ABSTRACT
Achieving goals requires organized action. If that action is to be undertaken in the form of policy, it must stem from legitimate authority, be guided by expertise, and be coherent and consistent across cases. This is accomplished through a bureaucracy – a system of administrative units, roles, and procedures. This chapter explains how bureaucracies can be mapped by: drawing boundaries around a policy arena; tracing those units, roles, and procedures and describing their relationships; and describing this system according to its degrees of centralization. The chapter goes on to provide maps of the US cultural bureaucracy at national, subnational (state), intergovernmental, and local levels. These maps illustrate the system of cultural federalism at work in the United States. The discussion closes with a policy lab on the federal role in cultural policy, including a brief review of the Culture Wars of the 1990s, and a case study of the complex, multi-party process of opening and sustaining the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York, NY.
