"This book explores the role of external powers and international organisations in media assistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Through analysis of key documents, media reports and interviews with key participants it examines the main actors, their roles and the way in which they influenced the media
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and society. Bosnia and Herzegovina remains one of the biggest experiments in international intervention in modern history. Media assistance, as well as international intervention, was an enormous project which involved many donors and recipient organisations, and large amounts of money, but it is just one of many countries where democratisation and state-building took place with little to no input from the local community. Since the mid-1980s, media assistance has been an integral part of international intervention used as a tool of democratisation in post-conflict countries and societies. The process is often led and created outside these countries and implemented by various international organisations, led by technocrats and dictated by the will of donors. The author uses the case study of Bosnia and Herzegovina to assess this in a broader context." (Publisher description)
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"The agenda for transition after the demise of communism in the Western Balkans made the conversion of state radio and television into public service broadcasters a priority, converting mouthpieces of the regime into public forums in which various interests and standpoints could be shared and delibe
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rated. There is general agreement that this endeavor has not been a success. Formally, the countries adopted the legal and institutional requirements of public service media according to European standards. The ruling political elites, however, retained their control over the public media by various means. Can this trend be reversed? Instead of being marginalized or totally manipulated, can public service media become vehicles of genuine democratization? A comparison of public service media in seven countries (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia) addresses these important questions." (Publisher description)
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"This books draws a comparative balance of twenty years' international media assistance in the five countries of the Western Balkans. The central question was what happens to imported models when they are transposed onto the newly evolving media systems of transitional societies. Albania, Bosnia-Her
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zegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia undertook a range of media reforms to conform with accession requirements of the European Union and the standards of the Council of Europe, among others. The essays explore the nexus between the democratic transformation of the media and international media assistance. The cross-national analysis concludes that the effects of international assistance are highly constrained by the local context. From today's vantage point it becomes obvious, that scaling media assistance does not necessarily improve outcomes. The experiences in the region suggest that imported solutions have not been very cognitive in all aspects of local conditions but international strategies tend to be rather schematic and lacked strategic approaches to promote media policy stability, credible media reform and implementation. The book offers valuable insights into the nature and effects of media assistance and the strategies deployed by international aid agencies, local political forces, media professionals, civil society organizations and other actors." (Publisher description)
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"The case of BiH demonstrates that media reform is a slow, time-consuming process, which is closely related to the consolidation of democratic institutions that foster free media. The four case studies presented here amply demonstrate a deep tension between externally-driven reform initiatives and t
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he democratization agenda on one hand, and the complex set of contextual challenges to the reforms on the other. Our findings support Mcloughlin and Scott who claim that media reforms "can only produce results at the same pace as democratic evolution in a given country, and should be integrated into broader democratic governance reform." (Conclusion, page 57)
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"This paper aims to give insights into my research on media assistance and its effects on democratisation and state building processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia). I try to analyse a process which lasts more than 15 years, and includes different aspects, from law making to establishing new me
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dia. I argue that most of the measures have been carried out in a state of imposition, in a semi-protectorate, that is Bosnia after the war. This period of post-war reconstruction in Bosnia is difficult to research for many reasons, starting from the obvious fact that processes are still going on, to the fact that different international players who were involved in the process over the years, hardly left archives available to the public to be analysed. What is left sometimes does not give a complete picture. In the paper different methods will be presented, that have been applied in order to overcome these difficulties. Thus, I try to give some recommendations for other researchers working on similar topics." (Abstract)
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