2010-02-23

Balancing act : twenty-one strategic dilemmas in cultural policy

Government action in the modern world

The age of the command economy has passed. Govern- ments across the continent increasingly recognise the limits to their ability to make things happen. The complexity of contemporary society and the interdependency of local and national economies mean that Governments must influence rather than direct change. They must work with and through a vast range of public, private and independent sector part- ners. Nowhere is this more true than in the fluid, changeable world of culture, where the states efforts in one direction will often produce unexpected, perhaps unwanted, results elsewhere. In the cultural sector, individual vision can have a huge and unforeseen impact, where substantial public resources can appear to produce no change at all.The culture minister deals with a field which is inherently changeable and often seen as marginal to the governments central objectives. While health and education ministers have thousands of hospitals and schools, and millions of public employees under their control, the culture minister typically has few directly managed resources. The development and management of cultural policy is therefore one of the most complex areas of modern government, a kind of a balancing act, not so much between competing priorities as in other areas of policy, but between competing visions of the role of culture in society.

The value of marking the edges of policy

This note is intended to help with the thinking process which must underlie that balancing act. In doing so, it develops a metaphor of strategic dilemmas originally conceived by Franco Bianchini and Charles Landry as a way of crystallising the poles of a number of policy issues for example, the extremes of no state intervention in the cultural sector and government control of cultural resources. 1 It is increasingly unlikely in contemporary Europe that there will be countries wishing to position their cultural policy at one or other of these extremes. But where they place themselves on the spectrum between the poles, the balancing point which suits local circumstances, will vary from one country to another. The value of identifying the extremes lies in being able to recognise ones own position in relation to them. Does policy lie exactly in the middle ? Or does it represent something closer to a 60-40 split, a 90-10 split, or a 30-70 split ? A tightrope walker is always conscious of the two ends of his balancing pole, continually making slight adjustments to pre- serve that elusive point of balance.

In creating a dichotomy between extremes, we do not expect cultural policy-makers to make a simple choice between two options, but to consider where local policy cur- rently lies, or should lie, on the spectrum between them. To reinforce this sense of a spectrum, we have appended a little chart under each of the policy dilemmas, on which some readers may find it interesting to visualise or mark their own situation, whether ideal, or actual. It must be understood, of course, that these dilemmas are not self-contained, as they are presented here : they overlap continually, and decisions taken in one area will affect room for manoeuvre in others.

In most cases there are other ways of looking at the issue which will enable us to break out of the oppositional strait- jacket and establish new policies which combine as many of the strengths of existing alternatives, and as few of the weaknesses, as possible. The task of identifying and developing these third ways for cultural policy lies at the heart of the challenges now faced by policy-makers and planners in the cultural sector.

The paper begins with the underlying conceptual issues, presented here as framework dilemmas , since the course of cultural policy depends on how government positions itself in relation to these strategic choices. The questions they pose depend almost entirely on political, social and ethical values, and how they are addressed will fundamentally affect the shape and outcomes of cultural policy. The remaining sections focus more on the tactical decisions which arise when we begin to consider how to put policy into practice.

In passing, we should explain that we have deliberately avoided defining terms such as art or culture , words of which we make continual use. Their definition is itself open to interpretation or dispute, and is inseparable from the other dilemmas we present. We have judged it preferable to allow the reader to consider these questions along with the others we present. Nor do we make any pretence to objectivity in formulating or presenting these dilemmas. We have presented them in this booklet for debate based on our own experience and involvement in cultural policy making. Although we believe that the best answer will normally lie at some point on the spectrum between the dilemmas appropriate to local circumstances and interests, this does not mean that a happy mean is always, or often, appropriate. Policy formulation involves clear, often difficult, choices, and we have not been afraid to note where good practice cur- rently lies, or to show an inclination towards one or other pole. We hope that this occasional expression of our own view will assist the reader in clarifying his or her own opinion and in stimulating critical comments and offers of other dilemmas for discussion that could be incorporated in any future editions. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the contribution of Franco Bianchini and Colin Mercer to this process, and express our gratitude to the Council of Europe for giving us the opportunity to articulate our thinking in this paper.