Batey, John R.

The existing literature regarding political power, hegemony, and mass-elite relationships could benefit from the utilization of a common theoretical framework. Such an approach calls for the synthesis of extant theories of political power into a theoretical structure that is easily translatable across various systemic contexts. Most political structures are to an extent power-based and hierarchical. The analysis of these power-laden structures is an important component of both political theory and political action. This thesis uses three cases studies to illustrate that these structures are commonplace and to explain certain aspects of their creation and destruction. The chief goal is to critically analyze whether these power-laden structures are compatible with democracy, defined as government according to rule by the people.

Democratic forms of government are either consolidating democratic institutions or unraveling into authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union. Among the possible causes of each success or failure to consolidate democracy is the character of civil society and its cultural proximity to long-standing, modern state-based, consolidated democracies of the West. What impact does Western or Westernized media have upon the indigenous civil societies of Eastern Europe, and is this impact sufficient to consolidate democracy among the states of the former Soviet Union? As case studies, Eastern Europe contains two states, Estonia and Russia, where democracy has either succeeded or failed alongside the presence of exogenous cultural influence in the form of Western or Westernized television broadcast media. To what extent does the presence of Western broadcast media and associated cultural memes predict the iv consolidation of democratic political values, and how ought any impact of these memes be interpreted in the light of modernity, Eurocentricity and cultural hegemony? To account for the impact of exogenous cultural influence, foreign policy prescriptions that encourage the growth of indigenous, mimetic, democratic civic culture would appear to be an effective means of supporting democracy in the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe.