Under the Influence of Politics: Mediatisation and politico-administrative systems in Scandinavia

This conceptual article extends three ongoing scholarly debates on the mediatisation of politics – the risk of media centrism, the tendency to see mediatisation as a linear process, and the preoccupation with elected officials. We argue for the need to identify, foreground, and systematise non-media dimensions of mediatisation processes. We also argue that actors encounter mediatisation as a set of dynamic ideas rather than a fixed logic. With a focus on government agencies and a comparison of the politico-administrative systems in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, this article gives certain attention to politicisation, autonomy, and accountability and suggests that the degree of freedom granted to agencies in Denmark and Norway is relatively limited compared with agencies in Sweden. Consequently, we present two propositions: 1) agencies in Denmark and Norway are less inclined to mediatise, whereas 2) Swedish government agencies will more likely mediatise and show conformity with widely accepted norms regarding media.