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ch challenged claims arising from liberal-pluralist
theory that the state was a neutral arbiter of competing interests, instead
emphasizing the power and influence of corporate interests over government
policy (Miliband, 1973). An in~portantd ebate occurred within the study of
political economy in the 1970s about the r'ole and nature of the state in capitalist
societies, where the 'instrumentalist' perspective - which saw the state as
acting in the interests of the dominant classes because they possessed the most
power and influence under capitalism - was challenged by strrlcrzlralist
approaches, which drew attention to the complex and contradictory nature of
class interests, competition between competing fractions of capital, and the
need for the state to be seen to be 'above' particular interests in order to maintain
legitimacy (Poulantzas, 1972; cf. Jessop, 1990). From a political economy
perspective, Mosco argues that 'the state has to promote the interests of
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48 Understanding Global Media
capital even as it appears to be the independent arbiter of the wider social or
public interest' (Mosco, 1996, p. 92). Kellner (1990) has drawn upon the
Gramscian concept of hegemony to argue that this potential contradiction
between state strategies to promote private capital accumulation and its need
to retain some degree of popular legitimacy is managed in part by 'a logic of
exclusion that condemns to silence those voices whose criticisms of the capitalist
mode of production go beyond the boundaries allowed by the lords of
the media' (Kellner, 1990, p. 9).
These approaches have been critiqued from the perspective of cultrrrol
policy strrdics for how they represent the relationship between media power,
policy and culture. Tony Bennett, one of the leading theorists of cultural
policy studies, has argued the need for a more institutionally grounded
approach to understanding ciiltural forms and practices, which can identify
opportunities for cultural politics that can impact upon the conduct of identifiable
government agents and institutions (Bennett, 1992a). Bennett's call
for a cultural studies that is tuefirl, in the sense that it can connect to the
discourses and institutional structures of cultural policy formation, has been
echoed by cultural studies theorists such as McRobbie (1996), who identified
cultural policy as the 'missing agenda' of cultural studies. It was also
connected to a wider body of work, associated with Michel Foucault's notion
of goveriziiie~itality( Foucault, 1991), which shifted the locus of understanding
of government from who controls formal state institutions and structures,
towards the micro-politics of tecl~nologieso f goverizii~e~tiht at shape the
understanding of political problems and the forms of action that can be
directed towards them (cf. Miller and Rose, 1992). Hunter (1988) drew upon
such work to argue that cultural studies needed to move towards more
historically grounded and institutionally specific forms of engagement with
cultural institutions, arguing that 'cultural interests and attributes ... can
only be described and assessed relative to ... the actual array of historical
institutions in which such attributes are specified and formed' (Hunter, 1988,
p. 106).
Bennett (1992a, p. 26) proposed that culture was