Abstract :
Institutions operating beyond direct control of government, such as central banks, constitutional
courts and public broadcasters, enjoy guarantees of de jure independence, but de jure independence is
no guarantee of de facto independence. This is especially so for public broadcasting, where cultural
variables are often assumed to be decisive. In this article, the de jure and de facto independence of
thirty-six public service broadcasters world-wide are operationalized, and de jure independence is
found to explain a high degree of de facto independence when account is taken of the size of the
market for news. Other variables considered in previous literature – such as bureaucratic partisanship
and the polarization of the party system – are not found to be significant.
