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State Capture through Media Clientelism in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina contributes to the understanding of the rise of stabilitocracies and competitive authoritarian regimes in the Western Balkans by examining the case of freedom and independence of the media.
State capture is explored through freedom of the media and capture of media outlets by the government in two candidates for EU accession, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The book argues that this is a consequence of the very process of EU accession-- vis-à-vis its democracy-promotion strategy-which has created the unintended consequences of state capture and rent-seeking. Rather than democratic institution-building, geopolitical interests such as the recent Russian war in Ukraine, Kosovo, lithium in Serbia, and the migrant crisis, have all been the catalyst for democratic backsliding. This rise of state capture and media clientelism thus challenges the very idea of a normative power Europe as an exporter of democratic values and norms to third countries. Utilizing a range of interviews (with journalists, media experts, scholars of media studies, and politicians), and documentary analysis of secondary and primary sources, the book asks whether we can observe a similar trend of state capture- specifically political clientelism vis-à-vis the media - in the newly emerging illiberal democracies in the Balkans as a novelty, or if lessons be drawn from EU members in the post-accession phase. It also discusses whether the political culture in both Bosnia and Serbia shaped their own media environments and contributed to an overall government pervasiveness in the media sphere that is unique to that particular region as opposed to the EU Member States; and what recommendations the EU needs to consider in order to promote media freedom in the Western Balkan applicants without endangering basic democratic norms.
State Capture through Media Clientelism in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina will be of great interest to students and scholars of EU and European Studies, Political Science, and Media Studies.
List of contents
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework: De-Europeanisation of the Media-Media Capture and Political Clientelism in the Western Balkans
Chapter 3 State Capture and Strategies of Media Clientelism in Vüi¿'s Serbia
Chapter 4 Ethnic Divisions and Political Clientelism vis-à-vis the Media in Post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina
Chapter 5 Conclusion
About the author
Dr Aleksandra Dragojlov is a political science researcher at KTU in Kaunas, Lithuania. She graduated with a PhD and a MA in European Studies from Cardiff University in 2018. Her research interests include media freedom and civil society in the Western Balkans and its impact on EU integration. She also has a previous postdoctoral fellow position from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland in political sciences at the Taube Centre for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.
