ABSTRACT
Cultural policy, as it is usually discussed, takes place within the framework of a political system capable of enacting legally binding legislation. A recent definition found in a discussion of Canada’s cultural policy is a case in point:
Cultural policy is the expression of a government’s willingness to adopt and implement a
set of coherent principles, objectives and means to protect and foster its country’s cultural
expression. The arts are the very foundation of this expression. In an age when countries are
becoming increasingly interdependent economically and politically, promoting cultural
expression by means of a coherent cultural policy for the arts is a valuable way to emphasize
and define what distinguishes one country from another. (Canada 1999, p. 1)
While this definition in principle applies to regional entities (such as provinces) or local entities (such as municipalities), most discussions of cultural policy examine it at the nation-state level. This way of framing cultural policy certainly makes sense, given that intervening in the cultural sphere has become such a central feature of how the countries of the world identify and deploy the resources available to them. But it also is constricting in that it implies the nationstate framework provides a general model readily applicable to all instances of cultural policy. However, there are innumerable instances both above and below the nation-state level where
cultural policy is implemented. In the international arena, UNESCO has been particularly important in this regard. Indeed, by virtue of the program it launched in the postwar period, its member nation-states were obliged to take stock of their cultural resources and implement programs geared to the preservation and development of culture (Valderrama 1995). Similarly, below the nation-state level, cultural policy takes place in a variety of arenas. In addition to regional and local authorities (Bianchini 1996; Martorella 2002), cultural policy can be found in a myriad of institutional settings including health, religion and education. While these agencies for cultural policy differ in scope and magnitude from those of the nation-state, they share in common with the larger entities the stability and routinization that comes with juridically based forms of authority.
