State Capture through Media Clientelism in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

State Capture through Media Clientelism in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina: Challenges to Normative Power Europe 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 European Union (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 catalysts for democratic backsliding. This rise of state capture and media clientelism thus challenges the very idea of Normative Power Europe (NPE) as an exporter of democratic values and norms to third-world 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 can be drawn from EU members in the post-accession phase. It also discusses whether the political culture in both Bosnia and Serbia shaped their 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.