ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes ‘thinking institutionally’ (Heclo 2008) about the state-media relationship. This is, instead of purely focusing on the normative function and on the kind of relationship politics that the media should engage with (as the one proposed by Siebert and his colleagues in Four theories of the press and strengthened by an ample range of studies that have followed this lead), this perspective argues for a general approach to the endogenous nature and social construction of institutions that takes into consideration a wider context as well as other characteristics of politics and the media such as organisational structure, agency, performance and institutional change (Olsen 2007: 2). Drawing on Swanson’s (1992, 1997) notion of ‘political-media complex’ the proposal is to focus the analysis on three core assumptions that, at their root, unify different neo-institutionalism schools of thought. These are: (1) the rules institutions enforce to give order; (2) the organisational dynamic that institutions impose over individuals’ roles, and (3) the patterns and tendencies that institutions take from but also use to shape historical rules and practices.
