ABSTRACT
Through its Cultural Policies for Development Unit (CPDU), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is making tentative steps to return to a field in which it was quite active in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly through the publication of its series, Studies and Documents on Cultural Policies. The Cultural Policies for Development Unit was created to support the work of the World Commission on Culture and Development. One must also note that transnational organizations are picking up on the application of research and information to national needs and situations at the same time as ministries of culture and arts councils are decentralizing their decision making, if not devolving cultural policy entirely, to the local and regional levels. Thus, there are two contrasting calls for research capability: one for building that capability at the local level and the other for building that capability at the transnational level.
