6 Brooten, McElhone and Venkiteswaran the longstanding interest in the role of media in political transitions. This led to the emergence of the “transitions” paradigm, which remains the dominant approach to understanding transitions away from authoritarianism. The transitions paradigm has been critiqued, however, for its assumption of a movement towards liberal democracy (Roudakova 2012, p. 247) and its teleological approach (Carothers 2002). As this period of democratization was wrapping up towards the end of the 1990s, analysts began to discuss regimes combining authoritarian and democratic elements, and the growing consensus in comparative politics now revolves around the notion of such “hybrid regimes” as “the most common form of political organization around the world” (Roudakova 2012, p. 247; Voltmer 2015). The field of comparative media and political communication has been dominated by the state-centric media “systems” approach since the publication of the highly influential Four Theories of the Press (Siebert et al. 1956). An important attempt to update and expand this seminal work is Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) Comparing Media Systems, which proposes three models of media systems as possible frameworks for comparison. These are the Liberal Model, which they argue prevails in Britain, Ireland and North America; the Democratic Corporatist Model, that characterizes northern continental Europe; and the Polarized Pluralist Model, which they say can be found in the Mediterranean countries of southern Europe. They note that these models are ideal types, more normative than real, and that they may include variations that the authors hope would be revealed by applying these models in various contexts. A more recent edited collection by Hallin and Mancini (2012), Comparing Media Systems beyond the Western World, is a conversation with critics of their first book who argue that the three basic models it proposes do not translate well enough to be heuristically useful in most other parts of the world. The newer volume addresses some of these concerns, featuring significant critiques questioning the value of static models of media as “systems” and the lack of attention to process in comparative media work and research on political transition (McCargo 2012; Roudakova 2012). Roudakova (2012) calls for a typology that conceptualizes media systems as processes, distinguishes between processes that function to maintain and to erode order, and analyses how this shifts over time. She argues that the project by “transitologists” and “hybridologists” to 01 ch1-MyanmarMediaIT-5P.indd 6 8/4/19 10:29 am