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Cross-National Analysis of Populist Media Oppression in the EU Csongor Bajnoczki Wright State University

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Cross-National Analysis of Populist Media Oppression in the EU Csongor Bajnoczki Wright State University Wright State University CORE Scholar Browse all Theses and Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2018 Europe's Parallel Media Universe: Cross-national analysis of populist media oppression in the EU Csongor Bajnoczki Wright State University Follow this and additional works at: https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/etd_all Part of the International Relations Commons Repository Citation Bajnoczki, Csongor, "Europe's Parallel Media Universe: Cross-national analysis of populist media oppression in the EU" (2018). Browse all Theses and Dissertations. 1978. https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/etd_all/1978 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at CORE Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Browse all Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of CORE Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. EUROPE’S PARALLEL MEDIA UNIVERSE: CROSS-NATIONAL ANALYSIS OF POPULIST MEDIA OPPRESSION IN THE EU A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts By CSONGOR BAJNOCZKI B.A., Wright State University, 2016 2018 Wright State University WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL 4/26/2018 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION BY Csongor Bajnoczki ENTITLED Europe’s Parallel Media Universe: Cross- National Analysis of Populist Media Oppression in the EU BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Arts. _________________________________ Liam Anderson, Ph.D. Thesis Director _________________________________ Laura M. Luehrmann, Ph.D. Director, Master of Arts Program in International and Comparative Politics Committee on Final Examination: __________________________ Liam Anderson, Ph.D. School of Public and International Affairs __________________________ Carlos Eduardo Costa, Ph.D. School of Public and International Affairs __________________________ Lee Hannah, Jr, Ph.D. School of Public and International Affairs __________________________ Barry Milligan, Ph.D. Interim Dean of the Graduate School ABSTRACT Bajnoczki, Csongor. M.A., International and Comparative Politics Graduate Program, Wright State University, 2018. Europe’s Parallel Media Universe: Cross-national analysis of populist media oppression in the EU. This research is to show that populist parties in the European Union attempt to oppress the traditional established media as soon as they come in to power. The multiple regressions test the hypothesis of a negative relationship between the political power of populist parties and degree of media freedom. For the assessment and clarification of the relationship between the level of media freedom and the political power of populist parties, political rights and civil liberties country scores from Freedom House’s Freedom in the World reports, GDP per capita from World Bank, corruption perception indexes from Transparency International, and Grigorii V. Golosov’s formula of effective number of parties are included as control variables. The proposed hypothesis enjoys empirical support in the context of Eastern Europe and both quantitative and qualitative data demonstrate that populist parties seek to tame the media as soon as they get the power to do so. III TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page 1 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………….…………………….1 2 LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………………..…………….7 3 QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS………………………………………………………23 3.1 METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………....23 3.2 DESCRIPTION AND EXPLANATION OF THE MODELS…………..…30 3.3 DISCUSSION OF THE RESULTS……………………..……………….…32 3.4 INTERPRETATION OF THE BEST MODEL……………………………35 4 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………...……….……42 APPENDICES……………………………………………………..………………………...…55 APPENDIX A…………………………………………...………………………..……55 APPENDIX B …………………………………………………….…………….………61 APPENDIX C …………………………………………………………..………………71 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………...................................................................79 LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1 Populist parties in Europe that gained parliamentary representation after national elections between 2000 and 2013………......................................24 2 Coefficients and significances of variables plausibly affecting the level of media freedom…………………………………………………………37 3 Lowest and highest scores of EU member states’ corruption scores taking into account the 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015 Transparency International’s corruption perception indexes……………………………….…40 IV CHAPTER 1 Introduction The European Union (EU) is more divided now than it ever has never been. A recent study shows that the European Union has been in decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as there is no real geopolitical reason to preserve this economic community.1 There are not any necessary incentives for cooperation. European states have started prioritizing their national interests instead of contributing to the shared economic community that worked effectively until the early 1990s. In spite of the EU having the establishment of economic integration, its laws are the subjects of debate between the politicians of each member state. In addition to the disputes over EU laws, many European countries are still recovering from the 2008 financial crisis. Germany provided a bailout in 2015 in order to pull Greece out of its financial crisis. Spain has also had to apply for a €100 billion rescue package from the European Stability Mechanism in 2012. The United Kingdom left the EU in July 2016 and has begun a formal process of separation. Simultaneously, the EU has been facing one of its biggest challenges since its inception: the European migrant crisis that began in 2015. Even though Thies asserts that there has already been a coherent school of thought consisting of exaggerated claims, unexamined premises, and superficial comparisons about EU crises,2 the 2015 refugee crisis has posed a challenge that EU governments have yet to cope with properly. Millions of people started fleeing their homes from numerous countries in the Middle-East and Africa. Most of the migrants have been coming from Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, but the list of departure states consists of other countries as well. The migrants’ motives for leaving their countries are either political or economic for the most part. Wars such as the Syrian Civil War, 1 Sebastian Rosato, “Europe’s Troubles,” International Security 35, no. 4 (2011): 47. 2 Wallace J. Thies, “Is the EU Collapsing?,” International Studies Review 14, no. 2 (2012): 225-239. 1 the Iraqi Civil War, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Somalia, and the War in Darfur have been making people leave their homes since these inhabitants have no other place to live. Wars tore their countries apart. Economic migrants have been pouring in from the Western Balkans (Kosovo, Albania), parts of West Africa (The Gambia, Nigeria), and South Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan) with the hope of having a more livable life in Europe. The EU’s very survival partly depends on how the member states will be able to resolve the migrant crisis. As Castles and Miller contend, “migration is a central issue in international politics, and one of the most important questions of domestic politics in many countries.”3 Rayna Bailey refers to migration “as one of the key challenges facing the world today,”4 which can be evidently seen in the EU’s disjointed and, at times, hypocritical responses to the migration crisis. Even though the contemporary migration crisis is not limited to Europe,5 the mechanism of the EU relies on how policymakers respond to Europe’s most substantial crisis caused by the highest level of forcibly displaced persons since World War II. As a side effect of these events, the EU has been witnessing the resurgence of populism in recent years. The parties challenging the status quo in western, central, and northern Europe tend to display a populist, anti-establishment, and anti-immigrant stance. Some contend that the influx of migrants to European countries have sparked the rise of new parties; more accurately, these right-wing populist parties are the ones that purport to defend a respective nation’s particular cultural values, because “immigration is the final frontier of globalization.”6 Natives have to interact with human beings from different parts of the world, which is why migration 3 Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration, (New York and London: The Guilford Press, 1998), 14- 45. 4 Rayna Bailey, Immigration and Migration, (New York: Facts On File, 2008), 3-6. 5 Janos Besenyo and Endre Szenasi, “Unprecedented Migration Crisis Affecting Europe: Will Western or Russian Style De-radicalization save the European Way of Life? (Part 2),” AARMS: Academic & Applied Research In Military & Public Management Science 15, no. 2 (2016): 164. 6 Fareed Zakaria, “Populism on the march,” Foreign Affairs 95, no. 6 (2016): 13. 2 might seem intruding and disruptive to many. Thus, this can give rise to fear, racism, and xenophobia.7 Ionescu and Luchian discuss the economic implications of the recent migrant wave that they declare to be “dramatic.”8 They claim that the wave of migrants could possibly help the EU diminish its economic debts, however, they also highlight the threat it poses in terms of economic well-being of a country. In reference to the political impact, Mikuláš Dzurinda, former prime minister of Slovakia, draws attention to the phenomenon of the increasing number of votes cast in support of populist parties.
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