Austrian foreign cultural policy: Europeanization through the prism of national interests

ABSTRACT

In the second half of 2018, Austria for the third time has taken over the EU Council Presidency and is therefore particularly interested in promoting an image of itself as a reliable partner and a European country which accepts and protects European values. Foreign cultural policy is one of the suitable instruments for achieving this goal. The present paper analyses Austrian foreign cultural policy with the aim of finding out how European integration affects it. The paper uses qualitative research methods such as desk research, document research and expert interviews. The results of the analyses show that Austrian stakeholders traditionally consider Europeanization primarily as a tool to promote Austrian national interests on the international stage.

KEYWORDS:

• Austrian foreign cultural policy
• cultural diplomacy
• EUNIC
• Europeanization
• soft power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Some American research mentions another recent tendency concerning the cultural diplomacy activities of particular great powers that aim to influence policy and politics in targeted countries. Due to the relative novelty of this approach, a new term sharp power has been suggested (National Endowment for Democracy 2018).

2. For example, during the Cold War when cultural relations between the U.S.A. and USSR were often one of the very few communication channels.

3. Cf. Cede and Prosl (2015, 12): ‘Whether one believes it or not, Austrian neutrality has been pared to its minimum as a result of the accession of Austria to the EU’ versus a quote by the then Foreign Secretary and present Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on 6 March 2017 with regard to the future of the EU: ‘Neutrality is part of the Austrian soul, it will be questioned by no one’ (Der Standard 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Boris Pavlovsky

Boris Pavlovsky lives in Vienna, Austria and is both practitioner playing as a violinist at the ORF Vienna Symphony Orchestra and PhD-researcher at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (academic adviser: Prof. Dr. Peter Tschmuck, subject: Austrian and EU foreign cultural policy). He is graduated in political science (University Vienna) and instrumental studies in violin (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna).