lower these even further during the period of transition to a meagre 2.5% and 4.7% respectively. Figure 3. CEE democratic culture, 1990-2009 state trust 80 prodemocratic members sociotropic solidary behavior pol interest 0 people's voice personal autonomy CEE 1990 CEE 1999 lifestyle tolerance gender equality CEE 2008 MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Figure 4. EU democratic culture by region, 2008-09 state trust 80 prodemocractic members sociotropic Page | 11 solidary behavior pol interest 0 personal autonomy people's voice CEE lifestyle tolerance WE gender equality SE When comparing the 2008 democratic culture indicators across regions, it becomes apparent that Central and Eastern Europe and Southern Europe still lag behind Western Europe (Figure 4). In five out of nine parameters, the laggards are culturally closer to one another than to Western Europe, if measured by a simple distance measure. In 1999-2000 the overlap was even smaller, with all but two criteria falling out of the pattern. However, some of these differences in distance are minor and should not be exaggerated. The 1990-2003 data sounds another note of caution, since it provides a rather mixed picture, without any clear patterns of regional overlap. Still, it looks as if many CEE and SE countries have relatively fragile and vulnerable democratic cultures. Because of this, they arguably remain more susceptible than most of their West European partners to sudden disruptions of the democratic order. Is it possible to pinpoint any particular measures of the democratic culture that can be treated as bellwether indicators of a country’s vulnerability or robustness? When combined by adding them together, tied to sociotropic associations, trust in political institutions and people’s voice provide the most consistent and robust correlation with the effective democracy variable among CEE, WE and all EU countries (see Figure 5). 6 6 Appendix A reports 2008 bivariate correlations between effective democracy and a number of democratic culture variables, including constituent variables of the combined measure. The results are also quite similar for 1999-2000. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Figure 5. Effective democracy vs. joint measure of democratic values, 2008-2009 Page | 12 To illustrate how these three measures vary over time, I take Estonia’s and Bulgaria’s democratic culture indicators for three EVS time periods (see Figures 6 and 7). The former is widely considered one of the most successful cases of democratization, while the latter is arguably among the least successful in Central and Eastern Europe. Although the figures indicate a number of different dynamics, I focus on the three measures of interest. In Estonia and Bulgaria, each of these reveals a more or less consistent, but contrasting pattern. Estonia exhibited robust growth, especially during the 2000s, while Bulgaria regressed in the 1990s and hardly changed during the 2000s. If compared to the rest of CEE, Estonia’s 2008 levels of trust in state institutions represent the single most unique feature of its overall profile of democratic values. No other CEE country was able to generate such high levels of institutional trust. While this is likely the consequence of the relatively efficient and transparent public sector in Estonia, it also empowers the government to conduct necessary reforms and to react quickly to a changing international environment. Domestically, the high levels of trust in state institutions may have contributed to the re-election of the governing coalition in 2011, despite the painful consequences of the 2008 financial crisis. In contrast, the Bulgarian government not only struggled in handling the crisis, but also with people’s anger about mismanagement and corruption. In early 2013, mass protests led to the government’s resignation and the announcement of early elections. The electoral campaign was littered with allegations of fraud and the atmosphere was one of voter apathy. If the 2011 Estonian elections saw the highest turnout since 1995, the turnout in the 2013 Bulgarian elections was the lowest since independence. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Figure 6. Estonian democratic culture, 1990-2009 Page | 13 state trust 80 prodemocratic members sociotropic solidary behavior pol interest 0 personal autonomy people's voice Estonia 1990 lifestyle tolerance gender equality Estonia 1999 Estonia 2008 Figure 7. Bulgarian democratic culture, 1990-2009 state trust 80 prodemocratic members sociotropic solidary behavior pol interest 0 personal autonomy people's voice Bulgaria 1990 Bulgaria 1999 lifestyle tolerance gender equality Bulgaria 2008 MDCEE Final Reports 2013 So far we have established the existence of close linkages between effective democracy and press freedom, and between effective democracy and the combined measure of democratic values. Because press freedom is not meant to measure media culture and practices, but rather the degree of state interference in the media, its correlation with the combined measure of Page | 14 democratic values is expected to be weaker. Still, in 1999-2000, the bivariate correlation reached -.73, while in 2008-2009 it dropped to -.66. These numbers can be further improved if, following the concept of effective democracy, the Corruption Perception Index is combined with the Press Freedom scores. But at this point there is already statistical evidence of the co-variation of the three measures: press freedom, effective democracy, and democratic values. These bivariate correlations suggest that political and media cultures are integral parts of mass culture. 4. From interdependencies to practices The establishment of the general interdependence of media and political cultures is a useful start, but it says nothing about the actual practices and the nature of interactions between mass media and political realms. Current literature on media and democratization in Central and Eastern Europe tends to assume that political elites seek to influence, capture or colonize the media (Bajomi-Lázár 2013; Mungiu-Pippidi 2008). These atavistic tendencies, to borrow Jakubowicz’s (2008) terminology, allegedly became apparent as post-Communist states sought to untangle themselves from total media ownership and oversight, and began to create new legislative frameworks for the mass media to function in. The way political elites used (and continue to use) these channels of influence has defined the state of media affairs. In contrast to this perspective, I shall argue that it is necessary to distinguish between public and private media. In the case of public media, there is a systemic power asymmetry that creates opportunities for political influence and even capture. On the other hand, private media, and especially foreign-owned media, have more opportunities to stand up to political pressure and in fact to put pressure of their own. In order to demonstrate these practices at work, I begin with the case study of Lithuania. In terms of its democratic culture, it can be treated as a rather typical example of the CEE region. It does not stand out as a leader (like Estonia) or as a laggard (like Bulgaria). More often than not, it is somewhere in the middle of the CEE pack and that is the strength of the case study. I only focus on how private media management and owners interact with political elites. Obviously, the case is context-specific and its particular practices should not be readily generalized across the whole region. Nevertheless, it shows that, given the strong presence of locally owned media groups and a fragile democratic culture, private media owners can become key power brokers in a democracy. Their informal practices can be as sinister and as damaging to democratization as those of political elites. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 The starting point for the case study was two publicly available documents that testify both to corrupt media practices and to the ability of Lithuanian media owners to leverage their power in public affairs. The first document is a 2007 Transparency International survey of 502 highlevel Lithuanian business people about media transparency, together with a compilation of Page | 15 articles (Juozapavičius 2007). The survey results indicate that the national and regional mass media routinely engage in shady business deals, offering hidden advertising and promotional pieces for their clients. The respondents encountered such practices most frequently in the national press (42.5%), the regional press (33.6%), and in national TV (28.5%). According to them, the most corrupt media outlets were the locally owned Respublika media group and the Lietuvos Rytas group, followed by other mostly local press and TV channels (2007). The compilation of articles attached to the survey highlights similar issues, with one of these reporting the results of a separate 2005 study on hidden advertising practices in the Lithuanian media. Having analyzed three separate publications (the dailies Respublika and Lietuvos Rytas and the weekly Veidas), the author concludes that readers are being cheated in favour of the interests of business, government and political groups. He finds extensive evidence of hidden advertising, use of fake journalist names, and a rather poor quality of content (Širvinskas 2007). The findings seem to be broadly in line with recent reports from an anonymous media watchdog group, Parsidavusi Žiniasklaida (Sold Media), which tracks and posts on Facebook instances of hidden advertising in the Lithuanian media. The second document is a confidential report by the US embassy in Lithuania entitled Lithuania’s Corrupt Media Hurts Everyone, Including U.S. Businesses (US Embassy 2011). In June 2011, this document became available to the public as a part of the Wikileaks scandal. The report paints a bleak picture of local media owners and de facto editors, who constantly target politicians as well as businesses, demanding financial support in exchange for favourable coverage or the absence of negative coverage. As the Prime Minister’s advisor, Vilius Kavaliauskas, has remarked, “you must buy the right not to be attacked.” Like the survey, the report highlights locally owned media, and especially the Respublika media group, as the most corrupt and problematic. Using this material as a stepping-stone, I conducted 24 confidential, in-depth interviews with high-level political, PR, media and business officials in Lithuania in order to further probe the extent of the media’s corrupt practices and their effects on democracy.7 In all cases, the 7 Four interviewees indicated their willingness to talk on record. Since the majority appeared to be more comfortable with an off-record strategy, I chose to keep all material confidential in order not to raise unnecessary speculations about information sources for particular examples of informal practices provided below. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 interviewees were chosen because at some point in time they had held (or still hold) key posts and were able to see at first hand how the media, politicians and/or businesses interacted. Among them were current or former editors-in-chief, former or current heads of PR agencies, political campaign advisors, CEOs, members of parliament and others. The interviews were conducted throughout 2013. Page | 16 One of the key reasons for choosing the off-record interview strategy was a rather guarded nature of on-record responses by CEE elites conducted during the first years of the Media and Democracy in CEE project. Often the interviewees acknowledged the existence of various informal practices, but tended to associate them with other rather their own organizations. The advantages of this approach were further highlighted by the fact that most interviewees provided a rather consistent story about the problems and challenges of the Lithuanian mass media. They argued that the mass media were both object and subject of corrupt informal practices in Lithuania that destabilize democratic processes. Based on the interviews and on publicly available material, I shall describe the five most prevalent patterns of private mass media behaviour, where they often act as agents with their own interests (usually economic ones) at stake. Each of the patterns is illustrated with examples. If an example had never been reported in the media, I anonymised it by removing any names in order to protect the confidentiality of the sources. Only two examples are provided for each pattern presented, due to the constraints of space in the report. 1. Local media owners and management blackmail both businesses and political actors in pursuit of financial gain. In some cases, they act as co-conspirators, in others as the initiators of deviant practices. Example 1a. On February 13, 2006, the Labour Party, headed by politician, media owner and businessman Viktor Uspaskich, paid 344,550 LT (roughly 100,000 Euros) in black money as subscription fees to the daily Respublika. Another payment to the same media group was made barely a month later in the amount of 405,450 LT (Želnienė 2012). The receipts for these payments have been used as evidence in the ongoing trial of the Labour Party for tax evasion. According to two sources in the Labour Party, these were standard practices in order to ensure an absence of negative coverage and, when necessary, positive coverage for the party. Since the party’s establishment at the end of 2003, its leadership had been actively buying media favours. Initially, they used PR agencies and other personal connections in order to gain the trust of local media power brokers. Later, as the party’s profile and political leverage grew, the leadership made deals directly with media owners. The presence of such practices is also confirmed in the already-mentioned US embassy report. One of the Labour Party officials complained about the discriminatory practices of the daily Lietuvos Rytas, which demanded 25,000 litas (~7,000 Euros) from his party for a MDCEE Final Reports 2013 favourable article, while offering the same service to the Social Democratic Party five times more cheaply. The official accepted the practice itself as common and only complained about the unfair treatment. Example 1b. Until recently, there were two instances in Lithuania where a major shareholder in a media group was also an owner of a basketball club. Since running a basketball club Page | 17 entails significant financial investment, it is not uncommon to leverage media power in dealings with companies that for a variety of reasons decide not to support the basketball club. According to an interviewee, who was directly involved in the discussions regarding funding, the editor-in-chief of the media group called him to discuss the issue. During the phone conversation, the editor talked about the possibility of publishing some scandalous material about the owner of the company, if they decided to terminate financial support. In the aftermath, the owner met with the editor-in-chief and resolved this issue to the satisfaction of both parties. Although the details are not entirely clear, it is very likely that the owner used other companies owned by them to provide the demanded funding. 2. Political parties use funding from ministries’ and publicly owned companies’ PR budgets in order to buy favourable media coverage for their ministers and for the party, and/or to reward their business clients. Since EU membership, the practice has grown exponentially as governmental ministries became some of the largest (indirect) buyers of media advertising. Example 2a. On 28 June 2007, the Chief Official Ethics Commission of Lithuania issued a decision accusing the Minister of Agriculture, Kazimiera Prunskienė, of misusing the ministry’s funds for self-advertisement purposes. The minister sued the Commission and won her case because formally she had not broken any rules. However, the report provided numerous examples of how national and regional media were paid by the Ministry to repeatedly and unequivoically praise the politician and her allegedly wonderful deeds. The paid publications usually included pictures of the politician provided by the Ministry itself. In 2007, the Ministry of Agriculture alone allegedly spent 9.5 million litas for such advertising/PR purposes (Baublys 2009). The Commission also investigated identical practices at the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Social Security and Labour, and the Prime Minister’s Office. The head of the Commision, Jolanta Petkevičienė, argued that the current rules regulating ministerial PR practices were very mild and lax, “providing ample opportunities for ministers to use budgetary funds for self-advertisement” (BNS 2008). Example 2b. One of the interviewees, who oversaw the publication of special argiculturerelated sections of a daily, argued that these sections were created with the sole intention of absorbing EU funding from the Ministry of Agriculture. Although the daily had a very limited rural readership - the primary target readership of the section - this fact did not bother MDCEE Final Reports 2013 the ministry or the management of the daily. Most of the articles were written in standard bureaucratic language with little appeal to readers. The interviewee was certain that almost nobody read the articles, but they served their purpose for both sides: the daily received financial support, while the ministry was spared any criticism in the daily. According to Dainius Radzevičius, Chair of the Lithuanian Journalists’ Union, some Lithuanian Page | 18 newspapers have up to 80 percent of their content paid for by the ministries.8 3. Local media owners and management put pressure on journalists (or editors) to report on particular topics, institutions, companies, parties or personalities in a tendentious way. Journalistic professionalism is subject to economic or other interests of owners. Example 3a. In summer 2009, one of the largest Lithuanian banks, Snoras, acquired 34% of the Lietuvos Rytas media group shares. It became the largest shareholder in the media company. Two years later, Snoras was facing financial troubles of its own. With the threat of nationalization looming over the bank, the daily Lietuvos Rytas, which is widely regarded as the newspaper of record, published an anonymous and highly controversial leading article entitled Order: Trample Lithuanian Banks, accusing the government and the President of a conspiracy to bankrupt one of the four banks owned by Lithuanian businessmen (Anonymous 2011). The following day, the government was forced to make a move and take over the insolvent bank. The daily Lietuvos Rytas continued with a series of distinctly biased articles giving a voice to the owners of the bank and accusing the government of intentionally robbing the bank. According to the head of the Lithuanian Journalists’ Union, Dainius Radzevičius, the conduct of Lietuvos Rytas demonstrated “the perversion of the mass media” in Lithuania (BNS 2011). Many interviewees referred to this situation as a clear example, where the media outlet represented the interests of its owners and ignored all basic standards of journalistic profesionalism. Example 3b. Anonymous high profile political commentary can also be found in the daily Lietuvos Rytas. Media analysts and practitioners have questioned the existence of columnist Algis Tilindis, who regularly writes on the most pertinent foreign and domestic political issues (e.g. Sakadolskis 2008). Since May 2007 there have been 53 columns written by Tilindis on the lrytas.lt news portal, which tend to consistently endorse certain politicians (e.g. former president Valdas Adamkus) and viciously attack others (e.g. current president Dalia Grybauskaitė). Rival media owners and their companies (e.g. Darius Mockus of MG 8 Interview with Dainius Radzevičius, Chair of the Lithuanian Journalists’ Union, 28 September 2010. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Baltic and Bronislovas Lubys of Achema Group) have also received a regular dose of contempt.9 Aside from the fact that the Lithuanian journalistic community has never personally met Tilindis, another proof of his non-existence is provided by the daily itself. Since August Page | 19 2012, the columns have been accompanied by the author’s picture. It is rather easy to find out that the picture in fact comes from the 123rf stock photography database, where there are many more pictures of the same model for sale by a photographer with the pseudonym ostill from France (see Appendix C for comparison of the two pictures). The practice of publishing some of the most controversial and politically explosive material using pseudonyms or no by-line at all is not limited to one daily. In March 2008, another major daily, Lietuvos žinios, published an article entitled Valstybės užvaldymas (State Takeover), where it was argued that a specific interest group, described as “statesmen”, were conspiring to take over the governance of the state (see footnote 5 for more details). The article was written by a previously unknown journalist, Mindaugas Velička – a name which, as the chief editor of the daily himself publicly acknowledged just two weeks later, was just a pseudonym (Sakadolskis 2008). Despite this acknowledgement, the name was subsequently used by the daily on at least 17 further occasions. 4. Some political parties and politicians directly or indirectly own media outlets and actively leverage them for self-promotion purposes. This is especially common among smaller regional press. Example 4a. Two members of the Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania Party (EAPL) – MP Michal Mackevič and MP Vanda Kravčionok – are stockholders of Rejspa Ltd, which publishes a weekly regional newspaper distributed in the Vilnius region. The newspaper has a Polish edition of 2,645 copies and a Lithuanian edition of just 250 copies. According to an investigative report by Vilniaus Diena (Vilnius Daily), in 2012 this weekly won a PR tender by the EAPL-controlled Vilnius district municipality council for 680,000 Litas (196,000 Euros) and was on the way to win another identical tender in 2013. Curiously, two thirds of this sum was awarded to the Lithuanian version of the weekly. Counting per 9 The columnist does not express a particular partisan position, but rather represents what is sometimes described as a “statesmen” interest group. This is a rather loose network/coalition of high profile government officials, diplomats, politicians and academicians, who allegedly seek to dominate policy-making. The years of Valdas Adamkus’ presidency are usually considered the zenith of their power. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 copy, the advertising rates for this negligible Lithuanian version reaches astronomical sums, but it appears to have a very specific purpose. The PR tender can be easily tailored for this publishing company in order to weed out any potential competition and to make sure that this publisher ends up being the sole bidder for the tender. This was the case in 2012 and 2013. Finally, the weekly itself made financial contributions to the EAPL party in 2011. As noted by the investigative report, the weekly’s content is very supportive of the EAPL, which is of Page | 20 little surprise given the overlap between the party and the weekly (Jačauskas 2013). Example 4b. The Labour Party leadership took up an ambitious media development and acquisition strategy in the late 2000s. Since the mid 1990s, the future Labour Party leader Viktor Uspaskich had already controlled a regional TV channel Kėdainių Krašto Televizija, and a regional newspaper, Rinkos aikštė, through his family business group, Vikonda. In autumn 2010, roughly half a year before the municipal elections, the Interneto Žinios company, whose majority ownership stake is also held by Viktor Uspaskich, established ten news portals purporting to be the websites of different Lithuanian municipalities. By 2012, the company controlled at least 20 such websites (MoC 2013). When it comes to politics, their content is openly pro-Labour Party and most banner ads feature Labour Party leaders. All these websites have now been brought under a relatively popular online news portal balsas.lt, which is owned by the Balsas.lt Leidiniai media group. At the end of 2010, it acquired one of the largest national weeklies, Valstiečių laikraštis, (Peasants Newspaper). Analysts (Vireliūnaitė 2012) and journalists who used to work for this group (Širvinskas 2012) link it with the Labour Party. In fact, the journalists argued that most editorial decisions in the Balsas group were made only with the supervision of a current Labour Party MEP, Vitalija Vonžutaitė, who used to work for the group (Pečeliūnienė 2012). In 2013, Ms. Vonžutaitė and Mr. Uspaskich, were found guilty of organizing and running a tax evasion scheme for the Labour Party, which included payments to mass media.10 Another member of the Labour Party, and a member of the Širvintai municipality council, Ms. Živilė Pinskuvienė is the sole owner of a semi-weekly regional newspaper “Širvintų kraštas.” The newspaper provides a frequent and exclusively positive coverage of the politician and her party. Over the last two years, on average, there were 3.4 articles a month mentioning the owner. For a publication that has only eight editions a month, this ends up being almost every second edition of the newspaper. Usually, such articles present Ms. Another indication of the tight linkage between “Balsas.lt leidiniai” media group and the Labour party was the fact that in the late 2000s, the group was headed by Ms. Kamilė Buranskaitė, who was both a member of the Labour Party and its youth organization Darbas. In 2011, she unsuccessfully ran in local elections as a Labour Party’s candidate. Such indirect evidence is necessitated by the deliberate masking of the true owners of the group. For example, since 2012 the official owner of this large media group is Mr. Darius Kavaliauskas, a mysterious Lithuanian who lives in Ireland. He was not known to the journalistic community as a business or media owner before. Other media owners mask themselves by establishing foreign companies and listing them as owners in the government registry. 10 MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Pinskuvienė as an energetic leader of the opposition, fighting relentlessly against inefficient and irresponsible local government. 5. Because of economic pressures, such as the 2008 financial crisis or unfavourable changes in the media policy environment, the mass media can become more open to compromising Page | 21 journalistic ethics and/or more vulnerable to manipulation by major advertisers. Example 5a. According to an interviewee, who was an editor of a daily, the 2008 economic crisis put a lot of financial pressure on the publication. Although most journalists did not enjoy writing articles or conducting interviews containing hidden advertising, this was a standard practice at the daily. Such articles were considered the ‘gold standard’ because they were perceived as most persuasive to readers. Another alleged reason for the practice was to avoid extortionist demands by rival media outlets, which would contact the sponsor and ask for advertising in their publications. If refused, the outlet would threaten potential clients with a public smear campaign. The content of such publications was usually co-written and approved by the sponsor. This also meant that the company was immune to negative coverage by the media outlet. The interviewee was not aware of any case where a journalist had refused to write such material. In fact, journalists were aware of the fragility of their job situations and acquiesced with such requests from management. Since most of them did not want to be associated with these rather crude articles, the practice of using pseudonyms became increasingly common. This is true of many, especially locally owned, newspapers. Some of these names have been outed by a media watchdog group (Taškauskas 2013). One such name, independently confirmed by two sources, is Egidijus Saladžius, a ghost journalist on the daily Lietuvos rytas. Since September 2008, Saladžius has written 28 articles on the lrytas.lt news portal. In 17 cases, the articles were exclusively focused on a company, product or service promotion. An additional seven cases involved policy lobbying on behalf of companies or business associations. Two more articles can be classified as containing both elements at the same time. And finally, yet two more articles relate to inter-organizational disputes, where only one party received exclusive and favourable coverage in the daily. Although the majority of the featured sponsors are private companies and business associations, there are state-owned companies (e.g. Lithuanian Railways) and governmental agencies (e.g. Directorate General of State Forests at the Ministry of Environment) featured as well. None of these articles has contained any indication that it was paid for (in cash or favours). MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Most interviewees argued that publishing articles or preparing TV reports in favour of a particular client had been, and still was, a standard practice in the Lithuanian mass media, especially in locally owned media outlets. In comparison to standard advertisements, mass media outlets charged more for the preparation of such news-like items. The only disagreement among the interviewees was about when such practices became commonplace: Page | 22 in the early 1990s, the mid-1990s or the late 1990s. Example 5b. An interviewee noted that although online news services presents an excellent opportunity for establishing effective grass root news reporting, based on information provided by the readers, a media organisation, for which they work, suppresses any readers’ complaints about their major advertisers. The interviewee recalled one occasion when they were following up on a complaint and made a phone call to a company. Barely half an hour later, they received a phone call from the advertising division requesting to drop this investigation. According to the source, the advertisers became increasingly intolerant of any criticism. This trend has gained momentum during the financial crisis and continued since. 5. Generalisations Based on this case study of media, state, and business relations in Lithuania, I draw six conclusions. Because of data limitations, it is impossible to judge the extent of such practices in the CEE region or beyond. Still, this case study demonstrates the negative potential of the media as the Fourth Estate. Just as in the recent Murdoch hacking scandal in the UK, they bear witness to the power that the media can achieve in public affairs and the importance of owners to their day-to-day operations. First, in a democracy, the mass media can become strong and independent power-players, taking care of their own economic interests. Their power stems from their ability to obtain and maintain a significant segment of the media market. Second, more often than not media power-players are local media owners, who intentionally maintain a very weak or no divide between themselves and the editorial staff. Foreign-owned media, whose parent companies nurture journalistic professionalism, tend to live within their own media culture bubble and less frequently to engage in illicit practices. Third, because of their control of communication channels, the mass media can have unprecedented leverage over political and economic spheres and use this to destabilize and distort democratic processes. This leverage also relates to a widespread belief that the media have the ability to make or break public figures and even companies, and to more general patterns of political culture.11 Fourth, excessive media reliance on blackmail and shady cooperation deals with businesses and political parties or 11 According to the above-mentioned survey by Transparency International’s Lithuanian Office, 91% of respondents believed that the mass media could destroy the reputation of any person or business. See Juozapavičius (2007: 6). MDCEE Final Reports 2013 politicians can noticeably degrade the quality of a media outlet and have negative implications for its circulation figures. Competition from new and respectable foreign-owned media provides additional strain for local media power-brokers. Thus, the process is dynamic and not necessarily locked into these corrupt patterns of behaviour over the long term. Fifth, in a society with relatively weak democratic values, political parties and even individual politicians can literally own a substantial segment of the private media market and effectively Page | 23 operate this as a propaganda tool for their own political and economic ends. This is not necessarily media colonization through political influence, but simply its acquisition and the imposition of partisan editorial policy. Such a situation pushes other political players to seek covert cooperation with influential media groups in order to counterbalance communication disadvantages. As one party communication strategist acknowledged, the greatest challenge for his/her political party was to have “your own media”, i.e. strong media outlets that would consistently present and defend the party’s positions. Finally, with EU membership and funding came ample opportunities for political parties to buy off the media. The result is not only the contraction of critical discourse on the government and its actions, but also the degradation of the overall discussion of EU politics. In Lithuania, most EU-financed projects receive almost no critical attention in the media. Instead, they are praised in a rather simplistic propaganda-like manner. The final, and probably the most troubling, side effect of this arrangement for the quality of democracy is that the media have become increasingly disinclined to carry out their statutory functions and grown more dependent upon combined informational-financial handouts from the state. They do not appear to be forced into this position by political elites, but rather to have learned to appreciate and justify comfort over candour. Obviously, the 2008 financial crisis only aggravated the situation, but it seems to have acted as a trigger for expanding deviant media and political practices, rather than to be the underlying cause of these. 6. Beyond a single case study Although the relevance of a single case study for a whole region is limited, on record interviews conducted by other team members of the MDCEE project provide some indications of similar informal practices and trends in other CEE countries. To begin with, many of the interviewees stressed the importance of the 2008 financial crisis to the deterioration of media quality standards. A rather typical explanation emphasized heavy financial losses, which had forced media management to search “for new sources of income and therefore they focus more on satisfaction instead of readers: satisfaction of sponsors, of owners, who are ready to sponsor media.”12 Still, one cannot escape the impression that the roots of the problem are not so involuntary, shallow or immediate. There seem to be preexistent networks of actors that endorse competing informal practices even in favourable economic circumstances. Marko Milosavljević, the head of the Department of Journalism at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana, alludes to this longer shadow of informality: 12 Interview with Arvils Ašeradens, Latvian MP for the Civic Union Party, 13 June 2011. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 But because of the crisis in the first place and because of that strong political role of the [Slovenian] state in the last twenty years, I think that many young journalists are pushed into that direction by the older journalists, like ‘Oh, watch out, this is an important advertiser, watch out, this is an important manager, this person has connections,’ and so on.13 In certain cases, the ability of journalists to successfully function within informal networks can bring about significant political rewards. Mihai Coman, the Dean of the College of Journalism at the University of Bucharest, estimated that there had been at least 20 cases during the last 10-15 years where Romanian journalists had been rewarded for their services after elections with high level political posts.14 On the other hand, some media owners and media personalities use media outlets to create their own political parties and to generate popular support. The cases of the OTV television network in Romania or of TV SKAT in Bulgaria are classic examples of such political entrepreneurship.15 Thus, the power symmetry between political and private media elites is not unique to Lithuania. The Director of the Bulgarian Council for Electronic Media, Georgi Lozanov, who previously held a number of editorial positions in the Bulgarian print media, pointed out the existence of informal coalitions of what he designated “information mercenaries”, combining “politicians, media owners, and business people.” According to him, “there is no political pressure on the media because it all is a voluntary process of getting involved together.”16 If media owners are viewed as business elites, but with additional communication (and leverage) capabilities, then the often-heard statements about the capture of the state by business groups in some CEE countries again puts at least larger media groups in a potentially strong position of political influence.17 And this can also be soft influence. For example, Emília Sičáková–Beblavá, the former head of Transparency International in Slovakia, argued that the daily SME dictated many decisions of Prime Minister Iveta Radičová, who headed the Slovakian government from July 2010 to March 2012.18 A high-ranking member of his party also confidentially confirmed this supposition.19 Interview with Marko Milosavljević, head of the Department of Journalism, University of Ljubljana, 14 June 2011. 14 Interview with Mihai Coman, Dean of the College of Journalism, University of Bucharest, 22 September 2011. 15 For more details about the cooperation between TV SKAT and the Ataka party, see Smilova, Smilov et al. (2010: 70). 16 Interview with Georgi Lozanov, Director of the Bulgarian Council for Electronic Media, 14 September 2011. 17 For more on definitional aspects of state capture, see Hellman, Jones et al. 2000. 18 Interview with Emília Sičáková–Beblavá, the former head of Transparency International in Slovakia, 15 June 2011. 19 Interview with a high-ranking member of the SDKU-DS party, 15 June 2011. 13 Page | 24 MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Although these selected observations cannot be treated as systematic evidence of the predominance of competing informal networks and practices of political and locally owned private media elites in CEE, they nevertheless suggest that the geographical scope of such practices goes well beyond the single case study of Lithuania presented in this report. Further research is necessary to understand the full scope and influence of such informal networks in Page | 25 CEE countries. 7. Ideals of democratisation Having examined CEE democratic culture and some of its informal practices, I now turn to the underlying (though slightly revised) normative question of the MDCEE project: what kind of democratic culture is necessary for the mass media to conduct their statutory functions? The answer is partly based on Estonia, probably the most successful case of CEE democratization. The Estonian media market, despite its linguistic division, small size and the prevalence of local ownership, seems to exhibit exemplary vibrancy, resilience and independence. The key to the Estonian success story appears to be its ability to minimize the role of competing informal practices in public affairs. This development goes hand-in-hand with the rise of popular trust in political institutions, increased citizen membership in sociotropic organisations, and greater support for people’s democracy/voice. These findings are broadly in line with current studies of democratic culture, which emphasize the importance of an activist set of self-orientations (Almond and Verba 1963; Putnam 2000), of emancipative values (Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Welzel 2007) and of high levels of trust in democratic institutions (Dalton 2004; Hetherington 2005). So these four elements – transparency, active citizenry, emancipative attitudes and political trust – seem to define a CEE democratic culture which is particularly conducive to the mass media carrying out their statutory functions. At the same time, Estonia, like most CEE countries, exhibits strong countervailing or even antidemocratic trends. Despite the country’s famed secularism, Estonian citizens are quite conservative when it comes to lifestyle choice tolerance and personal autonomy. They also show limited interest in political affairs. Their lacklustre support for democratic forms of governance is even more puzzling. In other words, none of the CEE countries consistently approaches the democratic cultural ideals embodied by the Scandinavian countries. Even the most progressive among them usually reach only the lower part of the distribution of WE democratic values. This indicates that CEE democratic cultures remain vulnerable to political populism, authoritarian sentiments and illicit informality. Too many CEE citizens are sceptical of their own democratic institutions and choose to disengage from public affairs. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 They show limited tolerance for minorities and too much patience with corrupt cultural practices. These vulnerabilities are usually manifested in the day-to-day running of political and media affairs. Only occasionally do they burst onto the political scene in the form of radical political parties that come to threaten the very foundations of a national democracy. Page | 26 MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Bibliography Almond, Gabriel A. and Sidney Verba. (1963). The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Anonymous. (2011). Įsakymas: sutrypti lietuviškus bankus. In Lrytas.lt., Vilnius. Bajomi-Lazar, Peter. 2013. The party colonisation of the media: The case of Hungary. East European Politics and Societies, 27, 69-89. Baublys, Viktoras. (2009). K.Prunskienė – žiniasklaidos žemė maitintoja. In Kaunodiena.lt., Kaunas. BNS. (2008). VTEK: teismo nutartis dėl Prunskienės apsunkino kitų ministrų veiklos tyrimą. In Alfa.lt. BNS. (2011). Dainius Radzevičius: Lietuvos ryto straipsnis demonstruoja išsigimusią žiniasklaidą. In 15min.lt., Vilnius. Curran, James. (2002). Media and power. London: Routledge. Dalton, Russell J. (2004). Democratic challenges, democratic choices: The erosion of political support in advanced industrial democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. European Commission. (2013). Report from the Commision to the European Parliament and the Council on progress in Romania under the Co-operation and Verification Mechanism. Brussels: COM(2013) 47 final. Goodwin, Matthew. (2011). Right response. Understanding and ountering populist extremism in Europe. London: Chatham House. Hallin, Daniel C. and Paolo Mancini. (2004). Comparing media systems: Three models of media and politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Halman, Loek and Malina Voicu. (eds.). (2010). Mapping value orientations in Central and Eastern Europe. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Hellman, Joel S., Geraint Jones and Daniel Kaufmann. (2000). Seize the state, seize the day: State capture, corruption, and influence in transition. World Bank Policy Research Paper No. 2444. Helmke, Gretchen and Steven Levitsky. (2004). Informal institutions and comparative politics: A research agenda. Perspectives on Politics, 2(04), 725-740. Hetherington, Marc J. (2005). Why trust matters: Declining political trust and the demise of American liberalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Page | 27 MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Hochstetler, Kathryn. (2010). Democracy and the environment in Latin America and Eastern Europe. In Steinberg, P. and S. VanDeveer. (eds.), The comparative politics of the environment (pp. 199-230). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Inglehart, Ronald and Christian Welzel. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The human development sequence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jakubowicz, Karol. (2008). Going to extremes? Two Polish governments deal with the Media. Global Media Journal—Polish Edition, 1(4), 24-50. Juozapavičius, Rytis. (ed.). (2007). Žiniasklaidos skaidrumas. Vilnius: Transparency International (Lithuanian Office). Karklins, Rasma. (2005). The system made me do it: corruption in post-communist societies. Armonk, NY/London: M. E. Sharpe. Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, Dieter Fuchs and Jan Zielonka. (2006). Democracy and political culture in Eastern Europe. London: Routledge. McQuail, Dennis. (1992). Media performance: Mass communication and the public interest. London: Sage. Merkel, Wolfgang. (2011). Plausible theory, unexpected result: The rapid democratic consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe. In Bakke, Elisabeth and Ingo Peters. (eds.), 20 Years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Transitions, state break-up and democratic politics in Central Europe and Germany (pp. 57-76). Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag. MoC. (2013). Visuomenės informavimo politika [Public communication policy]. 10 June. Mudde, Cas. (2012). The relationship between immigration and nativism in Europe and North America. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina. (2008). How media and politics shape each other in the new Europe. In Jakubowicz, Karol and Miklos Sukosd. (eds.), Finding the right place on the map: Central and Eastern European media change in global perspective (pp. 87-100). Bristol: Intellect Books. O’Dwyer, Conor. (2004). Runaway state building. How political parties shape states in postcommunist Eastern Europe. World Politics, 56(4), 520–553. Pečeliūnienė, Lina. (2012). Kaip mes beviltiškai kovojome prieš sukčių balsą. In 15min.lt. Putnam, Robert D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York/London: Simon & Schuster. Rose, Richard. (2001). A diverging Europe. Journal of Democracy, 12(1), 93-106. Page | 28 MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Sakadolskis, Romas. (2008). Aklai pasitiki vaikai. In bernardinai.lt. http://www.bernardinai.lt/straipsnis/2008-04-11-romas-sakadolskis-aklai-pasitikivaikai/27143. Schneider, Carsten and Philippe Schmitter. (2004). Liberalization, transition and consolidation: Measuring the components of democratization. Democratization, 11(5), 59-90. Page | 29 Schopflin, George. (1991). Post-Communism: Constructing new democracies in Central Europe. International Affairs, 67(2), 235-250. Širvinskas, Marijus. (2007). Kiekvieną dieną - po nupirktą naujieną. In Juozapavičius, Rytis (ed.), Žiniasklaidos skaidrumas (pp. 30-38). Vilnius: Transparency International (Lithuanian Offce). Širvinskas, Marijus . (2012). Darbo partija, vokeliai, Balsas.lt ir aš. In racas.lt blog. http://racas.lt/m-sirvinksas-darbo-partija-vokeliai-balsas-lt-ir-as/. Smilova, Ruzha, Daniel Smilov and Georgi Ganev. (2010). The case of Bulgaria. In Background information report: Media policies and regulatory practices in a selected set of European countries, the EU and the Council of Europe (pp. 44-76). Athens: The Mediadem Consortium. Stetka, Vaclav. (2012). From multinationals to business tycoons : Media ownership and journalistic autonomy in Central and Eastern Europe. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 17, 433-456. Taškauskas, Tomas. (2013). Su parsiduodančia žiniasklaida kovos viešumu. In Žurnalistika Kitaip. http://www.zurnalistika-kitaip.lt/zurnalistikos-link/su-parsiduodancia-ziniasklaidakovos-viesumu US Embassy. (2011). Lithuania's corrupt media hurts everyone, including U.S. businesses. http://www.15min.lt/pdf/doc/corrupt_media.pdf Vireliūnaitė, Lauryna. (2012). Lietuvių pirkinys Rusijoje – bankas. In 15min.lt. Welzel, Christian. (2007). Are levels of democracy affected by mass attitudes? Testing attainment and sustainment affects of democracy. International Political Science Review, 28(4), 397-424. Želnienė, Liepa. (2012). Darbo partijos juodosios buhalterijos išlaidos: Respublikai ir TV3 – beveik milijonas litų? In 15min.lt. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 APPENDICES Page | 30 MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Appendix A: Measures of Democratic Culture With the exception of the Political Interest variable, the measures of democratic culture were constructed following instructions by Welzel (2007). The main difference was the use of averages rather than factor-weighted percentages. This was done after personal Page | 31 communication with Christian Welzel and his recommendation to use averages because it was “the very combination of various items that makes a difference.”20 Trust in political institutions The measure of trust in political institutions is based on popular attitudes towards three state institutions: police, social security and justice systems. It indicates the percentage of respondents who expressed either a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in all three institutions. If a respondent chose “not very much confidence” and “not at all” in at least one case, the response was coded as zero. Tied to sociotropic associations This variable was constructed by aggregating the percentages of members of social services, cultural-educational and environmental/animal rights organizations. Solidary behaviour The measure of support for solidary behaviour was calculated on the basis of three questions about the justification for anti-social behaviour: cheating on taxes, claiming benefits when not entitled and accepting a bribe. The measure indicates the percentage of respondents who chose “never” as the answer to all three questions on a scale of 1 (never) to 10 (always). Personal autonomy The variable of personal autonomy was based on three questions about child rearing priorities. It was constructed by taking the average percentage of respondents who endorsed independence, creativity, but not obedience as among their key priorities. 20 Personal email exchange with Christian Welzel, 16 April 2013. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Gender equality The measure was constructed by averaging responses to two questions: whether males should get priority when jobs are scarce and whether a preschool child suffers with a working mother. In both cases, disagreement was coded as one; agreement as zero, and “neither” was given half a point. Page | 32 Lifestyle tolerance The lifestyle tolerance variable was constructed on the basis of three questions: justification for homosexuality, abortion and divorce. The ten-point scale ranging from 1 (never justifiable) to 10 (always justifiable) was rescaled from 0 to 1. The scores were then averaged over the three items. People’s voice This was constructed on the basis of respondents’ reported priorities for their country. The highest grade of 1 was assigned if either “protecting freedom of speech” or “giving people more say in important government decisions” were chosen as the first priority. Half a point was given if either of these items showed up as the second priority. Other choices were coded as zero. Political interest The variable of political interest averages responses to three questions: frequency of discussing politics with friends, importance of politics in your life, and interest in politics. It represents the average percentage of respondents who chose to answer “frequently”, “quite important” or “very important”, or “very interested”. The rest of the responses were coded as zero. Pro-democratic preferences This measure presents the average percentage of national respondents who described the option of army rule as “very bad” and that of having “a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections” as “very bad”, strongly agreed that democracy was “better than any other form of government”, and described “having a democratic political system” as very good. These three questions were not part of the 1990-1993 European Values Survey. MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Appendix B: Bivariate correlations, 2008-2009 Effective CPI Democracy FH Democracy N Index Joint measure (CEE) 0.7760 0.8760 0.4775 10 Joint measure (WE+SE) 0.7403 0.7653 0.3407 14 Joint measure (EU) 0.8512 0.8750 0.4524 24 Trust + sociotropic (CEE) 0.6848 0.8130 0.3324 10 Trust + sociotropic (WE+SE) 0.6821 0.6907 0.3898 14 Trust + sociotropic (EU) 0.8040 0.8255 0.4037 24 State trust (CEE) 0.6216 0.7331 0.3461 10 State trust (WE + SE) 0.5415 0.5283 0.3930 14 State trust (EU) 0.6832 0.7673 0.4272 24 Sociotropic (CEE) 0.6201 0.7422 0.2475 10 Sociotropic (WE + SE) 0.6081 0.6306 0.2857 14 Sociotropic (EU) 0.6832 0.7094 0.2985 24 People’s voice (CEE) 0.8031 0.8253 0.6751 10 People’s voice (WE+SE) 0.5035 0.5539 0.0550 14 People’s voice (EU) 0.6952 0.7170 0.4281 24 Lifestyle (CEE) 0.4475 0.4589 0.4489 10 Lifestyle (WE+SE) 0.7152 0.7379 0.3662 14 Lifestyle (EU) 0.8118 0.8296 0.4540 24 Gender (CEE) 0.5321 0.6144 0.2547 10 Gender (WE+SE) 0.7788 0.7862 0.5165 14 Gender (EU) 0.7484 0.7649 0.3584 24 Page | 33 MDCEE Final Reports 2013 Appendix C: Comparison of photographs Comparison of the photographs presented on the 123rf stock photography website (Screenshot 1) and on the lrytas.lt news portal as representing a fake columnist (Screenshot 2). Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2 Page | 34