‘My Name is Legion For We are Many’: Cultural Policies, Sectoral Disaggregation and
Differentiated Network Specificity1
Clive Gray
Centre for Cultural Policy Studies,
University of Warwick,
Coventry CV4 7HS
United Kingdom
E-mail: C.J.Gray@Warwick.ac.uk
Paper to the International Conference on Public Policy, Milan, June 20152
Paper:
8,044 words
References:
721 words
Abstract:
148 words
Footnotes:
654 words
Total length:
9,567 words
1
The quote is from the Authorised Version of the Bible, The Gospel According to St Mark, ch.5, v. 9
This is entirely a work in progress – questions about it, proposed improvements to it, and the identification of
problems with it will be gratefully received. Feel free to quote or reference it in this form even if it will be rewritten at a later date. My thanks to Kate Mattocks and Lisa Marx for their comments on an earlier version of
this paper: responsibility for its current contents remains with me.
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1
Abstract
This paper is concerned with the consequences that arise from the structural and
behavioural characteristics of the cultural policy sector. The essentially contested nature of
the concept of ‘culture’ creates the conditions within which the cultural policy sector is
subject to a large degree of sectoral disaggregation, leading to the creation of multiply
distinct forms of individual cultural policies. The consequence of this policy disaggregation is
that there exist within the sector high levels of vertical and horizontal differentiation in
organisational terms leading to the establishment of both distinct forms of group integration
and endemic policy siloification. The results of these multiple processes are that cultural
policy is difficult to both understand and analyse at the sectoral level, and that meaningful
generalisations about the sector are exceedingly difficult to substantiate. The question is
raised of whether cultural policy is a case where policy specificity trumps policy
generalisability.
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Introduction
The cultural policy sector3 contains a multitude of individual policies and policy forms, with
these being created through a greatly diverse set of policy practices and organisational
patterns. The sheer complexity that is generated by these means that the sector, as a whole,
is exceedingly difficult to make sense of. This complexity throws light on the long-established
concern about the relationship of specific policies to general policy characteristics: the extent
to which the former can be made sense of in terms of the latter is not an issue when there
are close relationships between the two. Cultural policy, however, is a sector where there
appears to be little relationship between the sector as a whole and the exact manner in
which individual policies within it can be understood. Such a position, however, is a
misleading one if the focus is moved away from the individual policies that form the sector
and is, instead, placed on the nature of the sector as a whole. By utilising a form of metaanalysis of the particular (and rather peculiar) characteristics of the sector it is possible to
develop an understanding of the general features, both structural and behavioural, of the
individual component policies that it contains.
The Nature of the Problem
A simple listing exercise can illustrate the complexities that exist when attempting to make
sense of cultural policy as a whole. The following are all examples of cultural policies (full
references for some of these are to be found in Gray, 2010): cultural diversity; community
cultural development; cultural sustainability; cultural heritage; cultural and creative industries;
lifestyle culture; eco-culture; planning for the intercultural city; cultural planning; national
language policies; library policies; archives policies; arts policies; museums policies; tourism
policies; censorship; sports policies; and media policies. In addition to these, cultural policy
can be considered to be concerned with ‘the production of cultural citizens’ (Lewis and Miller,
2003, 1); ‘currently controversial issues in the wider society’ (McGuigan, 2006, 203); the
‘culture wars’ in the United States (Hunter, 1991); ‘representation, meaning and
interpretation’ (Scullion and Garcia, 205, 116), and is ‘a transhistorical political function’
(Ahearne, 2009, 142). Such a listing, however, is only a starting-point – different academic
disciplines have quite distinct views about what cultural policy consists of, how it can be
understood, and how it can be analysed (Gray, 2010), so even the specific forms of cultural
policy noted above can be subject to radically different interpretations depending upon
whether the analysis makes use of approaches drawn from, for example, sociology,
economics or political science.
Some of these concerns are no more than a recognition that ontology, epistemology and
methodology matter when analysing public policies, even though these are perhaps less
considered as serious matters of analytical concern than they should be (Gray, 2014a). It is
3
For the purposes of this paper ‘sector’ refers to the collective label assigned to a distinct arena of policy
action; ‘sub-sector’ refers to the individual elements that are a part of these sectors. Thus ‘the cultural policy
sector’ refers to the entirety of what takes place in the ‘cultural’ field, while ‘the museums sub-sector’ refers to
the specific detail contained within the ‘museums’ field. This is a complicated issue and involves a great deal
more than this simple division allows for but for reasons of space this cannot be dealt with in more detail at
present.
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also, however, a serious matter of analytical concern when considering the field of cultural
policy as a whole that there is such variety in subject matter, particularly as the focus of
analysis is directed at widely variant understandings of the core subject that it is being
applied to. In the case of cultural policy this is more significant than in policy areas where
there is a much clearer understanding in place of the central features of the policy sector
concerned. Thus, health policy may be broken down into individual policy arenas – such as
drugs policy, prescription policy, public health policy, funding policy and so on - but there is a
clear focus to all of these on the same general concern with matters of individual and
societal physical and mental well-being. In the case of cultural policy, however, this is not
true, largely for the simple reason that ‘culture’ is an essentially contested concept (Gray,
2009)
The idea of essentially contested concepts rests primarily on the fact that such concepts are
appraisive, internally complex, variously describable, modifiable and all uses of them can be
both attacked and defended with no means being present to determine whether any
particular use is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ (Gallie, 1955/6)4. Of most importance in the present case is
the idea that essentially contested concepts are variously describable. This certainly fits in
with the idea that there are numerous ways in which ‘culture’ can be understood: Williams
(1981, 11), for example, identifies three distinct uses of the concept – a developmental one
(concerning ‘the active cultivation of the mind’), a view of the means of development (such
as through ‘the arts’), and a sociological/anthropological perspective (concerned with the
‘whole way of life’ of a community or society5). It is possible to extend this view of ‘culture’ to
make a distinction between culture as a ‘thing’ (composed of a specific element of action)
and ‘culture’ as a ‘process’ (through which meaning is produced and ascribed). Applying
these distinctions to the contents of cultural policies it is possible to distinguish between the
forms which such policies take. Arts, cultural industries and heritage policies, for example,
are clearly treating ‘culture’ as being made up of distinct ‘things’; cultural diversity and
cultural sustainability policies are concerned with the ‘process’ dimension of cultural policies;
creating cultural citizens is concerned with the ‘whole way of life’ of the members of a
community; and cultural regeneration policies are examples of the ‘developmental’ dynamic
of culture.
4
This is much more significant than the simple claim that ‘culture’ is polysemous in nature: that reduces it to
being simply a matter of definition. Being essentially contested implies a much greater complexity to ‘culture’
than can be captured in this way – the lack of a context to determine the adequacy of any of these definitions
has important implications for how cultural and cultural policy analysis can be undertaken, and what forms this
analysis can take. At the very least definitive statements that cultural policy ‘is’ concerned with any one
subject of concern (which a definitional approach would allow) will always be wrong and should therefore not
be used to limit the analytical field.
5
This claim is neither sociological nor anthropological and is simply either a tautological or a redundant
statement: everything concerning society in a tautological way must be cultural which rather begs the question
of what makes something specifically a ‘cultural’ rather than, for example, an economic, political, social,
mathematical or genetic feature of that society. To say, In the redundant version, that everything has a cultural
component to it again begs the question of what makes it ‘cultural’ – it is the equivalent of saying that
everything is ‘political’ or ‘economic’ or ‘social’. In each of these cases the claim would be untrue as definitions
of them demarcate what, specifically, they are concerned with: a vague use of the word ‘cultural’ to cover
everything in society makes it impossible, again, to identify what the specifically ‘cultural’ nature of the term
consists of.
4
Such a simple equation of policy types and conceptions of the content of the concept of
‘culture’ may serve the purpose of differentiating between the intentions of particular types of
policy but it does not say much, if anything, more than that. A classification of cultural policy
types in this way could be used to make claims about the reasons why they exist and what
political functions they fulfil but they are largely exercises in description in the first instance
rather than anything else. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such descriptive
exercises something more is needed to extend beyond simple labelling to allow for the
development of policy explanations, not least of how and why these individual policy types
differ in terms of policy organisation and their behavioural consequences. This becomes
particularly important when the development of instrumentalised forms of cultural policy is
considered (Gray, 2007; 2008). In these cases the focus is generally argued to have shifted
away from the cultural component of the individual policy that is concerned towards an
alternative that makes sense of what the intentions of the policy are that are anything other
than directly cultural ones. Thus the use of cultural policies for reasons of social inclusion
(Sandell, 1998; McCall, 2009), health (Madden and Bloom, 2004; Chatterjee and Noble,
2013), or for matters of well-being (Newman, 2013) all use ‘culture’ as a form of policy tool
for the fulfilment of quite other policy ends. The analysis of such policies, however, is often
focused on policy outcomes (such as whether the policies actually worked to meet their noncultural ends, or what their consequences were for the cultural organisations concerned)
rather than on the processes of agenda-setting, policy formation, policy implementation, or
interest, pressure or producer group integration/exclusion in the specific conditions of
instrumentalised cultural policies. Each of these policy analytical concerns may be present
by implication but they are rarely the core focus of analysis in terms of instrumental cultural
policies. At the level of individual sub-sectors within the overall cultural policy field there are
many studies of these policy concerns and the result of this is that there are a large number
of sub-sectoral analyses available but there is relatively little analysis that focuses on the
entirety of the cultural policy sector or which attempts to for account for the sheer diversity of
policies and explanations of individual policies that the sector has generated.
This lack of sectoral level analysis means that policy specificity has become something of
an entrenched position: the fact that the essentially contested nature of ‘culture’ makes it
difficult to establish a single over-arching conception of what cultural policies are for or are
like has led to a concentration on individual policy examples or sub-sectors (where
explanation of the peculiarities of individual policy examples is easier to develop) at the
expense of more wide-reaching explanations of the sector as a whole. The focus on
individual examples has certainly served to demonstrate the sheer variety of ways in which
the policy process is undertaken within the general field of cultural policy and the lack of
commonality between these component parts of the sectoral whole. The question of whether
these differences are the consequence of sub-sectoral differences in policy organisation or
whether they are reflective of the structure of the overall policy sector itself is one that has
not formed a particularly strong focus in cultural policy analysis (Gray, 2012a; 2012b) but
may provide a means by which an explanation of why the sector functions as it does can be
developed. In this context the more specific question of whether the individual peculiarities of
each of the individual sub-sectoral areas of activity that make up the general field of ‘cultural
policy’ as a whole can be tied back to the essentially contested nature of the core concept of
5
‘culture’ becomes a focus of attention that may be useful in drawing the links between the
general and the specific within the sector. In brief, does the essentially contested nature of
‘culture’ give rise to particular policy characteristics that can account for the divergences in
policy organisation and action that exist between specific policy sub-sectors? If such a
connection can be identified and explained then it should be possible to start to provide
sectoral level explanations of policy organisation and action that are, at present, not possible
to develop. The rest of this paper is intended to start this explanatory development by
concentrating on two features – sectoral disaggregation and sub-sectoral differentiation –
that have already been noted as being core features of the cultural policy sector as a whole.
Sectoral Disaggregation
The establishment of policy sectors can be viewed as being the consequence of either a
natural process of subject and actor coagulation around particular sets of concerns, or a
consciously constructed arena of action on the part of central policy actors (usually through
the state) to make sense of inter-linkages and overlaps of policy concern: the former is
based around interest aggregation and domination, and the latter is based around policy
coherence. Each of these has implications for why sectoral disaggregation may develop
within any given policy sector: the particular case of the cultural policy sector may thus
provide a side-light on broader matters of policy organisation across sectors. Given that the
cultural policy sector is so diverse in terms of its structure and organisation it can therefore
provide clear examples (if not specific evidence) of general principles that underpin the
manner in which policy sectors are created and developed.
The most simple explanation for why the cultural policy sector has become fragmented into
a series of individual sub-sectors that appear to have little, or, in some cases, nothing at all,
in common with each other is that the ways in which ‘culture’ has been made use of by
policy actors allows for a considerable degree of divergence in what is considered to be a
‘cultural’ policy. The end result of this is that a wide range of conceptions of how ‘policy’
should be organised, and how actors should be integrated into these particular sets of
concerns, can be generated, with no dominant model of either being available to act as a
reference point. Certainly the existence of widely-divergent sets of policy concerns – as, for
example, between the interests of those who are concerned with film policy and those who
are concerned with the development of policies that are designed to deal with issues of
cultural diversity (even if these can overlap in particular instances) – implies that there will be
a tendency for the development of forms of policy organisation that are perceived to be
‘appropriate’ for the particular sets of concern that form the central focus of policy actors’
interests. Thus film policy may be felt or seen to be best organised around the creators of
film – the production companies, technical experts (eg. lighting crew and cinematographers),
and film ‘makers’, (eg. actors and directors) – while cultural diversity might be felt or seen to
be best organised around the interests of representatives of particular sets of diverse
ethnicities, ages, religions, genders, disabilities, languages or any other form of societal
difference that is seen to be inadequately represented in ‘mainstream’ society.
6
Such a view as this is clearly based around an identification of policy organisation with the
core participants who have an interest in the policy sub-sector, implying that there will be
some form of automatic assignment of actors to policies and that there is a form of ‘natural’
order to the arrangement of individual policy sub-sectors. This implied order would thus see
sub-sectoral differentiation as being simply part and parcel of how policy actors allocate
themselves to some particular areas of activity rather than to others, with this leading to the
development of policy sub-sectors that are quite distinct from each other in terms of their
core memberships. A further implication of this is that these actors will be organised and
operate quite differently depending upon which sub-sector they are attached to at any given
time. Such an individualisation of policy organisation would thus imply that there would be
expected to be a high degree of siloification present between policy sub-sectors, as the core
interests that are at stake will be so distinct from each other that there will be no common
ground between them to build upon. The one exception to this is the core title for the overall
sector – ‘culture’ – which each set of core interests are able to stake a claim to, largely as a
result of the laxity with which the title is used. Thus the cultural policy sector could be seen
as the creation of multiple sets of actors staking a claim to their relevance for a particular
sector in terms of the interests that they claim to be representing. The fact that these
interests are seriously divergent from each other is not the point – it is that they see their
home as being in the field of ‘culture’, rather than anywhere else. This, therefore, gives rise
to a view that the cultural policy sector is a direct example of a form of social constructivism
where active agents determine the content of the field of action that they choose to form a
part of. Making use of different variants of what ‘culture’ means thus allows for the
establishment of multiple policy sub-sectors that will operate in quite distinct fields of
operation with little in the way of necessary overlap between them.
The direct alternative to this position is the claim that while the sector is a constructed one it
is a politically constructed one, operating on a clear set of policy design ideas. Instead of
access to the sector being open to sets of policy actors who effectively choose to be part of
it, access is, instead, determined by whether policy actors are deemed to be appropriate
ones for the sector to be engaged with by other groups of actors. In this case the defining
role that is being undertaken is based upon ideas about policy organisation and policy
coherence that are held by core political actors. These core actors will be located in the
central state machinery as this allows them to claim a legitimacy for the choices that they
make, and also provides them with access to the necessary forms of power that will allow
them to impose their choices on other actors – something that is necessary given the
diversity of claims about what counts as being a matter of ‘cultural’ policy in the first place.
Given the multiple ways in which ‘culture’ can be made use of it would therefore not be
surprising to see distinct versions of the policy sector being created by individual sets of core
actors in different countries, with each set of actors adopting a different version of ‘culture’
(or different multiple versions of it) as the key organising principle for the sector. These
actors serve a form of gatekeeping role for the sector by determining what are the sets of
policy issues that can be legitimately seen to form a part of it in the first place, with this
having almost nothing to do with the claims of external, sub-sectoral, groups and everything
to do with internal forms of political rationality and choice as exercised by the core
participants in making the central decisions about sectoral content (Gray, forthcoming a). In
effect the difference is between a bottom-up and top-down conception of what the overall
7
sector consists of, with this serving to regulate access to both the sector itself and to the
legitimacy which prospective actors can lay claim to in defence of their position.
The forms of political rationality that are employed in this process will be varied (as implied
by the likelihood of national variations in sectoral content) and depend upon how the core
actors involved in the establishment of the sector understand and employ ideas of policy
coherence and inter-linkages in the first place. By making these policy issues the core
organising principles around which the sector will be established there is a further implied
idea that central, core, actors have themselves a clear idea of how the cultural policy sector
could and should be constructed. International variations in sectoral content would further
imply that these core organising ideas have a strong national component to them – which is
hardly surprising given the ideological disparities between nations (compare the arguments
developed in Greenleaf (1983a/1983b/1987) about the underlying principles of the British
political tradition with those underpinning French cultural policy in Kiwan [2007]). Despite
ideas of instrumental rationality being central to discussions of individual policies and their
design (Howlett, 2011) this is not the same as the form of political rationality that effectively
governs the making of choices about policy sector content. Choices about what can
conceivably be included within individual policy sectors will certainly be informed by the
sense of policy coherence and inter-linkage noted above. While this falls far short of the idea
of a natural order to sectoral content it does imply that politicians do not just make things up
as they are going along (however much evidence might indicate that this is exactly what is
occurring at any given time in much more than simply the cultural policy sector) but are,
instead, attempting to construct patterns of activity that can be seen to have a logic to them.
Given that, following Gallie (1955/6), there is no way in which it is possible to make absolute
claims about what counts as a suitable area for ‘culture’ to be associated with, the selection
of sub-sectors to incorporate into the cultural policy sector allows central/core political actors
the opportunity to more or less pick and choose between multiple potential elements when
constructing the overall sector of concern. The extent to which this can then serve to fuel
continuing arguments about whether particular sub-sectors belong to the overall sector or
not, or whether it leads to the creation of such a rag-bag of policy concerns that argument
about sub-sectoral appropriateness becomes largely irrelevant, depends upon the balance
of interests that are concerned, the extent to which the arguments under-pinning the general
sector make sense, and, perhaps most centrally, whether anybody actually cares about
where the relevant sub-sectors are located. This leads into a further argument about why
sectoral disaggregation appears to be endemic to the cultural policy sector – the relative lack
of political importance that is attached to the sector by the core political actors involved
(Gray, 2009; Gray and Wingfield, 2011). If there is little core interest in the policy sector as a
whole (regardless of how important the sub-sectoral components of it may be held to be)
then whether a particular sub-sector of it remains in place, or is transferred elsewhere, or
simply ceases to be a matter of government engagement altogether is not a particularly
pressing matter for governments to be engaged with. As such, the fact that the sector as a
whole consists of only loosely connected policy concerns is not a problem. This, in turn,
means that the arguments that central actors employ to justify the inclusion and/or exclusion
of particular sub-sectors are unlikely to require the same degree of means-end instrumental
8
rationality that might be seen to be required in other policy sectors and opens the arena to
much more clearly discernable exercises of political rationality.
The other two elements in this part of the argument – interest mobilisation and sectoral
cohesion – will have a much more direct effect on whether sectoral content becomes a
matter of direct political debate than does the general lack of political significance attached
to the sector as a whole. At the sub-sectoral level, as noted above, there can be quite clear
forms of political rationality to justify why the state could and should have a functional
interest in them: in some cases this can be because of their contribution to the economy (as,
for example, with tourism), or their symbolic status (such as national museums), or for their
instrumental contribution to other policy sectors altogether (such as their perceived role in
terms of improving health or ‘well-being’). There can, however, also be sub-sectoral
pressures to encourage an active involvement of the state in the provision of the particular
services or functions that the sub-sector is engaged with, not necessarily through direct
service provision by the state itself but through forms of (for example) subsidisation,
regulation or promotion (as seen in the examples of Australian film industry policy [Parker
and Parenti, 2009], and the development of Singapore as a ‘city for the arts’ [Ooi, 2010;
Kong, 2012]), all of which can serve as forms of official recognition of the value that the subsector provides to society as a whole. While this may be most commonly seen in the case of
demands for extra state funding it is not necessarily only a matter of making demands on the
state in this form: the simple fact that the state has included the sub-sector within its general
purview can be sufficient to give the actors involved within the sub-sector a political
legitimacy that is not available to other sets of actors, and this can serve as a valuable tool in
arguments concerning the centrality of particular sets of actors in sub-sectoral terms (thus
most state support around the world for theatre groups goes to professional and not amateur
companies, with a clear acceptance that the former are more important in some way or
another than are the latter, and this contributes to the political and media role of
professional, and not amateur, actors in making the case for continued, or increased, state
support for the theatre). In these circumstances a willingness of sub-sectoral interests to
engage with core actors in the overall sector so as to maintain their position of financial or
symbolic importance can become a mechanism to reinforce the centrality of some groups
rather than others, and can thus encourage a continuing willingness to become active
participants in political activity concerning sectoral as well as sub-sectoral policies to
maintain this position.
The question of sectoral cohesion can become important as a part of this. The
disaggregation of the overall sector into a series of individual sub-sectoral fora for
discussion, debate and policy activity could lead to the creation of conditions for endemic
conflict between sub-sectors – or for them to simply ignore each other. The vertical division
of the sector can make sense as a means to provide a location for the drawing together of a
range of policy arenas that may have little to do with each other (but which have even less in
common with most other sectors of public policy), but it does not necessarily allow for an
easy agglomeration of the diverse interests that are represented within and by each subsector. The extent to which this leads to either conflict between, or wilful neglect of other,
sub-sectors depends upon circumstances rather than upon the nature and existence of the
9
conditions of acute siloification: sectoral level cuts, for example, would need to be distributed
between the component elements of the sector, and this could create conflict over the
amount and distribution of the cuts involved. Whether an existing sub-sector should continue
to be supported by the state, however, may be a matter of complete indifference to other
sub-sectors – provided, of course, that such excision does not lead to fears of further cuts in
support for their own sub-sectors and that there are no financial implications arising from the
withdrawal of support from other sub-sectors.
It would be anticipated that sectoral cohesion (or its absence) will only become a matter of
policy concern in conditions of change – and the more change that is on the cards the more
sectoral cohesion may become important in contributing to forms of underlying continuity in
the face of surface change. This importance would be of more concern to members of subsectors than to the central actors responsible for the creation of the cultural policy sector as
a whole, as their own centrality to the overall functioning of the policy sector might be
adversely affected by both sectoral-level and sub-sectoral changes. Regardless of the
specific content of the cultural policy sector in individual countries, at any given time there
will be a status quo ante in place which determines the significance that is attached to any
given sub-sector; how sub-sectors are expected to relate to each other (if this is seen to be
important in the first place: large-scale sectoral disaggregation leading to extreme degrees of
siloification may make this utterly irrelevant); the patterns of organisational behaviour that
are deemed to be important for managing the sector as a whole, as well as the individual
sub-sectors of which it is constructed; and the institutional forms through which the sector
will function (as, for example, in the employment of, in a crude sense, either ‘hand’s-on’ or
‘arm’s-length’ patterns of organisation). The fact that the cultural policy sector is such a
disaggregated arena for policy action has a tendency to mean that the focus of analytical
attention is rarely directed to the overall shape of the sector which means that the
identification of the status quo ante is rarely considered in the sectoral sense. Given that the
identification of the root pattern that underlies the functioning of political and social systems
is a common demand in analytical approaches ranging from the new institutionalism (with
path dependency arguments being particularly relevant to this: see Peters, 2012, 70-4) to
morphogenesis arguments concerning structure and agency (Archer, 1995; Gray, 2014a;
forthcoming b) an absence of sector-level analysis and the relationship of the whole to the
individual parts of which it is made becomes something of an absence in cultural policy
analysis.
This absence can be noted when generalisations are sought for in terms of the cultural
policy sector as a whole. The necessary consequence of the creation of such a diverse
policy sector in structural and behavioural terms as a direct result of sub-sectoral
differentiation is that national cultural policies are quite likely to be expressed in extremely
ambiguous terms to allow for any sort of national policy to be actually introduced (Gray,
2014b): such policies would require some sort of unifying principle for policy clarity to adhere
to, and such principle will be likely to be either entirely absent (as a result of sub-sectoral
variation), or so vague that it requires a degree of ambiguity in its own right (as with the
unifying principle of French public policy being found in the ideas of ‘liberté, égalité,
fraternité’ – when turning these into coherently meaningful cultural policies is by no means
10
as simple as might be imagined [Kiwan, 2007]). The presence – and it is something of an
endemic certainty for the sector in most countries – of this ambiguity is directly related to the
organisational and policy fragmentation that characterises the cultural policy sector as a
whole: it is not simply a sub-sectoral phenomenon in this case but something to do with the
structure of the entire sector, with this being directly related to the behavioural patterns that
are employed within it (Gray, 2012b).
Thus, sectoral disaggregation in the cultural policy sector can be accounted for as a direct
consequence of the essentially contested nature of ‘culture’. This disaggregation can then be
seen to have a number of direct effects on the forms of political (and other) rationality that
are employed to make sense of the sector; some aspects of political mobilisation within the
sector; and the dynamics of sectoral cohesion. These can then also be seen to contribute to
other aspects of the policy sector, such as the presence of large degrees of ambiguity in
policy content. But this is not the end of the story – vertical sectoral differentiation into
distinct sub-sectoral policy arenas also has the effect of establishing the conditions within
which variable patterns of group mobilisation and integration become the norm for the sector
as a whole, and this then contributes to a reinforcement of the vertical divisions that are so
common within cultural policy.
Sub-Sectoral Specificity and Group Mobilisation in Cultural Policy
As noted above (page 6) sectoral disaggregation into distinct sub-sectoral policy arenas has
implications for patterns of group mobilisation and integration into the policy process as it
affects the cultural policy sector as a whole. In some ways this is certainly not a surprising
claim to make – the patterns of actors to be found within policy sectors (let alone subsectors), and the ways in which they interact, are subject to large-scale variation not only
vertically but also horizontally, with different patterns of engagement being present, for
example, at the international, national and local (including regional and provincial) levels of
political activity more or less regardless of the policy sector or sub-sector concerned (as a
comparison of Gray, 2000, on the arts sub-sector, and Gray, forthcoming a, on the museums
sector, demonstrates). In the case of cultural policy, however, the implications of these
variations in group mobilisation are more extreme than is the case for most other policy
sectors where there are often core groups of actors whose impact can be felt and identified
across both vertical and horizontal levels of policy organisation. Thus the role of medical
professionals in discussions of health policy (Baggott, 2011), and their clear identification as
a classic form of ‘insider’ group (Grant, 2000, 24), clearly marks them out as being relevant
(if not core) actors across the entirety of their policy sector of concern: this central position
for health professionals cuts across both vertical and horizontal patterns of policy
arrangements and is repeated across political systems as well. The case of cultural policy,
on the other hand, demonstrates a much more fragmented policy system with major
differences across, as well as within, individual political systems, and where no single group
of actors is able to exert the same levels of pressure that health professionals can in their
field of expertise.
11
The sheer variety of policy concerns that the cultural policy sector contains can account for
the divergences of political mobilisation that exist at this preliminary, and rather superficial,
level of concern. To develop what is simply a descriptive statement, however, into something
that can be developed to establish some analytical and explanatory capability requires a shift
in emphasis away from the identification of a core structural component of sectoral
disaggregation in the shape of conceptual complexity towards the development of political
and policy perspectives that are concerned first and foremost with the relationship of groups
and policy intentions. If it is accepted that group engagement in policy is a combined matter
of: group interests and access; a preference for the establishment, changing or maintenance
of particular sets of policy objectives; a preference for certain ways of managing policy
activity to feed into these objectives; and the utilisation of forms of means-end instrumental
rationality to make sense of policy activity, then the meanings that are attached to each of
these are important for both actual and potential policy participants. The key focus which
draws these individual elements together can be found in the end-product of policy action the fulfilment of (or failure to fulfil) the policy objectives that actors are attached to.
Engagement in policy activity is then to be seen as purposive action that is concerned with
policy outcomes rather than, as more constructivist approaches would imply, with the
establishment, changing or maintenance of the structures of meaning that give shape to
policy action in the first place6.
In this respect it is expected that sub-sectoral differentiation would serve to establish the
conditions within which different sets of actors would be able to mobilise around distinct
arenas of potential action, with this allowing for the creation of the possibility to adopt
different patterns of organisation that are believed to be appropriate for the diverse forms of
policy outcome that actors are concerned with. In this way a differentiation between patterns
of group mobilisation would be developed that embody within them quite clear patterns of
specificity at the sub-sectoral level. This specificity would be expressed through particular
patterns of structural and behavioural organisation which, in the context of a highly
disaggregated policy sector, need not have anything in common between them. Thus, there
should be expected to be wide variation between sub-sectors in terms of their specific
functioning that are directly related to the nature of the policy sector itself. In addition to this
the low level of political significance that is attached to the policy sector in general provides a
context within which the colonisation of particular policy sub-sectors by particular sets of
interests is unlikely to be the cause of major ramifications for the broader political system as
a whole. This willingness to allow the focus of mobilisation to rest at the sub-sectoral level
can be explained in multiple ways, many of which are concerned with the generally depoliticised nature of cultural policy activity: the lack of a clear focus on the sector as a whole
on the part of central, core, political actors, for example, opens the possibility for a large
number of distinct groups and interests to stake a claim for involvement, if not outright
dominance, in particular arenas of action that do not have to take into account broader
demands and expectations about what these sub-sectors might be doing.
6
This is not to deny the relevance of constructivist approaches – it is simply the adoption of a particular
analytical approach to answer specific questions about the nature of the organisation of group involvement in
the cultural policy sector and how this can be explained: asking different questions about the sector would
require the adoption of different analytical techniques, some of which would certainly be suitable for the use
of constructivism.
12
The consequence of these environmental factors means that within the cultural policy sector
differences will be expected between sub-sectors in terms of which groups will be central
actors within them, the underlying bases upon which this centrality rests and the potential
open-ness of individual sub-sectors to influences from other sub-sectors or the sector as a
whole. The museums sector, for example, can be seen to have a clear hierarchy of group
engagement from a central core that is dominated by professional groupings, to a penumbra
of actively engaged volunteers and service managers, to a periphery of regular visitors and
those with an instrumental interest in what museums are doing, to a set of ‘policy relevant’
participants who have a range of accountability, social and legal interests in museums, to,
finally, a set of disengaged or excluded potential participants (Gray, forthcoming a). This
network of groups is organised around the basis that museums are largely seen as
institutions that have no intrinsic political dimension to them, and the control of which should
be managed by those who have the appropriate educational and technical museal
knowledge. In such a technically professionalised framework anything that elected or
appointed politicians may wish to do could be seen as being invalid interference that lacks
the legitimacy based on the functional capabilities that museum professionals can lay claim
to. The slow and partial development of inputs arising from the ‘new museology’ that
developed from the mid-1960s onwards (even though its roots can be traced to the mid-19th
century), and which emphasised the need for the introduction of increased (and improved)
social and political awareness into the work of museums, demonstrates the strength that this
professional conception of museums still has in terms of actual museum practice (McCall
and Gray, 2014), even if instrumentalising pressures demonstrate that the sector is not
immune to exogenous demands from actors in other sub-sectors and policy sectors
altogether (Gray, 2008).
A comparison with other sub-sectors demonstrates that the strongly professionalised
museums sub-sector is quite different to others: cultural diversity, as a sub-sector, is
organised on the basis of a plethora of representational interests organised around the
social characteristics that provide the underlying legitimacy of their claims to engagement
and, as a consequence, they can demand or be drawn into a wide range of sub-sectoral
concerns; art, as a sub-sector, on the other hand, can be seen to be constructed from a
combination of producers, suppliers, critics, consumers and educators (Alexander, 2003;
Thornton, 2008) who acquire their significance through their location in a chain of
connections that are specific to the rather inward-looking ‘arts world’ (Becker, 2008) of the
present day. This world is as much, if not more, an ideological construct (Thornton, 2008,
xiii) as it is a particular set of market arrangements and has within it a set of gate-keeping
activities that serve to insulate it from the demands and expectations of other actors. The
firmly commercial orientation of the art world also means that interventions by state actors
would, again, be seen as illegitimate intrusions into matters that lie outside of the purview of
directly politically-accountable rather than market-based participants.
In all three cases (museums, cultural diversity, art) it is not that they are completely
structurally independent from the demands of other sub-sectors and sectors so much as
13
their ideological underpinning that determines the extent to which they are integrated into the
broader policy environment which surrounds them. Each can be linked to the interests of
actors from other sectors and sub-sectors but the basis of their organisation around differing
sources of sub-sectoral legitimacy makes the development of these linkages difficult to
establish and maintain and a consequence of this is that there are few meaningful pressures
for the development of common organisational patterns that can cut across sub-sectoral
specificity. In effect, without some form of pressure or demand for consistency within the
sector as a whole there will be a continuation of specific forms of group mobilisation around
the peculiar features of each sub-sector. At this level there is a reinforcement of the divisions
between sub-sectors that are generated by differences in understandings of what ‘culture’ is
actually concerned with. The development of specific patterns of organisation around
particular sets of ideological and legitimating principles has effectively taken place in
something of a policy vacuum – the lack of direct engagement by core policy actors with the
entire field of culture allows individual sub-sectoral dynamics to become common-place and
to divorce them from any broader sectoral conceptions of policy organisation and practice7.
The reasons for this lack of central/core engagement with the sector as a whole can help to
account for this state of affairs and can be used to help to explain precisely why the cultural
policy sector is organised and functions as it does. A usual staring-point in this is the idea
that governments do not wish to be seen as intervening in a policy area that is predominantly
concerned with matters of subjective preference and choice, with this normally being
associated with fears concerning how ‘culture’ was used (and abused) by various
authoritarian governments during the 20th century where censorship was common and
cultural freedom was constrained. This is an almost entirely Western perspective on the
state’s role vis-a-vis ‘culture’ and is not only consequently a geographically limited view but it
is also empirically wrong as current liberal democratic governments can also be seen to
exercise real censorship and to constrain cultural freedom anyway. Regardless of these,
however, it is certainly the case in Western societies that there is a marked reluctance to
adopt a positively ‘hands-on’, direct control, approach to cultural policy – even though, as
pointed out some years ago there are a variety of less direct methods of control that are
made use of by state actors (Hillman-Chartrand and McGaughey, 1989; Craik, 2007) - and a
willingness to abdicate direct responsibility for culture necessarily leaves the sector open for
domination by non-state actors.
A less obvious reason that is also associated with the perceived subjective nature of culture
is that direct state intervention is never going to be problem-free. Any decision that the state
makes in the sector will generate opposition at both the ideological and the practical level
and by itself this is likely to make states reluctant to engage with the sector. In the case of
ideological criticism accusations of censorship and manipulation are often equally associated
7
This raises serious questions about not only the functioning of the cultural policy sector but also about how
analysis of the sector is to take place. The fragmentation of the sector through processes of disaggregation and
differentiation leads to a situation where policy overlaps (as seen, for example, in the way that film policy and
cultural diversity policy can and do so overlap within the European Union) cannot be simply resolved by the
application of a commonly-accepted frame of reference as is the case in more coherent policy sectors such as
macro-economic or agricultural policy. My thanks to Kate Mattocks for raising this point.
14
with claims that the actual practice of state intervention means that states can use their
position to effectively sponsor ‘official’ forms of art that then limit the possibility of innovation
and experimentation and establish forms of bland mediocrity that acquire status through their
conformation with ‘official’ standards while ‘real’ art is degraded in status8. With ‘arm’slength’ approaches states can avoid the more obvious accusations of bias that cultural
interventions can give rise to even if this is usually only at the cost of having the same
accusation made of them by non-state sub-sectoral actors instead. The idea that all cultural
interventions are expressions of some form of bias is a clear consequence of the accepted
subjectivism that is applied to all forms of culture and demonstrates both why states always
end up being subject to criticism for the cultural choices that they make, and why they are
usually quite happy to leave the sector open for the involvement of non-state actors in
making ‘cultural’ decisions as this lessens the force of the opposition that they will face.
A final reason for why state actors have generally taken a rather limited role in the cultural
policy sector is that as an issue ‘culture’ is simply not usually perceived as being of real
political importance. In comparison with making decisions about, for example, taxation,
defence and foreign affairs the making of decisions about ‘culture’ normally assumes a low
priority for governments and central/core political actors. Bulpitt (1983, 3).drew a distinction
between ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of politics: the former being colonised by central actors and
the latter being concerned with ‘residual matters which in normal circumstances could be left
to governments and interests in the periphery’. While this concerned a largely territorial
division of state responsibilities it can also be employed in a more directly functional form:
some policy concerns are seen as matters that the centre/core must be engaged with, others
are those which the centre/core might or could be involved with. Given that this division is
largely determined by central/core actors and is not definitive – policy concerns can shift
from being matters of ‘high’ or ‘low’ concern depending upon changing perceptions of policy
importance and changing ideologies of state engagement – the relative reluctance of state
actors to become actively involved in cultural policy is as much a matter of the particular
interests of central/core actors at any given time as it is anything else. In those state systems
where a relatively low priority is attached to the sector a dominance of private/non-state
interests in positions of power and authority would be expected to be the likely outcome. In
sectors where there is a much greater significance assigned to the sector by state actors the
more likely it is that these same actors will be much more involved in assuming central roles
in decision- and policy-making activities.
Conclusions
The core question raised at the start of this paper concerned the development of sectorallevel explanations of why the cultural policy sector is organised and functions as it does. The
focus in the discussion on two dimensions of the sector – sectoral disaggregation and group
mobilisation means that no definitive answer to this core question can be given. What is
possible, however, is the establishment of some general explanations for why these
8
An examination of, for example, how much of the modern and contemporary art that is purchased by
publically-funded museums and galleries around the world is criticised in the popular (if not populist) media
demonstrates how wide-spread this position actually is.
15
dimensions have taken the form that they have and how their specific characteristics form a
part of a single base feature of the overall sector. This feature lies in the essentially
contested nature of the ‘cultural’ concept. The effect of this is that there is no single definitive
way of organising the sector and, consequently, the possibilities for sub-sectoral
differentiation are many. This can be explained in both bottom-up and top-down ways with
these involving different structural and behavioural arguments. These arguments can then
be developed to provide explanations for the variations in how interests are integrated into,
or effectively excluded from, these sub-sectoral patterns of organisation. In effect the general
nature of the policy sector as a whole can provide the framework within which the specific
features of sub-sectoral elements of the sector can be made sense of. The identification of
the characteristics of the sector that can provide effective explanations of how it is both
organised and functions provides the possibility for the development of further explanations
of, for example, the specific nature of policy-making and policy implementation at both the
sectoral and sub-sectoral levels of what is not just an extremely diverse field of policy activity
but one of the most complicated that exists at each of the local, national and international
levels of analysis.
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