1 I Want My MTV: Free Media and Democracy 1 Patricio Navia Thomas D. Zweifel pdn200@nyu.edu tdz@swissconsultinggroup.com New York University Swiss Consulting Group and Universidad Diego Portales and Columbia University 2 9 April 2006 (6,792 words) Abstract Unless policy-makers debunk certain myths about what brings about democracy and what helps sustain it, they will waste years and billions of dollars on fruitless efforts – and not get democracy. This article asks: what effect on building and sustaining democracy do the media have? Using a dataset of 185 countries over a 23-year period (1975-1997), we study the relationship between freedom of information and regime type (democracy or dictatorship). Most definitions of democracy include an indicator for free information flows and media independence as an integral component of a well-functioning democracy. Our proxy for information freedom is the availability of television. We find a simple yet surprising relationship: a positive correlation between the availability of television, and the emergence and consolidation of democracy. The more TV sets there are in a country, the more likely democracy is to emerge and survive there. 1 We would like to thank Sebastian Saiegh for helpful comments, including the idea for this title. 2 Patricio Navia is an adjunct professor and outreach coordinator for the Center for Latin American Studies at New York University and a professor of political science at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile. Thomas D. Zweifel is chief executive officer of Swiss Consulting Group, and teaches leadership and cross- cultural management at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. He is the author of Democratic Deficit? Institutions and Regulation in the European Union, Switzerland and the United States (Lexington Books 2002), Culture Clash: Managing the Global High-Performance Team (SelectBooks 2003) and Communicate or Die: Getting Results Through Speaking and Listening (SelectBooks 2003).