Introduction

The introduction elucidates how the study seeks to fill in the gap in the literature on media and democratization studies—how political clientelism vis-à-vis the media is a tool of state capture by examining structural, historical, as well as international and domestic factors that contributed towards the consolidation of rent-seeking elites in the Western Balkans. The international side—or European Union (EU) toleration and therefore unintentional legitimization of such stabilocratic regimes—is only one piece of the puzzle in explaining the weak effects of the EU’s transformative power. The domestic side of how a culture of rejection of politics and political apathy is thus essential in providing for a conclusive analysis of how and why political elites capture formal institutions. Additionally, the weak effects of the EU’s transformative power therefore represent challenges to the idea of Normative Power Europe (NPE) as caused by the rise of non-Western illiberal powers and the EU’s self-interested goals in pursuing regional stability. It additionally discusses the lack of EU competences and soft power instruments vis-à-vis media freedom as the area remains mainly a national issue at the Member State level.