188 Lisa Brooten International Journal of Communication 10(2016) It is also clear that the military retains significant influence over parliament and its relationship with journalists, which needs to change if the transition is to bring more than window dressing. Political Transitions and Media The term transition has a contested history. Its reference to political regime change or a period of major state reforms dates to the 1970s, just before the start of what Samuel Huntington dubbed democracy’s “third wave.” The field of study called “transitology” emerged as the dominant approach to understanding this third wave, with the foundational assumption that societies in transition are moving from dictatorship toward democracy (Carothers, 2002; Sparks, 2010). This approach ignores various contested meanings of democracy and implicitly takes North American and Western European democracies, including their media structures and journalistic practices, as universal templates. As Sparks (2010) puts it, “In general . . . the progress of media in post-dictatorial societies is measured as being the extent to which the local press and broadcasting approximate to (highly idealized) versions of the New York Times and the British Broadcasting Corporation” (p. 7). An influential 2002 article by Thomas Carothers calls for an end to the transition paradigm, pointing out, among other things, how few of the third wave countries had actually become democratic. He and others have since tried to classify the various patterns and outcomes among these countries, emphasizing the need for context sensitivity. Nevertheless, the term transition continues to be used, especially given the color revolutions in the former Soviet Union in the early 2000s and the Arab Spring, albeit with more sensitivity to these critiques and the wide variety of outcomes possible for any given political transition. The state is key in any transition process, and a weak state unable to enforce the rule of law is as dangerous to a democratic transition and media freedom as a strong, authoritarian state. Freedom of speech and expression are widely acknowledged as vital to a democratic polity and arguably “a better indicator of regional democratization than elections” (Obydenkova, 2008, p. 226). Yet a weak state breeds self-censorship as impunity increases—as in the Philippines, which is widely assumed to have one of the freest media systems in Southeast Asia, yet historically among the countries with the highest rates of killings of journalists worldwide. A strong state, on the other hand, is likely to suppress public expressions of opposition, often using national security as justification. The most common framing of media conceptualizes them (usually implicitly) primarily as tools for information transmission, prioritizes professionalism and objective reporting, and defines independence in relation to the state, with no discussion of independence from commercial interests. Yet community media or media accessible to the community also play a significant relational, transformative role, creating symbolic space where identities are negotiated, constructed, and contested (Rodriguez, 2001, 2011). Scholars and policy makers alike need to pay more attention to these other important roles played by media, especially in areas of conflict. Recognizing media’s relational, transformative roles makes clear the need for community access to the means to communicate with others, and not just receive information. This is vital in multicultural countries in transition, especially those experiencing conflict. McCargo (2012) argues that comparative media systems models based on conditions in Europe and North America do not help explain the situation in the countries of the global South, or they require so