ABSTRACT
Arts funding systems, where they exist, cannot help inspiring strategic behaviour on the part of grant applicants, exaggerating financial needs in order to maximize their grant income, inventing spurious needs for the same purpose—even, in extreme cases, deliberately approaching the brink of bankruptcy in order to shame or intimidate funders into rescuing them. (Blackmail of this last sort only works when attempted by arts organizations considered too important to be allowed to fail.) Economists call these predictable but unscrupulous manoeuvres “rent-seeking”, and in general disapprove of the social waste to which widespread rent-seeking activity can be expected to lead. Time and money invested in unsuccessful rent-seeking campaigns would be better spent doing directly productive work.
This chapter investigates rent-seeking phenomena and suggests steps that funders can take to protect themselves against exploitation by rent-seekers. It adopts some of Kenneth Boulding’s ideas on “pathologies of the public grants system”, using them to explore the full range of motives determining funders’ responses to rent-seeking pressure. Caving in to pressure is one possible though undesirable response, and a likely one unless arts funding agencies have on their staff senior managers of high personal integrity together with technically competent programme designers.
