Study Of Media And Corruption Under The New Political Economy Perspective

This article is an introduction to the study on the relationship between the media and corruption with new theoretical tools of new political economy. Since the beginning of reform and opening-up in 1978, China's economy develops rapidly and the institutional construction which includes political reform and the rule of law starts on. However, as China is in a special historical period of social transition, institutionalized corruption, especially in pubic sphere remains a very serious problem which has greatly hampered the modernization process in China. Currently, the corruption research, particularly the research on the corruption of the media was very weak. Many studies still remain on the level of political education and moral persuasion. And the methods of these studies were also confined to quoting and explaining traditional ideology. Western economic theory and academic background are very different from those of China. Studies on the relationship between the media of corruption make use of a lot quantitative methods, especially statistical tools, and display a new theoretical vision. Therefore, the study from a viewpoint of new political economy in the field is of some significance practically and it is also of some significance theoretically, which is primarily embodied in the following aspects:Firstly, it introduces the media studies status of western mainstream economiccircles as academic references for domestic researches on the mass media.Secondly, it brings the media study tools, methods and index system of westerneconomists to enrich the related research in our country.Lastly, it provides some references for the media management institutions andthe elimination of media control system in China since their studies paid muchattention on the transmission of the media environment in some authoritariancountries.Modern new political economy has two main sources. The first one is publicchoice theory which is started by James Buchanan. In his theory, he applied the"rational person" theory to non-market areas especially to the human behavior in apolitical process. The second major resource of new political economy is the social choice theory which is created by Kenneth Arrow. It can be said that these two theories construct new political economy.For research methods, the media studies of new political economy mean the introduction of a general equilibrium framework of mainstream economics. The significance of paradigm renewing is worth paying attention to. We can name the media studies with new methods as "New Political Economy of Media". The relationship between the media and corruption is one part of the contents of new political economy. And It was devoted to the relationship among the media development, the degree of freedom, political elections, the level of corruption, transparence of government and the government's public spending.In this article, I explain the fundamental theory of new political economy at first. It is followed by the corruption studies from the mainstream economists in the second chapter. And in the third part, I introduce the current studies in developed countries with focus on media bias. In the last chapter, the environments and problems of transmitting and authoritarian countries are compared with those in the democratic states.