AUTHOR=Caron Bart 

TITLE=Can you characterise cultural policy politico-ideologically?

JOURNAL=European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy

VOLUME=Volume 15 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontierspartnerships.org/journals/european-journal-of-cultural-management-and-policy/articles/10.3389/ejcmp.2025.14376

DOI=10.3389/ejcmp.2025.14376

ISSN=2663-5771

ABSTRACT=In this study, I attempt to “map” the cultural policy pursued ideologically and give it a sociological interpretation of values. My hypothesis is that cultural policy is driven by values and interests. After all, those who implement cultural policy face numerous choice dilemmas. This research on potential characteristics of cultural policy, draws on a range of sources: on scholarly literature that links ideology and cultural policy and addresses values and justifications. Of course, cultural policy is also analysed on the basis of publications, policy texts, real policies, and qualitative interviews with key figures. This is how I arrived at a diagram of political-ideological characteristics of cultural policy. I group these into two overarching categories, progressive/conservative and left/right cultural policy. I arrange the characteristics as choice variables, each placed on a continuum. I develop a visual model with an x-axis containing the left and right characteristics and a y-axis containing the conservative and progressive characteristics. Plotting both categories on an x- and y-axis also clearly shows the relationship between them. The two categories of characteristics act as a tool to ideologically define each type of cultural policy.