European Institutions and the Regulation of Media Markets (European Policy Research Unit Series) »

Alison Harcourt is Research Fellow in the Centre for European Studies at the University of Bradford.

This book investigates the processes by which European Union institutions have sought to regulate national media markets, both through European level initiatives and influences upon national policy-making. This provides an excellent case study for observing new modes of EU governance. Because of this sector's political and cultural significance at national levels, there have been limits to the amount of European legislation that has been deemed to be acceptable, and limits have been encountered by the European institutions in question. The book argues that the institutions have therefore found other ways of governing media markets — the initiation of European level fora, the decentralization of decision-making bodies, presenting best practices solutions to domestic policy problems, and the Europeanization of national policies through direct action. This book provides the first in-depth empirical analysis of new modes of EU governance with a specific industry case study, and also shows how the European institutions have between them engineered processes of policy convergence at national levels.