Negotiating in a Mediatised Context – A Diachronic Analysis

The paper aims at identifying the effects of the so-called mediatisation on political processes in general and political negotiations in particular. Mediatisation, the study’s central independent variable, refers to increases in the quantity and intensity of the media’s observing, reporting and commenting activities on political events, issues and processes as well as to subsequent adaptation processes on the part of political actors which have come to challenge Western democracies in the last decades. Research on mediatisation effects on political negotiations is still in its infancy. Therefore, a theoretical model is developed that builds on “New Institutionalism”. It is claimed that the media forms an additional and increasingly important institutional context condition for political negotiation that is expected to affect actors’ strategic choices and maybe even preferences. Building on arguments derived from negotiation, deliberation and game theory, adaptation to the “media logic” on the part of political actors is expected to have both functional and dysfunctional consequences for the structure, dynamic and outcomes of their political negotiations depending on which dimension of democracy is addressed (input versus output). Two moderating factors are identified which are expected to affect the prevalence, direction and intensity of potential mediatisation effects. These are the extent of commercialisation of the media system and the degree of competition between the negotiation actors outside of the negotiation arena as induced by the political-institutional context. Starting from this broad theoretical framework, the empirical part of the paper puts a special interest on potential mediatisation effects on the output criterion of problem-solving efficacy. First empirical evidence for the theoretical model is provided by the results of a diachronic analysis of systematically selected negotiations on health care issues in the case of Germany.