Writing Question

Description

**** only use course materials and no outside sources therefore, u just need to choose one from here because info requirement is on PAP 3350A course.

–The option to choose a reading outside of what is covered in the course is available – provided you clear it with the prof first.

The objective of the reading report is to critically engage with the ideas and issues presented in the reading.

•To do so, you should draw on other readings and subject matter covered in class.

Clarity of the argument (40%)

Demonstrates a strong understanding of the readings and the ideas being covered;
–Provides complete and accurate information;
•Presents information that helps support/justify the arguments being made.
Critical Perspective (20%)
•Offersa unique or engaging perspective/understand of the issues
Makes connections to relevant concepts/themes discussed in class or presented in readings
Draws links between readings and authors
Applies theories to explore the issues and formulate sound arguments
Literary Style and quality of the language(20%)
•Must include proper spelling and grammar
Must include a proper introduction, development, and conclusion
Must include student name and number in both document title and inside the paper,proper (either in the top margin, at the top of the first page, or in a title page).
Must submitted as a Word document.
Completeness of Work (10%)
Must reach the minimum required word count (1,500) words.–Not included in the word count are bibliography, footnotes, orblock quotes(a block quote is any quote that is forty (40) words or more).
Avoid over-quoting. If more than 10% of the paper is direct quotes, it will be penalized.
Bibliography(10%)
Must include in-text citation and a proper bibliography.
–Must use a consistent style throughout the whole of the document.

Unformatted Attachment Preview

SECTORAL ISSUES IN PUBLIC
POLICY:
CULTURAL POLICY
Class 2:
Conceptualizing Culture and Cultural
Policy
Introductions
• Contact Info: [email protected]
• Availability: Upon Request
• Office: FSS 7010
TODAY’S TOPICS
Today’s Topics
• Recap:
– Defining and Conceptualizing Culture
– Defining and Cultural Policy
• The Love of Art
But first… Reading Report #1
• Due in three weeks (February 6th).
• Choose a reading of your choice (from the
course’s reading list)
– The option to choose a reading outside of what is
covered in the course is available – provided you
clear it with the prof first.
Reading Report #1
• The objective of the reading report is to critically
engage with the ideas and issues presented in the
reading.
– This means presenting and supporting an argument.
• To do so, you should draw on other readings and subject
matter covered in class.
– This does not mean simply summarizing the reading.
Clarity of the argument (40%)
• Demonstrates a strong understanding of the readings
and the ideas being covered;
– Presents and discusses issues that are salient to the
readings;
– Provides complete and accurate information;
• Provides perspectives and insights that are relevant to
the topics/issues being covered;
• Presents information that helps support/justify the
arguments being made.
Critical Perspective (20%)
• Offers a unique or engaging
perspective/understand of the issues
• Makes connections to relevant concepts/themes
discussed in class or presented in readings
• Draws links between readings and authors
• Applies theories to explore the issues and
formulate sound arguments
Literary Style and quality of the language (20%)
• Must include proper spelling and grammar
• Must include a proper introduction,
development, and conclusion
• Must include student name and number in both
document title and inside the paper, proper
(either in the top margin, at the top of the first
page, or in a title page).
• Must submitted as a Word document.
Completeness of Work (10%)
• Must reach the minimum required word count
(1,500) words.
– Not included in the word count are bibliography,
footnotes, or block quotes (a block quote is any
quote that is forty (40) words or more).
• Avoid over-quoting. If more than 10% of the paper is
direct quotes, it will be penalized.
Bibliography (10%)
• Must include in-text citation and a proper
bibliography.
– Must use a consistent style throughout the whole
of the document.
WHAT IS CULTURE? – RECAP
Culture
Often approached
through two
referential fields…
Also defined as a
signifying system.
The first defines
it as arts and
higher learning
Emphasis on the
social aspects of
culture
The second
defines it as a
way of life.
WHAT IS CULTURAL POLICY?
What is Cultural Policy?
…cultural policy is what
governments do as it
pertains to culture.
If policy is what
governments’ do
(or don’t do)…
• The “sum” of government
activities as they relate to the
arts, humanities, and heritage
(Mulcahy, 2006, p.320).
• The policies that regulate the
“marketplace of ideas”
(DiMaggio, 1983, p.242).
• A tool for policing culture
(McGuigan, 2003, p.24).
Democratization of Culture v. Cultural
Democracy
Democratization of Culture
• Hierarchy of culture: seeks to
disseminate certain types of
culture to the masses or the
general public.
– Often protectionist in nature.
– Privileges certain types or
forms of culture over others
(e.g. appreciating classic
literature over contemporary
video games)
Cultural Democracy
• All forms of culture are
equal.
– Market oriented.
– People are free to choose and
consume whatever culture
they want.
• Often informed by what is
popular.
THE LOVE OF ART
The Love of Art
• According to Bourdieu and
Darbel…
– Museum visits increase with the
level of one’s education; it is
almost the exclusive domain of the
educated classes.
– Similar increase in relation to
social class.
The Love of Art
However, education alone does not
explain it
• Although the average visitor has a Bachelor’s
degree.
Overall, the museum public is relatively young;
• The proportion of people aged 15-24 is 37% compared to 18%
of the population.
• The average age of visitors steadily increases with a higher
social class.
The Love of Art
Occupation could be used as an indicator;
• However, as occupation is often a product or expression of
education, it makes little difference.
Family also has an influence
• People are educated at school AND by their family
• The more the school leaves the task of cultural transmission
to the family, the more social inequalities exist
WHY DOES THIS MATTER?
Why does this matter?
Artistic competence is
defined, at least in part, by a
prior knowledge or
understanding of the artistic
principles encoding the work.
• Understanding its social/historical
context.
• Understanding the craft.
Working class taste is defined
in the way that Kant defines
‘barbarian taste’
• The refusal to distinguishing
between what pleases and what
gratifies.
All of this relates to
knowledge
• The ability, for example, to recognise
and appreciate the differences in
art/style from one period to another.
In other words…
• Cultural capital.
Cultural Capital
• Think regular capital (i.e. financial/economic)
but built around cultural appreciation.
Cultural Capital
• Defined by Bourdieu (1984) as “the disposal of
taste” or the “consumption of specific cultural
forms that mark people as members of
specific classes.”
Cultural Capital
• Collection of symbolic elements such as skills,
tastes, posture, clothing, mannerisms,
material belongings, credentials, etc. that one
acquires through being part of a particular
social class.
– Can be seen as a form of knowledge that serves
as currency to help navigate culture and alter our
experiences and the opportunities available to us.
Cultural Capital
• Not about money, but it
can be exchanged for
money/resources.
– Can be a major source of
social inequality.
• Certain forms of cultural
capital are valued over
others, and can help or
hinder one’s social mobility
just as much as income or
wealth.
Cultural Capital
• Can be broken down into three components:
– Embodied state:
– Objectified state
– Institutionalized state
Embodied State
• The form of knowledge
that resides within us.
– Manifested in the form
of work on oneself, or
self-improvement.
– It is an accumulation or
acquisition of external
wealth converted into
an integral part of the
person, into a habitus.
Embodied State
• The acquisition of cultural capital occurs
unconsciously, and is largely dependent on
the period, society, and social class in which
an individual finds themselves.
– Is “non-accredited and possibly tacit knowledge,
tastes and dispositions” accrued through class
participation
– Ex. One’s accent or dialect.
Objectified State
• Culture in the
sense of
material
objects and
media, and
their
transmissibility.
Objectified State
• Transmitted explicitly through its materiality
(i.e. writings, paintings, monuments,
instruments, etc.) (Bourdieu,1986, p.245).
– It serves as signifiers or symbols of our social
class/capital.
Institutionalized State
• Acquired through
institutional
legitimization, such as
academic certification
or qualification.
• Can be described in
terms of formally
accredited
knowledge.
Cultural Capital
• The question of investing in cultural capital is at
the heart of Bourdieu’s argument: class
reproduction “is based on formal education” and
not direct inheritance (DiMaggio & Mukhtar,
2004, p.170).
– It can be cultivated and accumulated, and “those with
it can gain at the expense of those without” (Bennett,
2009, p.11).
THE HABITUS
What is the or a Habitus
• Think of society as a number of different spaces
or fields, each with their unique sets of rules,
knowledge, and forms of capital.
– E.g. School, work, social, politics, science etc.
• While fields overlap, they are, for the most part
autonomous.
– When entering a field, individuals are subject to its
rules.
Habitus
• It is a system of dispositions
and that generates and
organizes practices and
representations to enable
and constrain social
transactions
– It is an internalized
structure or set of
structures that determines
how an individual acts in
and reacts to the world
Habitus
• In many respects, it is the physical
embodiment of cultural capital
– Refers to the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and
dispositions that we possess due to our life
experiences.
– It can also include social and economic capital.
Habitus
• Extends to our “taste” for
cultural objects such as
art, food, and clothing.
– It is often so ingrained that
people mistake their
tastes/appreciations as
natural instead of
culturally developed.
QUESTIONS?
5
Cultural Policy as Conventional
Public Policy
5.1
Introduction
There are many different research traditions that claim ownership of
cultural policy as an object of study. The most conventional approach
to cultural policy research used by these traditions consists of approaching cultural policy through the lenses of political scientists or public
policy researchers – meaning that cultural policy is given no specific
status and is seen as a “policy area or subfield” among others (environmental policy, foreign policy, immigration policy, transport policy,
fiscal policy, social policy, etc.). This approach builds on concepts,
theories, and methods that rarely differ from those used to study other
policy areas – from environmental policy to social policy, regardless of
how unique or different these policy fields might be, the outlook and
methods used to analyze them are often similar. This lens on cultural
policy has been considerably influential in the development of the field
and has contributed to a better understanding of national, regional,
and local cultural policies. Additionally, the tools developed by this
approach for comparative analysis and program evaluation have led to
a rich practice of collaboration and knowledge dissemination between
academia, governments, think tanks, and the broader arts community.
Of course, this conception of cultural policy falls short at times, and
many cultural policy researchers who are interested in some of the more
specific dynamics of culture may consider this conventional approach
to be oblivious to a number of important debates in cultural policy
research.
This chapter explores three major approaches to cultural policy
research. The first is what political scientists and public policy researchers have conceived of and defined as the “policy cycle.” The second
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© Jonathan Paquette and Eleonora Redaelli 2015
Cultural Policy as Conventional Public Policy
59
approach deals with comparative cultural policy. While the policy cycle
approaches cultural policy as a space of dynamic relationships and
exchanges, and tries to make sense of some essential components of
the policy process, comparative cultural policy approaches the subject
matter by offering a comprehensive snapshot of a given cultural policy.
Finally, program evaluation is the third conventional approach to
public policy research.
5.2 Cultural policy as a public policy
Through the lens of political science, cultural policy is seen as a particular kind of public policy; it is one of many subsectors of governmental
intervention. Therefore, answering the question of what a public policy
is may lead us to a definition of what constitutes a cultural policy.
Political scientists (or public policy scholars) define public policies in
very broad and inclusive terms. For Harold Lasswell (1936), the goal
of public policy research is to understand “who gets what, when and
how.” This suggests that public policy is a good – a resource that agents
seek and try to compete for. It opens us to the idea of competition
and negotiation in a policy arena for governmental interventions. For
Thomas Dye (1995), a public policy can be defined as “whatever governments choose to do or not to do” (p. 2). Public policy in its substance,
then, is as much about actions as it is about inactions. The capacity
to ignore the demands of a particular group in society or to ignore or
decline intervention in one field is as important and meaningful for
analysis as the development of any strategy of intervention. Other
propositions and attempts to develop a formal definition of public
policy are often irremediable variations on a similar theme. Some suggest that studying public policy involves studying “how, why and to
what effect […] governments pursue particular courses of action and
inaction” (Heidenheimer et al., 1990, p.3). For Richards and Smith
(2002), a public policy is “a more specific term applied to a formal
decision or a plan of action that has been taken by, or has involved,
a state organization” (p. 2). In sum, a public policy may be defined as
an action (inaction) or decision (indecision) made by an official agent
or organization of the state and that can be interpreted as its position.
Public policy researchers are interested in what governments both say
and actually do. In cultural policy research, Ahearne (2009) suggests
that some cultural policies are explicit and that their plans, intentions,
and frameworks are made public and easily accessible, while others are
implicit and must, therefore, be approached through the reconstruction
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Arts Management and Cultural Policy Research
of the effects that this policy has on the field, the arts, or any given
subfield of cultural policy.
Coining their definitions from public policy studies and political
science, cultural policy researchers have come up with definitions of
cultural policy that echo the aforementioned definitions of public
policy. For cultural policy researcher Clive Gray (2010), cultural policy,
in its simplest expression, can be seen “as the range of activities that
governments undertake – or do not undertake – in the arena of culture”
(p. 222). Other definitions, such as Paul DiMaggio’s (1983), are already
well enmeshed in the principles of advocacy and competition entailed
by the pluralist logic of the policy cycle. For DiMaggio, cultural policies
“are those [policies] that regulate what has been called the market place
of ideas” (p. 242). This definition sees cultural policy as an ideational
product that is in competition for legitimacy or resources from the
state. Consistent with the public policy approach to culture, DiMaggio
goes on to insist that his definition also includes the unintended consequences of governmental actions (and inactions) towards the arts and
culture, as well as the purposive actions with determinate ends.
Other definitions of cultural policy are open to a more descriptive
approach of what cultural policy includes in terms of public support.
Some of these definitions position cultural policy in a more comprehensive definition of governmental intervention, including not only
the arts, but also heritage – which comprises a vast array of cultural
institutions involved with almost all things cultural, from creation to
preservation. Cultural policy researcher Kevin Mulcahy (2006) offers a
descriptive definition of cultural policy as a sector of activities and governmental interventions that includes the most common institutions
within their scope: “A cultural policy encompasses a much broader
array of activities than what was traditionally associated with an arts
policy. The latter typically involved public support for museums, the
visual arts […] performing arts, […] historic preservation, […] and
humanities programs” (p. 321). This definition provides a tentative map
of the field, explaining cultural policy as the broad sector of intervention that it is (Table 5.1).
Finally, one of the most comprehensive and useful definitions of its
kind comes from Margaret Wyszomirski (2002), who defines cultural
policies as “a large, heterogeneous set of individuals and organizations
engaged in the creation, production, presentation, distribution, and
preservation and education about aesthetic heritage, and entertainment
activities, products and artifacts” (p. 186). Wyszomirski’s definition
encompasses many characteristics from the aforementioned definitions
Cultural Policy as Conventional Public Policy 61
Table 5.1
Cultural policies as public policies: some definitions
“[C]ultural policy can be simply seen as the range of activities that governments
undertake – or do not undertake – in the arena of culture” (Gray, 2010, p. 222).
“Cultural policies, in brief, are those [policies] that regulate what has been called the
market place of ideas.” As a policy, it ought to include “[…] the unintended systematic
consequences of government actions as well as action towards identified
fi ends”” (DiMaggio,
1983, p. 242).
“A cultural policy encompasses a much broader array of activities than what was
traditionally associated with an arts policy. The latter typically involved public support
for museums, the visual arts […] performing arts, […] historic preservation, […] and
humanities program” (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 321).
“[Cultural policies are] a large, heterogeneous set of individuals and organizations
engaged in the creation, production, presentation, distribution, and preservation and
education about aesthetic heritage, and entertainment activities, products and artifacts”
(Wyszomirski,, 2002, p. 186).
of cultural policy: it brings altogether the idea of a dynamic process
where agents are engaged in activities whose finalities are of a cultural
nature. Additionally, this definition also gives an idea of the scope of the
cultural sector, while also encompassing artistic and heritage activities.
As an object of study, cultural policy is a construction and reunion
of many types of activities and institutions that have been perceived
to have many commonalities and common goals – an inner logic – by
the research community that identifies with cultural policy research.
This leads to a caveat, and something worth considering for researchers who engage with actors from the field. First, cultural policy is both
an object of study – a conceptual product – and an objective reality for
actors in the field. For a public servant, a cultural policy could well be
strictly understood and defined as a formal document that a jurisdiction has officially formulated to determine the instruments and scope
of its cultural interventions. Of course, many public servants (or other
actors of the field) often have a more comprehensive understanding of
governmental intervention in the cultural sector; however, it remains
that some research and interviews with public servants may reveal that
a government has no official cultural policies, no coherent cultural
policy vision, or no policy documents explicitly outlining or addressing culture. In these situations, the definition of a cultural policy as
the sum of action and inactions that a government (administration)
conducts in relation to culture becomes all the more relevant. For a
cultural policy researcher, the absence of a document, statement, or
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coherent vision for culture should not be a research limitation. Second,
some of the vocabulary of cultural policy is, in itself, culturally contingent. The vocabulary and conceptions of culture used in cultural policy
can become challenging for researchers who come up with their own
national/regional/cultural expectations. As reminded by Wyszomirski
(2004), despite being widely studied by American scholars, the expression “cultural policy” has not historically been commonly used by the
federal government; it is only recently that the term has gained currency amongst policymakers (p. 470). All of this is to say that national
conceptions and (un)common vocabulary of cultural policy can become
challenging for researchers.
5.3 Rooting cultural policy in the policy cycle
The notion of the policy cycle is rooted in the post-Second World War
era of government and public administration studies (Heclo, 1972). The
cycle represents an important turning point in the study of government
decision-making and the study of cultural policies. The policy cycle
became a centripetal force for the field of public policy as it reunited
researchers around the desire to develop a core body of knowledge for
an applied social science – one that gave rise to the idea of a “policy
science.” Researchers of political sciences and many other cognate
fields felt that the traditional understanding of governmental decisions
fell short and that, in fact, there could be deeper and more satisfying explanations. The movement of the “policy sciences” emerged as
an attempt to develop sound and scientific knowledge about public
policies. Many argued that policy sciences should be problem oriented,
multidisciplinary, and normative – meaning that they should acknowledge that choices are highly political and have political impact (Lerner
& Lasswell, 1951). The policy cycle, thus, became the broad reuniting
device for researchers interested in governmental policies. Nowadays, it
has become difficult to think of public policies without engaging with
the policy cycle (or at least some form of sequential approach to public
policies), as it conceptualizes the policy process as a series of steps.
Over the years, the policy cycle has had many influences. First, the
policy cycle was thought of as a comprehensive theory – as a general
theory of policy-making. Second, from a theoretical perspective, the
policy cycle takes its influences from cybernetics and the biology of
complex systems. In the 1950s, the field came under the influence
of political scientist David Easton’s (1957) interpretation of biologist
Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s work on systems theory. Finally, the third
Cultural Policy as Conventional Public Policy 63
influence and defining feature of the policy process is its philosophical
association with liberal and pluralist political philosophy. In order to
conceptualize the policy process as a number of different steps in which
society takes part, expresses demands, and competes for rare and scarce
political resources, the whole model must be situated in the liberal tradition of political philosophy where civil society is acknowledge as an
actor and not denied existence.
Building on what was, back then, a novel idea, public policy researchers took things a step further in their understanding of the political
system in order to establish the different steps involved in the transaction with the social and economic environment – the transaction
between inputs and outputs. Again, there have been many different
ways of defining the sequences that encapsulate the life of a public
policy (e.g. Brewer & Deleon, 1983; Lasswell, 1956).
Despite the noticeable variations between the different steps or stages
that one observes in the literature, we can legitimately hold that – in its
simplest and most minimalist expression – the policy cycle stage model
can be described as a sequence of four interrelated steps that almost
always include emergence, formulation, implementation, and evaluation. By emergence (or the fi
first stage), researchers have observed that
before a policy is recognized as a legitimate social, economic, or political
problem, it must gain some attention amongst politicians and policy
experts (Cobb et al., 1976). Researchers suggest that before a public policy
takes shape, it is conceptualized as an issue that is about to influence (or
not) the officials who are in a position to develop a public policy.
Like Cobb et al., Kingdon (1995) uses the expression “agenda-setting”
to conceptualize the moment(s) leading up to when a policy issue
appears on the radar of the official decision-makers. For cultural policy
researchers, this stage could be echoed in one simple research question:
how does a particular issue make its way to becoming a legitimate issue
in the eye of policymakers? The formulation or transformation of a cultural policy may be the result of an advocacy process driven by artists,
consultants, or experts who try to push forward the benefits of culture
in other areas of governmental intervention (i.e. culture as a tool for
social policy or economic development) (Gray, 2004). This advocacy
process brings culture to the political agenda, and thus contributes to
agenda-setting (Table 5.2).
Policy formulation is the second stage of the policy process, and is one
of the most studied components of cultural policy. Policy formulation
implies that an arts, culture, or heritage issue has successfully made
its way into the policy arena – suggesting that the issue has gained
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Table 5.2
Cultural policies and the policy process: the stages
Emergence (or agenda-setting): the stage (or process) in which an arts or cultural
issue is propelled into the policy arena, opening up a forum for debate on arts and
cultural policy formulation or revision. The enabling forces of agenda-setting are often
the streams of politics, current/salient events, and available solutions.
Formulation: the ideational and deliberative stage of the policy process. Ideas or
points of view are expressed and the policy’s aims and objectives are defined
fi
and
negotiated between policymakers, actors of the cultural community, and policy
experts. Policy formulation implies defining cultural policy and determining the best
alternative(s) (instruments and means) to accomplish its goals.
Implementation: the stage where the policy envisioned by policymakers becomes
a(n) (imperfect) reality. This stage involves different organizations and institutions,
and implies the intervention of a constellation of actors such as artists, public
servants, heritage professionals, and stakeholders.
Evaluation: the stage where the policy is assessed by policymakers, the media, the
broad artistic community, and the general public. Cultural policy evaluation can be
associated with a number of formal evaluative procedures. Beyond formal evaluation,
cultural policies are often subjected to informal evaluation through the analysis and
appreciation of multiple stakeholders from the cultural community.
sufficient support (political, popular, or media-related support) to be
recognized as an important enough issue to be discussed and debated
in official political spaces. The policy formulation stage has to do with
decision-making – with construing and positioning a governmental
agenda for the arts and culture. This stage of the policy process has been
subject to an important debate in the policy sciences, the core of which
has had much to do with the way in which the decision-making process is said to occur. As early as the late 1950s, many researchers voiced
concerns about how decision-making had been simplified in policy
analysis – simplified into what has since been known and labeled as
the “rational model” of decision-making (and policy formulation). This
oversimplification of policy formulation has been described along the
lines of “an actor [politician in most cases] becomes aware of a problem,
posits a goal, carefully weighs alternative means, and chooses among them
according to his estimates of their respective merits, with reference to the
state of affairs he prefers” (Etzioni, 1967, p. 385). Hence, academics felt
this rationalist conception was perhaps too mechanical and had little
empirical grounding; it did not sufficiently account for the political
dimension at stake, for values, nor even for the emotional aspects of
decision-making. Cultural policy researchers know how much arts, heritage, and culture appeal to certain values and emotions that can make
Cultural Policy as Conventional Public Policy 65
a difference to the end result; these values and emotions can influence
what is acceptable, what is conceivable, and what kind of solutions will
be preferred. As such, values and emotions play a significant role in the
policy formulation process.
Building on more recent works on policy formulation, and for the
sake of providing clarity and relevance for the field of arts management
and cultural policy, we suggest that policy formulation is a stage that
comprises two aspects: the clarification of the cultural issue and the
selection of the right alternative. By “clarification of the cultural issues,”
we mean that, as the issue makes its way into official decision-making
discourse, the issue is systematically redefined to fit the official political
agenda. Definitions of what constitutes the arts, culture, and heritage
are constructed as the different actors who partake in decision-making
take into consideration the importance of the issue for society, its
implications for the state, and the state’s political preferences. Political,
economic, and social interests enrich the definition and translation of
artistic-cultural heritage as an issue worth public intervention and regulation. Actors in the field – whether they are politicians or the actors
who brought the issue to their attention – clarify their positions on
culture, redefine the issue collectively through their deliberation, and
contribute to formulating an understanding of the issue that builds on
the different interests, ideas, and social and political influences that
define their initial positions and objectives.
When cultural policy researchers try to make sense of the “meaning” of cultural policy, they question the end-result of the process of
value clarification and issue redefinition. Cultural policy researchers
try to make sense of how the actors who were involved in the policy
construction defined (or redefined) the issue through their positioning
on culture. Is culture about the high arts or any type of art? Is culture
a question of arts or a question of heritage? Is culture for the sake of
culture alone, or is it about economic development? (e.g. Dubois, 2011;
Mulcahy, 2006).
Policy formulation occurs in different contexts. In some cases, the
government is the leading force of policy formulation; in other cases
the government relies heavily on experts. More recently, it has not been
uncommon to see policies built through active citizen participation.
Studying the configuration of the actors who partake in cultural decision-making, their relationship in the policy elaboration process, and
the continuity of those relationships around similar artistic and cultural
issues is also part of the type of questions that cultural policy researchers try to understand. For instance, some researchers have questioned
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the importance of intellectuals “as policy experts” and their influence
on cultural policy formulation (e.g. Ahearne & Bennett, 2007). Other
researchers have been concerned with issues pertaining to the value of
relationships between the various actors involved in the formulation
process. For example, how is the artist’s input valued in the wake of
a cultural policy formulation? Other researchers are interested in the
evolution or persistence of the configuration of actors who generally
partake in cultural decision-making. Is it an inclusive forum? Or are
cultural decisions being made between closed doors, with a number
of select members from the cultural elite? Is it a corporatist type of
structure, where only art professionals are involved, leaving aside the
public or the arts amateur? Questions about the structure and nature of
the relationship between actors in cultural policy formulation form the
basis of many research studies in the field.
In addition to clarifying the issues and values of the different actors
involved in the decision-making process, policy formulation also
involves choosing between possible alternatives. Simply put, as part of
the policy process, the decision-makers try to select the best approaches,
means, and instruments to concretize the cultural policy. For instance,
what means should be used to mobilize arts and heritage if the objective
of a cultural policy is to create a local sense of pride and belonging? To
fulfill this goal, decision-makers may choose to build on local heritage
sites, to develop strict regulations to keep locally built heritage strong
and alive; decision-makers might also decide to rely more heavily on
communication strategies that value local celebrities, key artists, and
historical figures. To give another example, if the purpose of a new
national cultural policy is to sustain professional arts and promote
national arts abroad, then policymakers might propose developing
programs to support professional development, finance cultural events
abroad, and facilitate exchanges and collaborations in desirable areas of
cultural production.
The third stage of the policy process is the implementation stage. This
stage cover