Regime transition in the regions of Russia: The freedom of mass media: Transnational impact on sub‐national democratization?

Abstract The mass media have the main function of serving as a mediator between society and the authorities and is, therefore, positioned to be a catalyst for change in society. From the end of the 1980s into the 2000s, under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the development of the independent mass media played a key role in Russia's regime transition. It is also a good reflection, or indicator, of the pace of transition on the regional level, and an objective criterion of regional democratization. The regional media markets are not shaped entirely by the national government. Each of the 88 regional mass media markets is ‘the product of the cultural traditions of a region, its economy, the unique local relationship between the state and society, the tendency of a region towards a traditional/modernized or agrarian/urban society’. However, while these factors are important and have been analyzed in a number of articles, the role of foreign, transnational, factors has hardly been taken into account. This article is an attempt to single out the European impact on the development of the freedom mass media in the regions through different forms of transnational regional cooperation.

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