Post-regime-change Afghan and Iraqi media systems: Strategic ambivalence as technology of media governance

Abstract

This article investigates the governance of post-US invasion Afghan and Iraqi media systems by analyzing provisions pertinent to public broadcasting, licensing, and defamation in 14 laws and policy documents in the two nations. The author argues that the results point to a regime of regulatory ambivalence whereby state authorities have established an ontologically incongruent complex of legal and policy structures characterized by a simultaneous cohabitation of democratic and authoritarian tendencies. This ambivalence, born of struggles and contestations between state authorities, domestic civil societies and external supporters and donors, is a deliberate technology of media governance. The authoritarian tendencies of this regulatory regime have implications for media/journalists’ self-regulation as they are designed to curtail the agency of media institutions and journalists, and assert government control over speech and the flow of information.