The Structure of Cultural Policy
Clive Gray
University of Warwick, UK
C.J.Gray@ Warwick.ac.uk
Centre for Cultural Policy Studies,
Millburn House,
University of Warwick,
Coventry CV4 7HS
United Kingdom
Clive Gray has published widely on theory and methods in cultural policy, the state and cultural
policy, and the politics of the museums sector. He is currently undertaking research on structure and
agency in the museums and galleries sector in England.
Abstract
This paper identifies the policy setting within which cultural policy operates. It identifies a range of
behavioural and structural features that can be used to identify the key constraints on, and
opportunities for, action that are associated with the cultural policy field. It divides these features
between systemic principles (such as ideologies and rationalities), overarching policy structures (such
as policy priorities and policy instruments), and sectoral policy specifics (such as organisational
policy content and policy actors). The paper provides, in consequence, a framework that can be used
for the analysis of cultural policy in both the public, voluntary, community and private sectors.
The approach that is adopted is developed from the cultural policy and public policy literatures and
allows for the creative construction of a theoretically and empirically derived framework for the
analysis of cultural policy. The structure of the framework is derived from a social realist ontological
position and is thus not prescriptive of how analysis should be undertaken. By focusing on the
relationship between structural and agential factors in policy analysis it is anticipated that the
framework should allow analysts from a diverse range of disciplinary and methodological
backgrounds to locate their research endeavours within a common setting. This should also allow for
the development of a more effective comparison of research approaches - and their strengths and
weaknesses – than is currently available. It should also allow for the potential to develop effective
policy learning in so far as it should allow for the identification of common themes, issues and
approaches within cultural policy research as a whole. Finally, it should allow for the identification of
under-researched issues within cultural policy, and for the development of future research agendas.
1
Keywords: Structure and Agency; Policy structures; Politics
Word Count: 8,637
Introduction1
The focus of this paper is on the internal policy decisions that are made for the creation of cultural
policies within individual cultural organisations. While the impact on these on the policies that are
being pursued by a range of other, external, policy actors from central to local governments, to
external funding agencies, to a range of community and voluntary organisations are seen as being
significant in their own right, they are not the central topic of concern. Thus, precisely why
government departments made the individual decisions that they did over topics ranging from cultural
regeneration strategies, culture as a tool for social inclusion, or the promotion of cultural excellence is
not necessarily the central issue: instead, the focus is on how staff within the organisations that are
affected by these decisions manage them in the context of their own decision and policy-making
strategies2. This discussion and analysis is framed within the context of the general argument within
the social sciences about the interplay between structure and agency.
A common argument within this context concerns the relative significance of structure and agency for
the functioning of individual and organisational decision processes, with policy actors being either,
like Macbeth, ‘cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in’ by a set of relatively invariant structural
constraints, or capable of claiming that ‘we are not a government poodle’ (West & Smith, 2005), able,
instead, to make their own independent choices through the exercise of political agency. The extent to
which such positions are either tenable or relevant to an understanding of structure and agency in the
context of social action rather depends upon the underlying ontological, epistemological, theoretical
and methodological positions that analysts assume (Gray, 2010). If a realist ontological position is
adopted, where agency and structure are seen as continuously intertwined (Archer, 1988, 1995; 2003;
Elder-Vass, 2010), with each being recognised as central to an effective analysis of policy activity,
then the relative importance of differing structural and agential factors in any given individual case
can only be determined empirically and is not amenable to definitional fiat. Of necessity such
empirical analysis must incorporate both structure and agency to be effective, which raises questions
about the appropriateness of differing methodological means for making sense of their interplay.
1
This paper is not intended to be taken as being a definitive exploration of the subject that it discusses, not least
as it is part of a work-in-progress study of structure and agency in the museums and galleries sector in England.
Any comments and, particularly, any suggestions on how to improve the content and the analysis that is
contained in the paper will be gratefully received. All of the inevitable failings that go with conference papers
are my responsibility.
2
Clearly the internal decision processes of cultural departments at the central government level can equally be
analysed through the mechanisms that are developed in this paper: the approach developed is a general rather
than an institutionally-specific one. A shift in focus to the level of the decisions being made within a
government department instead of at the level of an individual culture-producing organisation would simply
shift the focus of the analysis to that of the central government department, with consequent changes in the
location of variables that affect the choices that are made within it.
2
Structure, Agency and Policies
The basic starting-point for analysis is that policies arise from a combination of exogenous and
endogenous factors. The exogenous factors may range from the policies that are adopted by
sponsoring or funding bodies that are institutionally separate from the individual organisations that are
the focus of concern but which are affected by these policies, to the ideologies that underlie policy
choice, to the consequences of actions that have been undertaken in other policy sectors altogether.
The endogenous factors are seen as deriving from the choices that are made by actors internal to the
specific policy sector that is concerned, which can be influenced by, amongst many other things,
organisational strategies, professional standards3 and the patterns of accountability that exist within
these sectors. Overall policy is seen as being a response to the differing pressures that are generated
from each set of factors, with this response being mediated by the conflicts and agreements that policy
actors are involved with, both internally and externally. The conditions of uncertainty that exist in all
of these serve to make predictions about the likely outcome of any given case extremely difficult to
make with any credibility – but not impossible.
If both sets of factors – exogenous and endogenous - are important for understanding the precise
detail of cultural policies then the question of how to make sense of what may otherwise appear to be
a set of disaggregated component policy parts becomes analytically important. Archer (1995), from a
position of analytical dualism, argues that, in effect, it is possible to start from a focus on either
structure or agency as being the dependent or independent variable in question, with the choice of
either being dependent upon the specific questions that the investigator wishes to analyse. The classic
view from Marx (1973, 146) that ‘men make their own history, but not of their own free will; not
under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances
with which they are directly confronted’, for example, takes a structural starting point, requiring an
identification of the surrounding ‘circumstances’ before sense can be made of the choices that are
arrived at. This may be seen clearly in rational choice approaches to analysis where the identification
of the underlying value preferences that individuals hold serve to structure the choices that are, and
can be, then made4 (Hindmoor, 2006). More voluntaristic approaches, such as those deriving from a
phenomenological ontology, would tend to focus on how actors make sense of these constraints in the
first instance before investigating how they are then manipulated or managed by these knowing
actors. Versions of interpretive analysis that concentrate on the role of individual actors in the creation
of meaning through their manipulation of ideas and their reliance on personal experience demonstrate
this approach to analysis: Newman, 2011, for example, argues that an analysis of individual responses
to museum displays casts doubt on the efficacy of the top-down structural requirements of
management tools to capture the actual cultural impacts that visiting museums and galleries may give
rise to, and if these impacts are to be effectively understood then an investigation of the personal
responses of actors to the contexts within which they are located is required and, indeed, assumes
primacy in an investigation of visiting effects5.
A literature review of the range of variables that exist, however, is unlikely to do more than
descriptively list the potential effects that they may have on policy. More helpful, it is argued, could
And, indeed, by a general sense of ‘professionalism’ that is distinct from these standards. My thanks go to
Andrew Newman for this distinction.
4
Given the emphasis within rational choice on methodological individualism this may seem to be a rather
perverse claim but, as critics have argued (see Green & Shapiro, 1994; Hay, 2004), if the underlying
assumptions of rational choice are followed through then individuals can only make some choices out of the
multitudes that potentially confront them, and those that are made are determined by the underlying value
preferences that they hold. At the very least there are some methodological inconsistencies here.
5
Archer (1995, 2-12) discusses the problems and limitations of upwards and downwards conflation – an
emphasis on individual or structural features – in the context of structure and agency issues.
3
3
be the identification of a framework within which the roles of a host of policy variables could be
located, with their inter-relationships and causal connections, and their individually distinct
consequences for cultural policies being integrated into an analytical whole. Policy is inherently
messy involving, as it does, multiple organisations, actors, ideas, practices, arguments, discourses,
paradigms, jurisdictions and justifications, with all of these having both independent and interactive
effects. Rather than attempting to make claims about the relevant significance of any particular sets of
factors for cultural policies at this stage it could also be argued that the development of features of
policy that have been developed within the larger public policy field may be more helpful as these are
concerned with policy as policy, rather than with the specificities of individual policy sectors. As such
there is a certain generality in the policy features that could be included but this may be helpful in
emphasising the fact that cultural policy does not occur in conditions of splendid isolation from what
is occurring elsewhere within societies6. Of course, the identification of these public policy-based
features are themselves based upon particular emphases that have been placed upon analysis in the
past and,as such, they have generally been established on the basis of particular ontological and
theoretical presuppositions, where assumptions about importance in practice have been used to give
them importance in analysis7. Be this as it may, however, an awareness of particular sets of variables
can serve to focus attention on what are commonly perceived as being the prime motivating forces
behind policy choice that are independent of the peculiarities of cultural policy8.
A return to the relationship of structure and agency can provide one means for establishing an
effective framework within which policy activity can be located. Apart from simply re-stating the
truism that both structure and agency matter and have an effect upon policy – assuming, of course,
that there is neither complete structural determinism (downwards conflation) nor complete free will
(upwards conflation) in existence – an explicit clarification of the relationship between the two is
required if analysis is to be meaningful. In this context Archer’s social realism (1989, 1995, 2003) has
been used to anchor the discussion. Archer (1995, 15) argues for an analytical dualism on the basis
that ‘structure necessarily pre-dates the action(s) leading to its reproduction or transformation …
elaboration necessarily post-dates the action sequences which gave rise to it’. Thus, all social action
takes place within a particular structural context9. This context can be either maintained or changed
through social action. If the latter occurs it then produces a new structural context within which later
social action will take place. In this respect it is possible at any given time to differentiate between the
effects of structure and agency on the actions and choices that are made: ‘although structure and
agency are at work continuously in society, the analytical element consists in breaking up these flows
into intervals determined by the problem in hand’ (Archer, 1995, 168).
6
As will be emphasised in the model that is developed at a later stage in the paper where the importance of
exogenous factors in accounting for endogenous choices is made clear.
7
Regrettably, negative findings remain rare in the literature. This may demonstrate that things are even more
complex than is commonly thought – the sheer number of factors that have been argued to affect policy, either
singly or in combination, now runs in to the thousands – or it may demonstrate that there is simply an
unnecessary complication of analysis, or that there has been a certain amount of re-naming of identical factors in
different studies. It would make a change for a study to announce that the variable that has been studied has
absolutely no effect on policy.
8
The specificity of cultural policy should not be ignored, having, as it does, particular consequences for how the
sector functions (Gray, 2009), but this specificity is given effect in how the framework that has been developed
is put into practice.
9
This does leave it open to a recursive attempt to identify the original structuring framework that existed –
although whether this is analytically helpful is open to question – but for analytical purposes the identification of
the existing structural framework within which policy is made would be all that is required, unless the emphasis
is on analysing processes of morphogenesis whereby it may be that changes in the structural context are being
analysed through agential means with the latter being the focus of study.
4
It goes almost without saying that different organisations are subject to particular, specific, external
forces and pressures that need not necessarily be present in the case of other organisations. Thus local
authority museums that are in a left-wing-controlled area will not necessarily be subject to the same
expectations and policy structures that one in a right-wing-controlled area may confront. But, equally,
two different left-wing authorities may have quite distinct approaches to their own museum services,
and individual museums may also have their own organisational approaches to managing their
activities. In the same vein two national museums may be subject to the same reporting requirements
for reasons of public performance management but this does not mean that they will actually respond
to these in the same way. Hood (2006), for example, differentiates between five types of ‘gaming’
strategy that have been employed in the British public sector10 any of which may be applied to
performance reporting, while Smith (1995) has identified eight unintended consequences of
performance reporting (of which gaming is one) which are subject to the choices that are made by
organisational managers. To simply assume that managers will do what they are told to do does not
seem to be an accurate reflection of the lived experience of organisational staff11. In this respect
context assumes significance: simple generalisations do not necessarily reflect complex realities (see
Howlett, 2012).
Be this as it may, it is possible to identify a number of common claims about what determines the
structure and goals of policy, with these operating in two distinct arenas: policy as ‘policy’, and policy
as action. The former of these is, in keeping with the topic of this paper, taken to be concerned with
the structural characteristics of policy, whilst the latter is concerned with the practice of the policy
process. Given the emphasis within realist ontology on the recursive relationship between structure
and agency the identification of variables as forming a part of either of these groupings is as much a
matter of analytical choice as it is one of necessity: what may appear to be a structural component in
one line of analysis may appear as an agential factor in another, and vice-versa. At the very least this
means that a clear statement of the initial starting place for analysis would be required to justify the
analytical choices that are then made. Indeed, Elder-Vass (2010, 65-6) has argued that for a complete
causal analysis of events five features of the analysed variables are required:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
A list of their characteristic parts;
An explanation of how these must be related to each other;
An explanation of how they arose;
An explanation of how they are sustained;
An explanation of how the effects of the whole are produced by the organisation of its parts12.
Given the tendency from within the cultural sector as a whole to view the choices and actions of
external agencies as being unwelcome intrusions on the independence and integrity of actors within
the sector - the instrumental debate, for example, has seen numerous ‘accusations of rigid
prescription, a loss of quality and artistic integrity, increased bureaucracy and an abdication of
responsibility by the state’ (Nisbett, 2012, 2) – the role of external actors in establishing sets of
requirements for the management of regulation, oversight, accountability, probity and many other topdown concerns, where these affect internal actors, would serve to establish the ‘circumstances’ (in the
Marxian sense) within which staff in the organisations that are examined are operating. Indeed, the
location of central government departments which have a responsibility for culture within a realm of
structural requirements that are equally imposed on them in a top-down fashion can have significant
10
Neither is this peculiar to the public sector. The private and voluntary sectors have equally as varied responses
to demands for information from both internal and external actors.
11
The principal/agent model in economics usually ends with much the same conclusions, even if starting in a
different place – see, for example, Goddard et al, 2000.
12
While a broad consideration of these is contained within this paper a fuller discussion of them would require a
rather different sort of paper to the current one.
5
effects on the centrality of these departments to the overall concerns of governments (Gray &
Wingfield, 2011).The extent to which these function as invariant controls over which internal actors
exercise no effective autonomy is thus a key dimension for investigating the structure/agency
relationship. Whether structure is simply a set of constraining factors or whether it can serve as a
means for the exercise of effective policy choices by independent actors thus becomes the major
setting for the analysis.
The Structural Characteristics of Policy
At one level an identification of the range of factors that establish the structural conditions within
which organisational staff function is clear-cut: a simple listing of the legal framework governing the
particular sector in general, and specific organisations in particular,the reporting requirements that
central and local governments have established, the international treaties and obligations that have
been signed, the funding mechanisms through which the sector is financed, and the policies that
central and local governments have introduced that govern what the sector and its component
organisations are intended to do would be sufficient for this purpose. At another level, however, such
a listing is noticeable as much for what it ignores in terms of establishing the context within which
policy functions as it is for ignoring the less direct ways in which exogenous actors may seek to
impose control over the sector. It is particularly noticeable for ignoring the unintended consequences
of a range of actions external to the sector that could potentially have major repercussions for how it
functions13. While the direct structural matters concerning top-down policy choices clearly have an
importance for any sector it is possible to approach structure in a wider fashion that includes both the
direct forms and the range of indirect and unintended structural factors noted above14.
One way of approaching this lies in identifying a range of structural constraints that are present in all
policy settings and then to identify how these play out in the context of the cultural policy sector. The
constraints that are identified here function at different levels (macro-, meso- and micro-) within the
sector and operate in quite distinct fashions from each other. They cover a range of potential,
externally-driven, constraints that have been identified as having at least some effect in internal policy
terms. What these effects actually are in the specific case of cultural policy organisations (both
individually and collectively) can only be determined through detailed empirical research, even if the
assumptions concerning what these effects arelikely to be are relatively clear. What follows is a brief
listing of the variables that form the general model of structural constraints and opportunities that has
been developed.
At the macro-level three key structural factors are seen to be of significance: those of ideology,
rationality and legitimacy. Each of these has a role to play in determining the general political, social
and organisational context within which policy operates. Ideology - in the general sense of sets of
beliefs, attitudes, values and norms15 – establishes the parameters within which policy choices will be
made. At the most crude this could be represented by party political ideologies that establish different
expectations about the role of the state in society – with conservative parties being generally more
restrained about this than social democratic parties are. More generally such ideologies can establish
13
As in the case of adopting new approaches to management across the public sector as a whole (Gray, 2008),
or the impact of new technologies for/on the activities of public and private organisations in general (see, for
example, Eisenstein, 1979, or Pettegree, 2010, on the impact of the printing press).
14
This is important, for example, in the treatment of hierarchical relationships in Mouzelis’ (1995, 141-7) reworking of functionalism to integrate social action, leading to a rather different version of the relationship of
structure and agency to that developed by Archer.
15
These largely correspond to Archer’s (1988) notion of ‘culture’ but are here being used much more in the
political science sense of ‘ideology’.
6
the balance between collective and individual responsibilities within societies, as well as with
establishing what are seen as being acceptable approaches to issues such as nationalism, ethnicity and
gender. Needless to say, each of these is a matter of some concern within the cultural sector (see in the
case of the museums sector, for example, Butts, 2007; Mason, 2011; Szekeres, 2002). Legitimacy is
concerned with the basis upon which decisions and choices within society are seen to be acceptable
ones, either in the sense that the right of decision-makers to make these choices is accepted, or that the
decisions themselves are accepted as being the right ones (this approach is largely derived from the
Weberian argument (1978, 212-99) about the nature of authority within societies). While legitimacy is
unlikely to be an absolute state of affairs - in so far as not everybody always accepts without dissent
or disagreement the right of decision-makers to act and/or the rightfulness of the decisions that are
made –a basic level of legitimacy for the exercise of authority is absolutely essential to allow social
life to be undertaken. As such, working within the confines of the established legitimate order is a
necessity unless or until that legitimacy is subject to such extensive stress that it fails to function.
Recognising such legitimacy issues may be simply at the level of knowing the ‘rules of the game’ of
organisational and personal life that allow things to be done, at another level it involves an active
acceptance of standards of behaviour and ways of working if one wishes to become accepted as a
participant in the activities of the wider social world. Rationalities govern the ways in which people
operate by identifying the key relationships that will be used to justify the choices and actions that
individuals will take. Classic Weberian means-end, instrumental, rationality is not the only form of
rationality that may be applied to any given situation – from sociology, affective and communal forms
can be identified, in political science patron-client forms are seen, and in cultural policy a ‘ritual’
rationality can be seen to exist (Royseng, 2008) – even if it is a common one. Which rationality is
being employed at any given time, however, has some important implications for how social
behaviour will be or can be explained, and it operates as a limit to what are seen as being appropriate
ways of behaving in any particular set of circumstances.
Such macro-level structural elements serve to establish the general framework within which more
specific choices and decisions will be made. This set of factors may be variable in so far as parts of it
may take different forms at different times (for example, with switches from instrumental to
communal rationality when dealing with some issues) but it is a consistent feature across all areas of
social life. As such it is expected to be unlikely that these limits to action will be at the forefront of
policy actors’ considerations in most cases or for most of the time. Instead it is anticipated that they
will function more as forms of ‘deep’ structure which do not need to be spelt out but which can be
identified in the patterns of behaviour that they generate, or which can be applied post ante as
justifications for the choices and decisions that were made. As such they have a causal capability that
is independent of the individual actors who will operate within their limits and can therefore be seen
to have a structural effect16. Further it should be noted that treating these variables as structural ones is
a matter of analytical choice. Each could be equally treated as agential variables where they are
deliberately constructed by knowing actors to serve particular policy ends (Ingram et al, 2007). By
treating them as structural variables, however, the assumption is that actors/agents do not determine
their content in a direct fashion at any particular time, even if their own choices are affected by
them.Treating them as being a part of agency would involve agents being responsible for their
content, construction and use which would require treating them as ‘emergent properties’ rather than
as ‘relatively enduring character(s)’ (Archer, 1995, 9 and 168 respectively), which would have
implications for how they could be analysed.
At the meso-level are a range of structural elements that are formed by direct exogenous policy
considerations. In effect these form part of the general policy context within which cultural policies
Archer (1995, 168) argues that ‘the identification of structures is possible because of their irreducible
character, autonomous influence and relatively enduring character’ all of which are met by ideology, legitimacy
and rationality.
16
7
are located. Within this context five variables are noted as being of particular significance in policy
terms. Firstly, the policy priorities and agendas that other organisations have are clearly of
significance. Thus, in the British case, what these priorities and agendas are for national governments
can have quite clear policy effects on the cultural policy sector: the current coalition government’s
strategy with regard to public expenditure has had inevitable knock-on effects across the entire sector,
while the role of national government in establishing a framework for the management of public
sector organisations during the 1990s and early 2000s17, through the use of ideas from the New Public
Management, that influenced the development of instrumentalisation in the cultural policy sector
(Gray, 2007, 2008) provides a second example.
Secondly, the structural policies that are used by national governments for managing the policy
process in the public sector will have a constraining effect upon how individual organisations and
policy sectors will be expected to operate. Ideas related to evidence-based policy (Davies et al, 2000;
Sanderson, 2002) and ‘joined-up government’ (Pollitt, 2003; Ling, 2002), for example, have had clear
impacts on the manner in which public organisations are expected to be organised and to make
decisions, even if with limited effect in some cultural policy cases (Gray, 2006). Such general policy
ideas may have limited long-term impact given that they often seem to be fashions and fads that can
be, and often are, discarded with some rapidity, but in the short-term they can be used to direct policy
actors along certain lines of action even if only at the level of providing the latest jargon for use in
public and official policy statements. In this case the exact extent to which these policies operate as
constraints or as opportunities for policy actors to exploit is a matter of empirical research and
evidence but their role as structural factors is evident in either case.
Thirdly, the macro-policies that are applied across the public sector can establish the framework
within which policy operators are expected to function. The emphasis on social inclusion and
exclusion (Newman & MacLean, 2004), and the ‘big society’ in Britain, for example, have both been
intended to be used as mechanisms to provide a focus and justification for the actions and choices that
public sector organisations are expected to make in the exercise of their decision and policy-making
activities. If they have rarely been used as the central policy focus that organisations are expected to
concentrate on, they have existed as a set of general policy expectations that policy-makers should
bear in mind when making their decisions and choices, and to ignore them entirely would be unlikely
to be good organisational politics. Whether these macro-policies are simply a means for
instrumentalising policy-making across policy sectors would depend upon governments actively
behaving in a top-down policy fashion – and being able to impose their policy preferences on
reluctant organisations and individuals – with little evidence that this has actually occurred. But,
again, the precise impact of these major policy foci on the work of specific organisations is a matter
for empirical research and evidence18.
Both structural and macro-policies are normally determined by the dominant political organisation
within national systems – in the case of Britain this would be at the national governmental level at
either Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast, depending upon the distribution of powers within
the overall system, just as in federal systems this would be determined by the constitutional settlement
that underpins the distribution of power and authority within them. Such national policies, however,
are not necessarily the end of the story. International policies can also contribute to the formation of
17
In Britain the New Public Management is no longer directly relevant having been replaced by newer models
and ideas of effective and efficient public sector management.
18
Gray (2012, 19), for example, quotes a museum curator as saying with regard to the ‘big society’ idea that
‘nobody can afford it and nobody can be bothered’ indicating a relative lack of direct impact in that specific
case.
8
the national policy landscape, either through the requirement to live up to international laws and
treaties or through the impact of policy learning and/or policy transfer (see Cairney, 2012; Rose,
2005; Benson & Jordan, 2011 respectively). In the case of the cultural sector, for example, the
UNESCO conventions on intangible heritage and cultural diversity and the Washington Conference
Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art (amongst many others) can all have an effect on the production of
both national and local level policies. As such the meso-level is not an enclosed world that is isolated
from broader political and policy currents but is, instead, also subject to its own sets of structuring
constraints and opportunities from the broader environment within which it is located.
The fourth meso-level constraint is constructed from the organisational universe that underlies policy
activity. The allocation of functional responsibilities between government departments, local
authorities and the world of quasi-governmental organisations – let alone between the public and
private/voluntary/community sectors – has important implications for the distribution of hierarchical
resources between them (Rhodes, 1981, 100-1), as well as for control of the actual implementation
stage of the policy process19. Additionally, the organisational universe contains a host of interorganisational, intra-organisational and inter-personal relationships that can have an important impact
on the functioning of policy sectors. As such this factor extends between the formal structural
arrangements that exist to the informal structure of relationships in the form of organisational ‘rules of
the game’ that can serve to manage how policy will be put into practice. At this level there is a clear
expectation that matters of agency will be of some significance for understanding precisely how the
organisational universe will function, particularly in terms of reinforcing existing patterns of
behaviour and rules or adapting or changing these (morphostasis and morphogenesis, respectively, in
Archer’s (1995) terms). Be this as it may, however, the structure of the organisational arrangements
that are in place within policy sectors will serve to regulate the formal dimension of operational
activity and can thus be seen to have a structural dimension to them.
Fifthly, the policy instruments that governments employ to manage public policy serve as important
restraints on the room for manoeuvre that public (and private/voluntary/communal) organisations
have available to them. These instruments can be classified in various ways: Hood (1983, 4-6) refers
to nodality, treasure, authority and organisation; de Bruijn & Hufen (1998, 17-9) to regulatory,
financial incentive and information transfer instruments; while Howlett (2011) to information, advice,
resources and structural instruments. Whichever listing is chosen, however, they are all referring to
the mechanisms that are employed by governmental actors to turn policy preferences into actions. The
combination of instruments that are employed at any given time will establish parameters for action
within which actors should be expected to function20, they will equally close off other pathways that
might otherwise have been pursued. As such they establish a form of what historical institutionalists
would refer to as path dependency, where present choices are constrained by previous ones that direct
individuals and organisations along particular routes, and limit the extent to which alternatives are
likely to be pursued (or even recognised) (Hall & Taylor, 1996).The ultimately structural determinism
of this view is questionable and accepting policy instruments as structural components does not
necessitate an acceptance of such deterministic rigidity – instruments may serve as much to liberate
policy actors as they do to constrain them, particularly at times of policy and organisational turmoil –
and whether they function as constraints or opportunities is, again, subject to empirical research and
evidence and also depends upon which questions the analyst wishes to ask. An emphasis on
morphostasis, for example, may well lead to an examination of instruments as constraints, while an
19
This is of clear importance as it is at this stage of the policy process that policy success and failure are most
commonly determined.
20
Whether they actually do so is a matter of agency rather than structure but treating instruments as structural
components identifies the policy framework that is being employed and the boundaries to action that this then
imposes on actors.
9
emphasis on morphogenesis may lead to an investigation of them as liberating components for policy
actors.
Alongside these macro- and meso-level structural factors a means to identify the precise location and
role of agency factors is needed if analysis is to be more than a simple description of structures that is
isolated from the practice of policy activity within these structured boundaries. While it is possible to
investigate the role of individual and group actors at a number of levels, for current purposes agency
is located at a micro-level established in and of individual organisations. Within these organisations
policy actors are not only confronted with higher-level structural constraints and opportunities but are
also subject to the possibilities – both as limits and as room for manoeuvre – that are provided by
specific organisational characteristics. Identifying these local structural factors will serve to provide a
multi-dimensional image of the policy space within which actors will, or can, exercise their role as
agents of choice.
These micro-level structural factors are, firstly, the specific policies that organisations have. These
will identify the aims and intentions of policies, the targets at which policy is directed (whether these
are people (for example, school-children) or processes (audience development or staff training, for
example), or the distribution of functional competencies between staff members. These policies are
the focus of the activity undertaken by agents in so far as they are concerned with introducing,
incrementally amending, strategically changing and terminating particular directions and intentions
that the organisation maintains. Regardless of whether agents operate in a proactive or reactive
manner with regard to the policies that the organisation has, they do provide the ground-plan that
regulates and controls organisational operations. These policies are determined internally by the
organisations concerned and are thus analytically distinct from those operating at the meso-level in
the form of structural or macro-policies.
Secondly, the policy instruments that are used at the level of the individual organisation operate in the
same fashion as at the meso-level, establishing the parameters of action that organisational members
are expected (and anticipated) to function within. Which instruments are utilised, and how these relate
to those that are used at the meso-level of structure, are subject to empirical investigation, with an
expectation that there will be variations both between levels and between individual organisations (as
well as between differing policy sectors) as to these issues as a consequence of the different interests,
policy concerns and expectations that actors have at differing levels of the organisational universe. In
this case policy instruments are used to identify the policy processes and mechanisms that are made
use of within particular organisations.
Thirdly, the people who inhabit the organisational space of individual institutions can serve as a
structural factor: whether this be simply in terms of the number of staff that an organisation has, the
split between full-time employees and volunteers, or the distribution of professional resources within
the organisation, all can affect the policy capabilities that exist. At the simplest level the existence of
in-house professional staff has obvious implications for what will be seen as ‘good practice’ and ‘best
practice’ for organisational operations, while the argument of Newman & Tourle (2011) about the
potential long-term implications of cuts in full-time staff numbers in the museums sector in England
and Wales effectively focuses on the competencies and capabilities of the sector to serve the public at
all. Regardless of the consequences in terms of agency choice that arise from these concerns, the
general treatment of the human element as a structural constraint or opportunity for the functioning of
the cultural sector shifts attention to the general staffing context within which these organisations
operate.
10
Fourthly, the distribution of power within individual organisations, or which affects organisational
functioning, has important implications for understanding the specific policy choices and decisions
that are made. Whilst the relatively oligarchic nature of policy-making across cultural sectors has been
commonly identified (see, for example, Gray, 2000 on the arts sector) what occurs within specific
organisations is less clear. Certainly differences between, for example, national, local authority,
private and community theatres would be anticipated not least because of the formal structural
relationships that have been established between national theatre Boards and Directors and
government ministers, local authority managers and elected councillors, and the Boards of private
trusts and foundations or companies and their managers,directors, communities and/or shareholders.
The level at which effective policy is made, and whether this is made in a top-down, bottom-up or
collaborative fashion will affect the types of policy that are made, how these will be expected to be
implemented and evaluated, and how they will relate to meso-level expectations in terms of policy
priorities and agendas, structural and macro-policies. While the distribution of power would be
expected to vary to some extent between issues and over time, for any particular policy case who the
effective policy-makers are, in terms of who wields power, will be of some significance for the
resultant policy outcomes.
Finally, the specific resources in terms of money that are available to the organisation or organisations
concerned will have obvious policy consequences – not least in terms of the people and professional
and technical competencies that organisations can make use of, let alone in terms of what can be
produced and how much of it can be produced. Whilst finance (under various labels) is a common
policy instrument (Howlett, 2012, 101-13), the actual detail of how it is used, and what it is spent on,
in any given organisation is subject to the choices and actions of the members of that organisation21.
These decisions and choices can then act as structural limitations to policy choices depending upon
the degree of budgetary flexibility that is available to organisational members, and this flexibility can
be limited by a variety of legal, political, moral and technical boundaries that have been established at
all of the macro-, meso- and micro- levels. Identifying these boundaries to flexibility can thus help to
establish the extent to which financing is subject to structural and/or agential limits and the
consequences of this for patterns of policy choice.
Visualising Policy Structures
It is possible to bring together the range of variables that have been identified so far to pictorially
illustrate the relationships that are posited to exist between them. Such identification is important
unless it is assumed that there are simply a series of independent effects that these variables have on
the overall structure of cultural policies. If, on the other hand, it is assumed that there are a series of
connections between these variables which can serve to mutually reinforce, or work counter to, their
individual effects, or, less dynamically, to simply demonstrate how they are related to each other, then
some means of representing these reinforcements or relationships can serve to clarify the overall
picture. Two images of these relationships are employed to demonstrate different ways of thinking
about the interconnections that exist in terms of these structural variables.
Figure 1 is organised in terms of the increasing (from the centre out) or decreasing (from the
periphery in) generality in terms of the specific impact that each set of variables has for the overall
shaping of cultural policies. The precise effect of each set of variables (and each individual variable)
on policies will depend upon what questions are being asked and what the focus of analysis is to be.
21
Unless, of course, the organisation’s entire budget is determined elsewhere which is very rarely the case.
11
In general terms, however, it is anticipated that the outer circle of ideology, legitimacy and rationality
will tend to have more general effects on policy, and will operate in a largely constraining fashion in
doing so. The inner-most circle, on the other hand, is anticipated to have much more direct effects on
the internal dynamics of policy activity in any given organisational case, and may be constraining or
liberating depending upon individual circumstances and cases.In effect this constructs a form of
core/periphery relationship between the variables that posits a relatively separate set of effects arising
from each group.
Figure 2 adopts a different visualisation of the relationships that exist between the variables by
concentrating on the inter-relationships between them individually rather than between them as levels.
In this version it is possible to distinguish between different pairs, triads and larger multiples of sets of
variables to indicate the possible inter-linkages that the model contains. This allows for the
identification of potential causal relationships that could be present in any individual case. Whether
such relationships are relevant for explanatory purposes will depend upon the questions that the
analyst is asking in the first place, but they could also be informative if the answers to these questions
are, at best, partial as a consequence of their identification of a range of intervening variables that the
original questions had not considered to be relevant for analytical purposes. As such the model can
also be used by the analyst as a means to clarify the causal content of their questions.
A secondary use of Figure 2 could be to identify the central concerns of already existing work in the
field of cultural policy and how this work deals with the range of potential influences on policy that
the model identifies. This would allow for the clarification of the relationships between the structural
components of cultural policy across a range of individual studies thus providing the possibility for
the accumulation of a more coherent map of the territory that cultural policy studies is concerned
with. While such a mapping exercise may have illustrative possibilities of indicating areas which have
currently been under-researched and analysed it is important to bear in mind the need for an
underlying understanding of the ontological and epistemological issues that are associated with the
particular individual studies that are included. Thus, it would be anticipated that the differences
between behavioural and discourse approaches to analysis would lead to a concentration on particular
elements of the model in each case whilst leaving other component parts relatively untouched.
Likewise, approaches to analysis that focus on the structural dynamics of policy are likely to
concentrate on different policy elements than would be found in analyses that focus on the role of
agents. By clarifying the consequences of such differences for the forms of analysis that have been
undertaken in the past an understanding of the appropriateness of analytical strategies for the field of
cultural policy could also be developed.
Conclusions
This paper is an attempt to clarify the field of cultural policy analysis. The structural framework that it
contains is constructed of key elements for the understanding of policy that can be applied across the
public, private, voluntary and community sectors. How it is applied depends upon the ontological,
epistemological and methodological choices that analysts make. It is anticipated that these choices
will lead analysts to concentrate their attention on particular features of the structural framework
rather than on others. As such the framework is open to a multiplicity of analytical strategies and is
not presented as a plan for analysis that must be utilised if a full picture of cultural policy choices and
actions is to be presented. The basis of this framework in an analytical dualism that is derived from a
social realist ontology does not preclude the utilisation of a variety of alternative positions as the
starting point for analysis as this depends upon the questions that the analyst is asking rather than
these being a necessary consequence of applying the model in the first place. The model does provide
an opportunity for analysts to consider how their work relates to previous research, and to identify
12
what it is that they are not concerned with as much as with what they are. As such it provides the
opportunity to both locate individual studies within a broader picture of the field of cultural policy
analysis as well as to identify potential areas for future research exploration.
Policies; Power;
People; Resources;
Instruments
Priorities/Agendas;
Organisations; MacroPolicies; Structural
Policies; Instruments
Ideology; Legitimacy;
Rationality
.
Figure 1: Core/Periphery Relationships of Variables
Macro-level
variables
Meso-level
variables
Micro-level variables
Figure 2: Inter-Relationships between Variables
13
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