Introduction: cultural policies in Ibero-America at the beginning of the XXI century

ABSTRACT

This editorial introduction presents the aims and contents of a special issue devoted to cultural policies in Ibero-America. The issue provides a wide-ranging overview about the subject. In addition to papers focused on the development of cultural policy in specific countries, it also includes articles analyzing particular cultural policies in a transnational perspective, paying attention to their multiple programmatic transferences. It also includes articles centred on the development of cultural diplomacy and institutional networks within this area. In this way, it intends to highlight the commonalities among countries and the relations between them, so offering a new and deeper vision of the development of cultural policies in the Ibero American region. In this introduction we offer some theoretical keys for analyzing this development, in particular the notion of family of nations proposed by Castle (1993) and we evaluate its applicability to the case and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• cultural policy
• cultural diplomacy
• Ibero-America
• family of nations
• Latin America cultural policy
• Spanish cultural policy

The Ibero-American space, integrated by the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America, has produced quite a few widely known cultural expressions, which have attained a global reach during the 20th century: flamenco, Mexican muralism, Brazilian Carnivals, or the Catalan art nouveau architecture, among many others. Some of these cultural expressions have had a particular Ibero-American scope, bringing together several countries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean; such as the literature movement of the so called Latin American Boom or, more recently, the tied hip hop network in Spanish, for example. Moreover, we may say that Ibero-America is, mainly, a cultural space of communication defined by its shared history and by its two iberromance rooted languages: Spanish and Portuguese, which are very close. In this sense, the existence of shared and/or similar cultural expressions is an expected phenomenon.

However, cultural spaces can also be social spaces giving way to specific public policies. In this regard, Castles (1993) has proposed analyzing public policies with the concept of ‘family of nations’, a concept that has an essential cultural character and one where the Ibero-American space fits perfectly well. For Castles, a family of nations is defined by historically formed commonalities. These can include aspects, such as the transmission of ideas, the shared historical experience of a specific group of countries that can include different imperial ties, or the structure of their institutions, as well as their legal tradition; elements that are framed by a common culture and language (Castles 2010). In his view, these shared geographical, linguistic, cultural and/or historical attributes may lead to distinctive patterns of policy outcomes (Castles 1993, 634).

Therefore, from this point of view, it is legitimate to ask oneself: besides the cultural expressions within a regional universe, such as the Ibero-American one, is there also a space of specific cultural policies in it? To what extent has the cultural and historically common base among Ibero-American countries given way to similar or related cultural policies? Moreover, to what extent do Ibero-American cultural policies differ and stand out from other cultural policies in a more general international context? The international community of cultural policy scholars does not have a clear answer to any of these questions at present. Of course, within the Ibero-American area, various successful paradigms of cultural policy have emerged which have managed to reach a broad projection, at least within their borders. This is the case, for example, of the Barcelona model of urban cultural regeneration, of the civic policies of Antanas Mockus in Bogotá or the Brazilian Culture Points Programme. However, not all of these outstanding examples of cultural policies have reached recognition outside the Ibero-American perimeter. Nevertheless, we can say that during the last 20 years, developments in the cultural policy of several of the countries in this region have generally been dynamic and innovative, exceptions apart. Still, there is wide ignorance with respect to all these experiences outside the framework of the countries themselves and especially outside their linguistic area. Most academic works on cultural policy in relation to this region are written in Spanish or Portuguese, and the knowledge of this area that is accessible in English remains very limited.

This special issue intends therefore primarily to offer a general overview of the space of cultural policy in Ibero-America, allowing us to present its most essential parameters to a wider and international academic audience. Secondly, the special issue seeks to contribute towards advancing the existing knowledge of Ibero-American cultural policies in a twofold sense: paying attention to its latest transformations and giving a more complete and structured view of its essence than the one currently available. The reason for this is the fact that, although there is some valuable Spanish and Portuguese literature on the evolution of national and local cultural policies in Ibero-American countries, their recent transformations have not been analyzed in a comprehensive way so far. Most works on these issues that are not devoted exclusively to a specific country are restricted to Latin America (García Canclini 1987; Harvey 2014), and the only one addressing the complete Ibero-American space (Rubim and Bayardo 2008) does not cover the last period nor makes any effort to consider the area as a whole. This special issue, however, in addition to papers focused on the development of cultural policy in specific countries, also includes articles analysing particular cultural policies in a transnational perspective, paying attention to their multiple programmatic transferences. It also includes articles centred on the development of cultural diplomacy and institutional networks within this area. In this way, the special issue intends to highlight the commonalities among countries and the relations between them, offering a new and deeper vision of the development of cultural policies in the Ibero American region.

Finally, the adoption of the Ibero-American perspective as a framework for analyzing these policies adds an implicit objective, of a theoretical nature, to this special issue: testing the applicability of a perspective based on the concept of the family of nations to the study of cultural policy. This objective goes beyond the Ibero-American case, insofar as this angle on connected cultural areas has hardly been taken into account in other research on cultural policies. The most notorious exception in this sense could have been the special issue on Cultural Policy in Asia that Lorraine Lim published in 2012 in this same journal. In the introduction to the issue, the editor showed awareness of the relevance of asking how the different historical legacies of this cultural space had impacted upon the way cultural policy was created and managed today and which specific Asian values linked to ‘Confucianism’ could have influenced the type of arts and culture that was being supported there by public institutions (Lim 2012, 261). However, in spite of the great contribution that the volume made concerning the knowledge of cultural policies in that region, the editor herself later admitted that the issue ‘(did) not set out to prove or determine if there is such a thing as an < Asian cultural policy>’ (Ibidem: 262). As we have said before, this present issue does intend indeed to move forward this question with respect to Ibero-America. We believe that, in doing so and going beyond the case, we could perhaps contribute to stimulating the application of this concept to other world regions.

Analytical keys for the study of the Ibero-American space of cultural policies

The Ibero-American region encompasses extremely diverse countries, in terms of physical, social and economic coordinates. Its configuration is marked by a division between the Iberian countries of southern Europe, such as the former colonial powers, Spain and Portugal, and the countries of Latin America that were once their colonies. The colonial relationship in this case is quite remote, however, having been extinguished two centuries ago. This fact, together with a delay in the modernization of the old metropolises, led to a strong rebalancing of the weight between these two areas throughout the 20th century. In the first place, their contrasted geographical situation – some of these countries are located in the south of Europe and others in the American continent – has determined them in different ways. In addition to that, their specific profiles – all very different – have determined them even more intensely. In this sense, Spain may have a degree of economic development quite similar to that of Portugal, but with a population and a territory five times greater.

As for the Latin American countries, their degree of development is much more diverse than that of the Iberian countries (GDP per capita of Mexico quadruples that of El Salvador) and they are also very contrasted in terms of territory and population. Some of them are very extended and highly populated (Mexico is four times larger than Spain and has three times its population; Brazil, the largest country in this area, has a territory that quadruples that of Mexico and a population that is almost double). At the other extreme, countries, such as Costa Rica or El Salvador are much smaller than Portugal.

Now, in this context and based on these basic coordinates, we can ask ourselves how does cultural policy arise in Ibero-American countries? On the whole, and if we refer to modern cultural policy as a systematic action of the state in the cultural sphere with a democratizing orientation – that is to say, redistributive (Urfalino 1996; Rodríguez Morató 2012) – it can be said that the take-off of this policy in these countries came late and basically sequentially, affecting first Spain and Portugal and then Latin America. Spain and Portugal suffered long dictatorial regimes during the 20th century, ending in 1975 and 1977, respectively. The development of a modern cultural policy in the Iberian Peninsula had to wait until then, starting therefore with 20 years of delay in comparison with the most advanced European countries. In most of Latin America, that development was delayed even more due to political impediments of the same order. Since the mid-1960s, an authoritarian cycle had intensified affecting many countries and lasting for the next two decades. Democratic cultural policy would not start to flourish in the region before the 1990s, 10 years later than in the Iberian Peninsula.

Despite the time lag and the fact that authoritarianism had left disparate legacies, the starting point of this policy was actually quite similar in the different countries of Ibero-America: the overcoming of a political regime of dictatorship. Although in all cases the dictatorship-imposed policies of censorship and cultural dirigisme of a nationalist and reactionary nature, there are countries – such as Spain – where this also meant a radical impoverishment of cultural life and cultural infrastructures. In other cases, such as the one of Brazil, it coincided contrarily with important advances in the institutionalization of cultural policy and in public support for culture (Rubim and Bayardo 2008, 54–58). As expected, with the overcoming of the authoritarian political domain, new opportunities and dynamics of cultural development opened everywhere, while at the same time it also happened that the different previous experiences determined the calibre of the different democratizing impulses in the initial moments (in a greater extent in Spain for example, and with a minimum impact in Brazil). On the whole, however, the new democratic frameworks would eventually all end up generating important democratizing dynamics in the cultural sphere, whether sooner or later (this also happened notably in Brazil but later, once Lula was President).

The institutionalization of modern cultural policy, in as much as it involves the state establishing some new or adapted system of administrative intervention in the cultural realm, is always configured according to a series of coordinates that are specific to each country. These coordinates are very diverse and contrasted in the case of Ibero-American countries. To begin with, there are some basic cultural and political-administrative contexts. In this respect, the countries of the region are extremely plural. In the Iberian Peninsula for example, Spain stands out for its intense cultural diversity, with some regions having their own languages, differential national and cultural identities that are very much settled and very different patterns of relationship with respect to the common cultural identity. In contrast, Portugal is strongly homogenous in these terms. Also in Latin America, we find a similar pattern in this sense. There are countries that are very diverse culturally speaking, such as Mexico, Brazil or Bolivia, even at a deeper level than in Spain, since they integrate a multiplicity of indigenous ethnic groups and Afro-descendant populations; while in countries like Argentina or Uruguay, this cultural heterogeneity is less marked. On the other hand, the political-administrative context is also very contrasted, with some predominantly centralist countries, such as Argentina or Portugal, and others much more decentralized, such as the case of Spain or Colombia. Obviously, this whole context finds its counterpart in the configuration of the corresponding cultural administration. This is how we come to see that in Spain, where we know that regional cultural diversity is very important and where the general political system is configured in a quasi-federal way (with the so-called Autonomous Communities), the cultural policy system predominantly pivots on the regional level (Rodríguez Morató 2015). On the contrary, in Portugal where cultural diversity is minimal, and the political system is basically centralist, the regional level of cultural policy is non-existent, and the predominance of the central state is absolute (Santos 1998).

Finally, the Ibero-American countries also differ strongly with respect to the coordinates that most directly structure the cultural policy system of each country: the coordinate that establishes the relationship of the political field with culture, the cultural sector existing in each country or the previously established cultural institutions (Rodríguez Morató 2012). In this sense, in the Ibero-American space we can find, for example, countries that develop their intervention earlier (such as Colombia or Spain) and others that do so later (such as Portugal or Brazil). There are also national traditions of more intense state intervention in culture and greater continuity in that line (as in the case of Mexico) and others of weaker and unstable intervention (the case of Brazil). For the rest, there are also countries whose exceptional archaeological legacy determines the hypertrophy of heritage protection institutions, strongly conditioning the configuration of the entire national cultural policy system (this is exactly what happens in the case of Peru with Cusco for example) and others in which the existence of powerful cultural markets and industries (in the case of Brazil, Spain and, to a lesser extent, Argentina) exerts an equally inordinate influence.

However, and in spite of all the existing contrasts between different countries as mentioned above, in terms of the circumstances forming the institutionalization of modern cultural policy, within the Ibero-American space we can also find some important common elements in this respect. One of them is the relatively precarious legitimacy previously achieved by high culture in the area, which would affect several determinants of nascent systems of cultural policy being shaped. This characteristic, for example, corresponds to a rather fragile autonomy of the cultural sphere and also to the institutional base of a relatively weak creative sector. All this tends to favour an administrative system of cultural policy, where configuration is not hierarchical and compartmentalized and which is also characteristically fragile.

From here, the formulas of institutionalization have been multiple (Ministries or Secretariats of State, Institutes, Councils) and have adopted, as already indicated, a great diversity of territorial structures. Subsequent trajectories have, in turn, been very diverse. These trajectories have been marked to a large extent by political changes and especially by crises. In Spain and Portugal, for example, the alternation between governments of the left and the right has recurrently led to changes in the governing bodies of cultural policy (Ministries in the left governments and State Secretaries in those of the right), with corresponding alterations in the ambition of the promoted policies (more intense in the progressive governments than in the conservative ones). Still, the factors that have most significantly altered the trajectories experienced by cultural policy in different countries have been the economic crises or the most disruptive political changes. In this sense, once again there is a marked gap between the two fundamental areas of the Ibero-American space.

In Spain, there is a deployment of a cultural policy system and its uninterrupted progress since the beginning of the eighties, initially with the development and predominance of the central administration (the Ministry of Culture) until the end of that decade, followed by a predominance of the regional administrations (the Ministries of Culture of the Autonomous Communities) during the following 10 years and, finally, by the leadership of the local administrations (Rodríguez Morató 2015). In Portugal, the deployment and the subsequent progress came a bit later and were somewhat more timid. In both cases, however, there has been synchronic and radical bankruptcy of these advances since the recent economic crisis of 2008 and the big budget cuts that this would entail.

On the other hand, in Latin America a similar process has taken place, but later than in the Peninsula. The start of the new democratic cultural policy took place in the nineties, but it did so in a neoliberal context, which slowed down the march, so the advance was slow and contradictory at first. It was from 2003 onwards that cultural policies in Latin America (particularly in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador) really managed to strengthen. This happened in the context of a regional political turn to the left, with different national approaches to this activity but with two common elements: a greater public intervention in the field and a particular interest in popular expressions (Zamorano, Rius Ulldemolins, Klein 2014). In fact, in many countries this process represented the expansion of the definition of the national culture (Rubim and Bayardo 2008). Also, the cultural field was redefined by different states as a battleground for social inclusion, as a space for cultivating the historical memory of dictatorships and as an instrument for deconstructing colonialism. This stage has been closed very recently, with the emergence of a new economic crisis and the displacement of several of the governments that had led those developments.

On the other hand, during the last decades we have witnessed a deep transformation in the ideological paradigm and in the political institutions and dynamics that support and connect the Ibero-American cultural space, which affected its cultural diplomacy. With the return of democracy in Spain, the imperialist concept of Hispanism¹ that drove Franco’s active cultural diplomacy, gave way to an intercultural conception of the Spanish relations with Latin America (Delgado Gómez-Escalonilla 1991). Thus, during the eighties, the foreign cultural action of the Spanish state focused on a major programme of cultural cooperation for development, which contributed to dynamizing cultural life in many capitals of the continent (Huguet 2010). This development was based on an idea of culture as an instrument for bringing welfare to the most vulnerable sectors of society, always according to the necessities of each local context.

In this scenario, more ‘horizontal’ instruments of multilateral relations were established. For example, in 1985 the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI), which had been created in 1949, renewed its statutes and widened its goals linked to cultural policies. Meanwhile, the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), created in 1991, reactivated the dialogue within this bloc of countries regarding cultural and heritage issues. Six years later, SEGIB established Ibermedia: the first in a series of successful programmes for international cooperation developed in the context of a growing institutionalization of Ibero-American cultural diplomacy.

During the last decade, many transformations occurred within Ibero-American cultural diplomacy. New South American approaches to international relations emerged, which transformed from an ‘open regionalism’ – mostly characteristic of the nineties – to the so called postneoliberalism during the following decade (Serbin 2011). The appearance of UNASUR, CELAC and other supranational organizations, strengthened South-South cooperation and the region itself as an international actor, opening new channels for the organization of a common cultural diplomacy.² However, up to now, all these transformations have not had a clear impact in rearticulating Latin American cultural diplomacy nor in the advancement of its cultural cooperation platforms.³ On the contrary, only steps in the production and exchange of cultural information and data have been made. In this regard, the creation of the Cultural Information System of MERCOSUR (SICSUR) in 2009 must be highlighted. This initiative addressed a historical difficulty for the development of cultural policies in the region: the lack of cultural data which could allow for a better coordination of common policies in the sector (García Canclini 2000, 91). Moreover, Spanish cultural cooperation for development experienced an important drawback, with a 65% cut in the budget in 2012 (Bonet 2012). Nevertheless, during the last decade Ibero-American cultural diplomacy agreements, meetings and activity programmes have multiplied, accompanied by the stronger participation of Brazil and Portugal in this space, which reveals the importance and validity of international cultural policies in the macro-region.⁴

The articles

As already mentioned above, when composing this issue, several substantive objectives were pursued: to show the latest developments and transformations of cultural policy in the Ibero-American countries, their most characteristic programmatic developments and the dynamics of their relationship in this ambit. In this way, it is intended to offer a weighted and global view on the development of cultural policy in this family of nations. As has also been pointed out, this exercise does not intend to carry out an analytical development of the perspective of the families of nations in the field of cultural policy, because this would have required a more systematic design, but it does propose an exploration that shows its potential.

Based on the above objectives, the issue presented here integrates three perspectives: that of specific national cases, the trajectory of which during the last decades is taken into consideration; that of sectorally defined policies, with a focus on their characteristic developments; and that of diplomacy and cultural relations within the region, which deals with the configuration of that structuring dimension of the regional space. With regard to the first, the countries chosen for analysis are three: Portugal, Argentina and Brazil. The case of Portugal allows us to show a representative perspective of the common trajectory of the two Iberian countries (Portugal and Spain) in the last decade: a trajectory marked by the breakdown of the expansion of a welfare cultural policy that they had been developing over the previous 30 years, in the context of their parallel overcoming of their authoritarian past and their subsequent integration into the European Union. As for Argentina and Brazil, their Latin American representativeness is given by being two of the largest and most culturally developed countries in the region, as well as two of the most influential; the first characterized by an accentuated cultural homogeneity and the latter by diversity.

Regarding the perspective of sectoral policies, the chosen areas are two: that of urban cultural regeneration policies and that of cultural policies linked to development. These two areas constitute two of the most important and innovative areas of current cultural policy and, in the case of Ibero-America, they also represent the two areas in which the most original and most global initiatives have crystallized. Finally, the inclusion of the perspective on diplomacy and cultural relations within the region is justified by its particular importance with respect to the very existence of the Ibero-American space for cultural policies. In this regard, the examination of its development, in its double institutional and discursive aspect, allows us to calibrate its consistency and its future perspectives for development.

This issue will be structured according to these thematic and analytical levels focusing on the transition period between the 20th and 21st centuries. During this period, several changes occurred both in the hegemonic models of cultural policies deployed within Ibero-American countries, and in terms of the domestic political and economic scenarios framing these policies. Since different financial crises deeply marked this historical moment in the whole macro-region, these studies have been marked by the tension between a neoliberal and a welfare/redistributive state as a central independent variable, clearly modelling their public cultural management in each case. In this historical context, continuity and change examination is transversal to the research reflected in this special issue and the articles presented here.

The work authored by Garcia et al., ‘Mapping culture in Portugal: From incentives to crisis’, analyzes the impact of the financial crisis initiated in 2008 on national cultural policies. In this framework, transformations in both the relevant institutional aspects of this political system and its interrelations with cultural and artistic fields are studied by combining qualitative and quantitative sources. The article reveals that the process of rationalization of public cultural services occurred in many countries across Europe during the last decade, affected Portuguese cultural governance in a very particular way, due to its comparative weakness in terms of industrial development and the dependence on the public sector of some cultural sectors.

Argentinian cultural policies are analyzed by Bayardo and Bordat in the article ‘Changing philosophies of action? Argentina’s cultural policies in the 21st Century’. The article discusses the evolution of cultural policies in Argentina between 1999 and 2015, focusing on the relation between the different ‘philosophies’ deployed by the six Secretaries/Ministers in charge of the area at federal level and the polices established during their corresponding periods in office. The contrast between these ‘philosophies’ – which range from ‘culture as an economic resource’ to ‘culture as a citizenship right’– and the actual programmatic, institutional and instrumental policies developed by the studied governments reveal the preeminence of an – every so often contradictory – economist discourse.

Finally, the article ‘Brazilian cultural policies during the Workers’ Party governments: Challenges for the development of cultural citizenship’, developed by Rubim and Rocha, examines the public cultural policies of Brazilian governments between 2003 and 2016. The text analyzes the instruments used by Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) to apply a new conception of cultural action in the country, in line with cultural democracy and mainly oriented towards a decentralized provision of public support to local cultural actors and artists from a communitarian approach. All at once, the text shows the societal and corporativist factors limiting the capacity of the Ministry of Culture to guarantee culture as a citizenship right in the country.

As mentioned above, this issue also analyzes some specific sectorial dynamics of Ibero-American cultural policies. Firstly, Morató and Zarlenga examine cultural policy strategies supporting urban regeneration, focusing on its particular characteristics in the Ibero-American context. They develop a systematic contrast between the different circumstances that have led to the emergence of these strategies in the Ibero-American sphere and in other parts of the world. Their examination of the Ibero-American regenerative experience also includes a consideration of the paradigmatic cases that arose initially in the Iberian Peninsula and a typological analysis of subsequent Latin American experiences. The consideration of all these different elements thus ends up providing a global vision of the specificity of the phenomenon in its Ibero-American context.

Secondly, the article elaborated by Yudice, ‘Innovations in cultural policy and development in Latin America’, provides an overview of the relations between those cultural policies oriented towards the so-called ‘creative sector’ and those seeking further social inclusion, considering their differential logics and strategies. The examination is based on recent Latin American cases and shows how different programmes and projects developed in this region during the last decades have placed public support of cultural industry as a successful strategy for social development. The article also identifies and underlines the tensions and contradictions apparent in this process.

To conclude, this special issue addresses the international cultural relations developed within the Ibero-American framework in the last decades, both institutionally and theoretically. The article titled ‘The reshaping of the Ibero-American cultural diplomacy in the beginning of the XXI century: the declining of the Spanish historical hegemony?’, written by Zamorano and Bonet, examines the recent evolution of the Ibero-American system of cultural diplomacy. In particular, the text analyzes the causes leading to its power balance reconfiguration around 2010 in order to understand the repositioning of Spain as its historical leader. Even though the text reveals the maintaining of this leadership, it identifies two main factors leading to a new cultural diplomacy scenario: the reduction of the Spanish economic contribution to social-oriented cultural diplomacy and the critical rethinking of the Ibero-American identity discourse due to a Latin American ‘left turn’ taking place during the first decade of the 21st century.

Finally, ‘Theorizing cultural diplomacy all the way down: A cosmopolitan constructivist discourse from Ibero-America’, written by Cesar Villanueva, provides an overview of the different hegemonic rationales behind cultural diplomacy, particularly soft power and branding, and contrasts them with the constructivist approach on the basis of the Mexican case. In doing so, this analysis establishes some of the main characteristics of current normative dimensions of Ibero-American cultural diplomacies, as a field of political struggle. The text also underlines the importance of these theoretical/normative approaches towards shaping cultural diplomacy systems and, in this context, problematizes the way in which both corporativist and participatory understandings of this policy are being adopted in the Ibero-American space.

Making interpretations

This special issue provides a wide-ranging overview of cultural policies in Ibero-America. Each article contributes particular evidence to illuminate specific angles and areas in support of this object. Now we can ascertain some basic or common traits and make some interpretations about the specificities of cultural policies in the macro-region. This will allow us to reflect in the final section on the theoretical perspective that this case-study opens up for future studies of cultural policies in other world regions.

Heterogeneity and homogeneity in the field of cultural policies

The historical processes and socio-political dialectics shaping cultural policies/diplomacy models in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America are clearly different in many respects. In fact, Spain and Portugal, as do other developed countries, manage a rather different conception of culture as substrate of policy action than the one used in Latin America. But still the hegemonic discursive approach to these policy fields in the whole of Ibero-America has been statist and redistributive and central-European models of cultural action (Hillman Chartrand and McCaughey 1989) have led the field at a conceptual level in both cases. Currently, different identified programmes and initiatives based on local social participation seek to develop a cultural democracy paradigm more adapted to the current technological scenario and the new social demands, and more suited to the so-called creative sector.

In this general framework, new manifestations of the historical tension between ‘pro-market’ and ‘pro-popular sovereignty’ dynamics are identified in the studied cultural policies. During the analyzed period, cultural policies in South America were frequently framed by post-neoliberal discourse while along the south of Europe, neoliberal policies, operating through budgetary reductions and, to a lesser extent, privatization of cultural services, were deployed as part of the so-called ‘austerity measures’. As revealed by García et al. in this volume, the impact of the economic crisis combined with liberal-conservative policies developed after the financial crisis of 2008 fostered a certain ‘exhaustion’ of the previous cultural policy model and the need for building new forms of public-private governance. This reconfiguration of public systems of cultural policy adopted different forms depending on the country, in accordance with the historical role of the state in the sector, the power and configuration of its private cultural system and other sociocultural variables, such as dominant cultural practices or artistic consumption trends.

In contrast, as shown by Rubim/Rocha and by Bayardo/Bordat for the Brazilian and Argentinian cases respectively, cultural policy renovation in Latin America was based on a reconstitution and, in many cases, the ‘emergence’ of the State in this domain, which represented a nearly unheard of positioning of culture as public service. This phenomenon was manifested in a multiplicity of national approaches, which had as common elements their emphasis on traditional mechanisms of cultural democracy, such as the widening of access to cultural assets (including museums, libraries, etc.) and the expansion and redefinition of the culture concept to integrate popular, plurinational or indigenous expressions. However, these new approaches to cultural policies have not resulted in policies that have always been sustainable in the area and, in many cases, this expansion was legitimated by essentially presenting culture as an economic resource. In this regard, Yudice’s text provides a relevant contribution in order to understand those political strategies aimed at developing the creative sector focusing on its ‘social return’, which were put in place by some administrations in Latin America.

Hence, facing deeply different sociopolitical contexts, both Latin American and Iberian countries have established political strategies highly dependent on ‘sub regional’ and changing historical scenarios. Cultural policies within these two blocs of countries had to follow therefore quite different paths: while Spanish and Portuguese governments shrank their cultural policy systems, South America countries, in the main, gave greater importance to this public area. In this regard, it should be underlined that the abovementioned expansion and reconceptualization of the official definition of culture served two aims. On the one hand, to provide a reference point for the institutionalization of cultural policies, mainly grounded on the establishment of Ministries of culture⁵ and the expansion/diversification of cultural programmes. On the other hand, it offered a chance of integrating new forms of social participation in the cultural and artistic fields, based on decentralized strategies of cultural engagement and on a more active use of digital channels of cultural dissemination. In this respect, it is also important to underline a greater use of some cultural industry instruments or media as mechanisms for constructing national hegemony within populist political strategies and according to different ideological conceptions of the public sphere. This point for instance is mentioned in the text of Bayardo/Bordat in relation with Kirchnerism after 2009, as part of the governmental ‘cultural battle’ with corporate media.

Internationalization of cultural policies and expansion of cultural diplomacy

Some of the above ‘pro-sovereignty’ cultural policies were developed in a new scenario in terms of the influence of the internationalization and digitalization of social life in cultural production, consumption and identities. This phenomenon favoured a growing internationalization of cultural policies that has particularly affected local actors. Their ‘glocalization’ was part of a new urban approach aimed at projecting the city on the basis of its cultural and heritage assets.

This internationalization of cultural policies was accompanied by a diversification and expansion of cultural diplomacy in Ibero-America. In the South American case, greater institutionalization of cultural relations at a supranational level was also seen as an opportunity for constructing regional power, which was still shown to be very limited in terms of increasing the autonomy and articulation of its cultural diplomacy. Nevertheless, broadly, a new ‘postcolonial’ conception of international relations marked a dialectic between new plural definitions of national culture operating in local policies and those diplomatic efforts oriented towards strengthening Latin America identity. By contrast, in the case of Spain, the integration in Europe and Ibero-America as well as the internationalization continued to be the main aims of all levels of governments’ cultural diplomacy. As shown by Zamorano/Bonet, the Spanish state followed its traditional strategies in the field, such as branding strategies as part of the Marca España project, as well as cultural cooperation for development and artistic dissemination.

These developments affected the Ibero-American system of cultural diplomacy. As shown by Zamorano/Bonet, the convergence of developments, such as the new approach to international relations boosted by the left turn in South America, the Spanish reduction of its contribution to transnational programmes and its economicist approach to public diplomacy deployed during the beginning of the XXI century, opened a space of negotiation between the above discussed different developments. Nevertheless, the maintaining of the shared efforts in Ibero-American cultural diplomacy also confirms the importance of cultural assets for framing ‘hard relations’ within contemporary international relations at large. As Villanueva illustrates through the Mexican case, this relevance of culture in international relations also relates to its growing use as a tool for constructing soft power by means of national branding strategies.

Normativities in tension and instrumentalizations

In terms of the reconfiguration of the normativity legitimating the studied policies, the articles in this issue show the reconstruction of the discursive basis of cultural policies in Latin America, both in an entrepreneurial/austerity sense and as part of citizenship/cultural diversity rights. As shown by Yudice, cultural democracy/cultural rights and entrepreneurial/economicist approaches were then often boosted as opposite foundations for cultural policies. This dispute for the hegemony of cultural policy discourse can be found in the redefinition of the activity in Brazil in terms of cultural citizenship or within some of the different philosophies of action identified by Bayardo/Bordat for the Argentinian case. Meanwhile, constructivism and branding represented the main discursive dichotomy within cultural diplomacy. While the branding rationale of cultural diplomacy emphasizes the attraction of financial resources and tourists, other approaches to this activity, such as constructivism, are more adapted to social participation and demands. Naturally, in all the studied cases, the reframing of the theoretical and discursive basis of official cultural action has been accompanied by certain forms of instrumentalization of the new approaches involved.

Acute institutional fragility

One recurrent trait in the trajectories of Ibero-American cultural policies is their significant dependency on governmental change and their subsequent level of partisan or corporativist instrumentalization as well as their dependency on the economic environment. Both the South American path towards new mechanisms of democratization, and the process of rationalization fostered by the Spanish and Portuguese states, jointly with the development of new participatory governance approaches by its main cities, have had instrumentalization, branding, economicism and corporativism as democratization obstacles. This phenomenon can also be understood as a common dimension amongst Ibero-American countries, where cultural policies, to the extent that they are not entirely institutionalized and are highly power-dependent, often seem to be more inclined towards corporate actors’ conceptions of this area than towards the definitive positioning of culture as a citizenship right. This historical dynamics boosts the institutional instability of cultural policies and limits public-private and intergovernmental coordination, a hypothesis that seems to be confirmed by the new development of cultural policies that has occurred during the last four years in Ibero-American countries.

A characteristic instability and the exaggerated dependence on circumstances – often external to the cultural realm – observed in Ibero-American cultural policies, expresses an endemic lack of institutional solidity in this political and administrative sphere, which also refers to cultural factors at the base. Previously, we have already said that the historical tradition from which the field of cultural policy in Ibero-American countries is formed is characterized by the precarious legitimacy achieved by high culture and the corresponding lack of autonomy of the cultural sphere. This corresponds to a structural weakness of the cultural sector, both in professional and social terms. As the cultural sector is the main base on which the cultural policy system lies, this is undoubtedly the factor that best explains the exceptional institutional fragility that this system has in Ibero-America.

Cultural policies in the Ibero-American family of nations: a promising analytic perspective

At the beginning of this introduction, we expressed our interest in developing this special issue on Ibero-American cultural policies from the analytical perspective of the family of nations’ notion, which Castles (1993) had put into circulation for the comparative study of public policies. What the volume allows us to verify, in our opinion, is that the application of this perspective to the analysis of cultural policy makes a lot of sense. Indeed, perhaps the cultural field is one of the fields in which it makes the most sense.

Of course, the present overview shows that the diversity among countries is great, both in the institutional formulas adopted by them and in their trajectories. There is no clear affiliation between them, based on common administrative and legal traditions or on specific structural arrangements between state and market in relation to culture. One such perspective would be that of welfare regimes, popularized by Gosta Esping-Andersen from his studies on social policies in the developed world (Esping-Andersen 1990). This same perspective was then imaginatively used for the analysis of cultural policy by Annette Zimmer and Stefan Toepler (1996). In their work, these authors found that this approach was not fully applied to the field of cultural policy, but they also found that it could be, significantly in some ways. In particular, they found that there was no correspondence with respect to features, such as objectives or chronology, since in the different countries that they took as representative cases of the different types of regime (United States, Germany and Sweden) cultural policy seemed to develop according to similar philosophies and in coincidental times. On the other hand, in other aspects – such as the legitimations and the forms of implementation of the policies for example – the contrast between the countries and their correspondence with their respective regimes was clear. Naturally, the information presented in this special issue on cultural policies in Latin America does not allow for a precise contrast with respect to the categories used by Zimmer and Toepler in their analysis. It is easy however to appreciate the fact that the Ibero-American universe does not fit at all within the model of cultural policy regime that they identified. The countries that make up this universe do not resemble each other because of similarities in their respective cultural policy implementation. On the contrary, in this respect their cultural policy is very heterogeneous. It rather coincides, instead, in their objectives and legitimations.

But we have seen that the common cultural substratum does operate as a generator of affinities. To the relative lack of legitimacy of high culture, for example, which is a feature widely shared in the Ibero-American universe, we have previously attributed the institutional weakness of the cultural sector and, based on it, the characteristic fragility of cultural policy in the region. And the same happens with the similarities in the recent political trajectories of the different countries. As we have pointed out, the shared and successive experience of overcoming dictatorial regimes (which first occurs in the Iberian Peninsula and then in much of Latin America) produces a similar democratizing desire that drives the institutionalization of cultural policy everywhere, with more or less delay. For the rest, both factors favour mutual exchange and influence, as well as common orientations and tendencies. Through the shared language, for example, the policy transfers are facilitated, which are so important in the field of cultural policy. And from the common cultural substratum, which in the Ibero-American case we have said includes a pattern of weak autonomization of the cultural sphere, there is the characteristic tendency to hybridize between the cultural and the social in cultural policy actions, a tendency that is reflected, for example, in urban cultural regeneration programmes. That is why it can be said, in light of all this evidence, that the perspective of families of nations is much more fruitful than that of welfare regimes when interpreting in a comparative sense the evolution of cultural policy, at least in a case like the Ibero-American one. Because as Castles says (2010, 3), ‘the families’ notion is, in some ways, less rigid than its counterpart [the regime’s notion], allowing for the possibility that a common ancestry is compatible with divergences in some areas of behaviour whilst simultaneously supplying a cultural transmission mechanism for the subsequent reassertion of affinity’.

In sum, the findings of this special issue confirm the consistency, as well as the limitations, of the family of nations perspective in the cultural policies sphere and its analytical potential. Although this is an as yet unexplored approach within the field of cultural policy, these promising indications invite us to use it for the design of systematic research methodologies, able to further exploit its potential. We consider that, beyond the Ibero-American case and its undoubted intrinsic interest, this perspective could be applied to other cultural regions of the world. In this way, we may advance in the development of a less Eurocentric vision of cultural policies than has been developed so far. This is a relevant aim, to which we hope this issue contributes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This imperialist concept was developed during the beginning of the XXth century by the Spanish diplomat Ramiro de Maetzu, who defined Ibero-America (named Spanish America) as a sociopolitical space civilized and evangelized by the Kingdom of Spain.

2. The process of establishing the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) began in 2004, its founding text becoming effective in 2011. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) was created in 2004 and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean (CELAC) in 2010.

3. The Andres Bello Convention (1970) made certain contributions with its cultural programmes, such as the Economy and culture plan (1999), focused on the production of cultural information in member countries. In MERCOSUR, despite the fact that meetings for discussing education and economic issues have developed since 1991 (Getino 2009, 179), the supranational organization has not given way to specific programmes or dynamics of management in the culture field.

4. The Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government held in 2006 approved the Cultural Ibero-American Charter, influenced by the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity.

5. The appearance of left-wing governments during that decade led to the creation of successive Ministries of Culture: Venezuela in 2004, Ecuador in 2007, Bolivia in 2009, Peru in 2010, and finally Argentina in 2014. To this must be added the constitution of the Chilean Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage in 2017.