The regulatory independence of audiovisual media regulators: A cross-national comparative analysis

Abstract

There is a rich scholarship investigating the formal regulatory independence as an outcome of particular institutional arrangements of National Regulatory Authorities for various utility sectors. In contrast, the establishment of national media authorities has only recently stimulated the academic debate on the links between formal independence and institutional design. No empirical measurements have yet been done to scrutinise the independence of audiovisual media regulators in Europe. This article addresses this gap and provides a first empirical assessment of the cross-country variations in formal independence of national media regulators. The analysis is based on an original data set comprising formal independence scores for 43 National Regulatory Authorities which were created by the year 2014. It is demonstrated that institutional differences among National Regulatory Authorities mirror different levels of formal independence, which varies across countries.