Overview
- Argues that media generates functional pressures consolidating a trend of centralization toward the executive centre
- Advances research on the presidentialization of politics and on government communication
- Application to the Swedish case focusing on the office of prime minister and the government communication system
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership (PSPL)
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Table of contents (4 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book offers a systematic inquiry into how, why, and with what consequences media affects governments and the standing of prime ministers. It aims at an understanding of how media has caused institutional effects in government, as well as at advancing a unified theory of government communication. The author develops a logic of centralization and applies it to one case, Sweden. Government communication has been institutionalized, tightened and centralized with the prime minister and has changed irreversibly. Analysis of how the government communication system has evolved, mainly in its institutional structures, suggests that the shift to centralization arose more out of necessity than choice. For prime ministers most of this is about finding ways to ensure that the entire government respond to media uniformly. As governments face a set of functional demands from media, different kinds of media, uniformity has been a paramount objective. Nevertheless, thisdevelopment involves shifting dynamics of intra-executive relations and a shift of power away from ministries to the prime minister’s office; the apex of political power. The prime minister has been empowered at the expense of ministers through the concentration of power and resources to the executive centre. That is partly because of media, which reinforces political hierarchies. That and the centralized control of government news in turn raises further questions about democratic governance and the nature of modern-day governing.
Reviews
“Karl Magnus Johansson reveals the paradox between ever more fragmentation, diversity and decentralization of media and ever more centralization of government communication. His study fills an important gap as it advances theoretical reflection and empirical understanding of how governments respond to volatile communication environments by reorganizing their functions to manage the demands of the media.” (—Barbara Pfetsch, Professor of Communication Theory and Media Effects Research, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and author and editor of Political Communication Cultures in Europe: Attitudes of Political Actors and Journalists in Nine Countries (2014))
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Karl Magnus Johansson is Affiliate Professor of Political Science at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. Previously, he was Professor at Södertörn University and Part-Time Professor at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Prime Minister-Media Nexus
Book Subtitle: Centralization Logic and Application
Authors: Karl Magnus Johansson
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12152-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-12151-7Published: 16 October 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-12154-8Published: 17 October 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-12152-4Published: 15 October 2022
Series ISSN: 2947-5821
Series E-ISSN: 2947-583X
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 103
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Political Leadership, Political Communication, Governance and Government, Comparative Politics, European Politics