ABSTRACT
The chapter provides insights into the adaptation of Swiss cultural policy to reflect the digitally triggered transformations. It shows that although digitisation is taken seriously by the relevant actors in the cultural policy domain, the adaptation is still somewhat incremental and it is hard to speak of one distinct “Swiss digital cultural policy”. This has to do, on the one hand, with the fragmented nature of cultural policy formulation and implementation in Switzerland. On the other hand, and more importantly, this is linked to an ongoing contestation between core cultural policy and its economisation, which connotes a preference for the economic logic and a pursuit of market-based efficiency. In the transformation of Swiss cultural policies into the digital, this feature triggers multiple debates and is tied with contentious politics and divided public opinion as to the right way forward. The chapter seeks to examine these specific characteristics of Swiss digital cultural policy and exemplify some of the inherent tensions with case studies of two recent legislative initiatives in the cultural domain.
