Transnational cultural networks: soft mechanisms for cultural diversity and frictionless mobility

ABSTRACT

Transnational networks in the cultural sector have expanded significantly in Europe over the last three decades. Nevertheless, although this phenomenon is fuelled by the EU’s cultural policy and corresponding funding initiatives, there is a noticeable lacuna in the academic literature on this issue. This article, therefore, examines the emergence and institutionalisation of these networks, shedding light on: 1) the relationship between networks’ evolution and the EU’s cultural policy discourse, and 2) networks and the Europeanisation process. To this end, the study employs a document analysis and uncovers three distinct policy clusters, with a shift from a transnational European identity to one of cultural diversity and a people-centered approach. These outcomes lead to an investigation of whether and how these discursive shifts are interconnected with the development of transnational networks. This conclusively reveals how their implementation is intricately linked not only to the foundational tenets of the EU’s cultural policy – the subsidiarity principle, but also to the broader context of EU policymaking. The article concludes that EU intervention in the cultural sector can be justified as a discursive agent in the evolving European public sphere, with significant implications for professionals, policymakers and scholars in the field.

KEYWORDS:

• Networks
• EU cultural policy
• European integration

Introduction

The cultural and creative Sector (CCS) has increasingly gained an international presence, with multilevel governance playing a significant role in its development both globally and within the European Union (EU). Transnational networks (TNs) are at the heart of this system. Their implementation, as this article emphasises, is intricately linked not only to the foundational principles of the institution’s cultural policy, but also to the broader context of EU policymaking. Nonetheless, despite the widespread adoption of such practices at the transnational level, there is still a dearth of comprehensive research on these phenomena across academic disciplines. This void hinders any achievement of a clear understanding of the networks’ organisational and political implications.

In the European context, TNs emerged in the late 1980s as informal cross-border gatherings of cultural professionals. There was a negotiation phase in the period around 1992 that involved the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Information, Communication, Culture and Audiovisual Media (known as the DGX), which was then in charge of cultural activity. As a result, these self-organised models underwent a thorough process of institutionalisation within the context of EU policies. In the time since then, TNs have increasingly been funded by the EU’s cultural programmes, i.e. Kaleidoscope, Culture 2000 and, most recently, Creative Europe, thus becoming fundamental mechanisms within the EU’s cultural governance and implementation of policy.

The goals of this article are to: 1) provide a historical overview of the phenomena of cultural networks, specifically those benefitted from EU funding schemes, within the European context, and 2) identify the most relevant discursive shifts in the EU’s cultural policy as it became interlinked with the development of networks in the field, 3) shed light on the link between networks’ evolution and the different phases of Europeanization. In order to examine the emergence of these tools and consolidation of these practices, the article draws on political science, specifically bringing together studies on Europeanisation and cultural policy. Also investigated is whether the legitimacy of these practices has increased because they have been embedded within the principles of cultural diversity and frictionless mobility, which are fundamental priorities in the EU cultural policy, as well as enablers of the integration process. To this end, the article focuses on the EU's soft governance mechanisms, addressed in cultural issues in particular, which is an area of research that has received very little academic attention thus far. This absence primarily arises from: 1) an understanding of culture as “a contested area of policymaking in the European Union (EU)” (Mäkinen et al., 2023, p. 9); and 2) the underdeveloped exchange with the public policy discipline in relation to cultural strategies (Belfiore, 2002, 2020). The academic literature has thus fallen short in terms of addressing the issue of TNs in the cultural sector (Imperiale & Vecco, 2019), meaning that the analytical and empirical implications thereof have not been questioned until now.

The approach proposed in this article enables us to achieve an understanding of the EU’s cultural policy, its soft mechanisms and shifts in EU governance as closely interlinked with policy activity in the cultural sector. This demonstrates how the EU governance architecture developed hand-in-hand with the Europeanisation process and, ultimately, how networks became an intrinsic part of this evolution. The study draws on both the public policy discipline, specifically taking a discursive-analytical approach to archival sources (Wodak, 2007), and Europeanisation research more broadly (Borrás & Radaelli, 2012; Bruno et al., 2006; Jacobsson, 2004; Radaelli, 2000, 2008; Radaelli & Pasquier, 2007).

The main argument here is that the implementation of networks is closely linked to EU policymaking more generally, and to the fundamental principles of the EU’s cultural policy specifically, emphasising a horizontal decision-making process based on the subsidiarity principle (see Article 128 of the Maastricht Treaty). This is a departure from the traditional top-down, highly regulated governance model wherein, it can be argued, that networks, i.e. membership-based organisations that comprise diverse multilevel actors, evolved as a response to the organisational changes that not only occurred in EU governance, but also in the CCS. In such debates, it can be conceived that these EU-granted TNs simultaneously emerged as part of both a top-down effort in line with the EU’s outgrowth in a network governance structure, as well as bottom-up practices initiated by civil society. The engagement of cultural professionals in a new governance architecture is also an issue discussed within this framework.

This article is structured as follows: the next section describes the research methodology, before shedding light on how Europeanisation studies have helped to clarify the rationale behind the emergence of soft governance mechanisms like TNs. Then, adopting a discursive-analytical approach, the article identifies three main shifts in the EU’s cultural policy discourse: ontological, intercultural and participatory (Staiger, 2009). This is linked, on the one hand, to the broad discourse on European integration and, on the other, to the legitimisation of these networks in the CCS. A historical reconstruction of TNs, from institutionalisation to the mainstream, is presented within this discursive analysis. This overview illustrates how the EU’s increased involvement in a policy domain where it actually has no jurisdiction or formal mandate has transformed what was a subsidiary issue into an opportunity to expand EU competencies in sectors like culture.

Sources and methods

This article adopts a systematic approach to shine a light on TNs by linking research across multiple disciplines (Gilson & Goldberg, 2015, p. 128). This brings together Europeanisation studies and cultural policy, with the intention being to unpick the European reference within the EU’s multilevel cultural governance. More widely, it seeks to contribute to the dialogue taking place between policy theory and cultural policy studies (Belfiore, 2022). My systematic approach (Weinfutner & Seidl, 2019) to performing a literature review of academic and grey sources on the issue of Europeanisation within the EU’s cultural policy¹ enabled me to uncover a major gap in the research conducted on how the EU intervenes in cultural matters. There are vast bodies of work on the European Capitals of Culture (ECOC) and their impact (Sassatelli, 2009; Ponzini & Jones, 2016; Kinsella et al., 2017; Fage-Butler, 2020). There is also a branch of the literature that draws on critical heritage studies to examine the EU’s heritage policy as an inherently political phenomenon (Lähdesmäki, 2016 , 2017; Lähdesmäki et al., 2019a, 2019b; Lähdesmäki & Čeginskas, 2022), as well as a more recent wave dedicated to heritage diplomacy within the European framework (Mäkinen et al., 2023; Vos, 2017). Nevertheless, very little attention has been paid to the governance mechanisms (Mattocks, 2018; Vos, 2017) that enable the EU to take action in relation to cultural matters. Moreover, referring specifically to the issue of European networks in the cultural sector, the lack of academic studies and the poor quality of EU policy documents must be acknowledged (CoE, 2002; EACEA, 2021). This article thus seeks to offer a retrospective reading of the evolution of these soft policy tools by systematising the secondary sources available, which were mostly published by the European Commission and the TNs themselves in the period 2004–2020.

The sample of EU cultural policy documents analysed was selected from two main sources: 1) the foundational documents concerning the evolution of the EU’s cultural policy, as discussed in the key literature (Sassatelli, 2002; Shore, 2006; Ahearne, 2009; Lähdesmäki, 2017; Lähdesmäki et al., 2019a; Groth, 2023); and 2) EU policy documents sequencing the European Governance White Paper (European Commission, 2000), which is considered to be a milestone in the emergence of new modes of governance within the EU. In brief, the policy documents examined describe new modes of governance. More specifically, networks are treated as a fundamental asset for achieving good governance, which is a concept of a “deeper normative and political content” (Börzel et al., 2008, p. 7) that is characterised by the principles of openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and the coherence of the political system. The foundations of this concept lie within the European Governance White Paper (European Commission, 2000), which has since been implemented as a way to better meet the internal needs and improve the quality of international organisations (ibid., 20). As this article will now show, this includes in the cultural domain.

The documents in the sample were examined based on the emergence of diverse topics and topoi (Wodak, 2007, p. 71), i.e. pieces of arguments that have been contextualised and recontextualised within a variety of policy documents across time and space, and which were fundamental in bringing about discursive policy shifts (Krzyżanowski, 2010). Furthermore, after the article identifies these shifts, it goes on to explain how these discursive agents have evolved over time. The methods employed reference discourse historical analysis (DHA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Wodak, 2007; Krzyżanowski, 2010), wherein the process of identification in the “construction of Europe” is unpicked discursively. This type of document analysis is mostly retrospective, highlighting how networks emerged, developed and have been further institutionalised within the framework of EU discourse. However, the article also contains a prospective view on the engagement of cultural professionals in such a new governance architecture. Specifically, this shows how concepts like networking, participation, mobility and cooperation have become central assets not only in EU cultural policy discourse, but also for cultural networks in particular.

Transnational networks as soft modes of European governance

This section describes the emergence of TNs within the EU governance process and explores how they can be regarded as soft policy instruments also in response to the cultural policy’s subsidiarity principle. As cultural policy is a non-binding policy sector within the EU, soft mechanisms and new modes of governance emerged as a result of member states’ lack of acceptance of supranational legal regulation (Jacobsson, 2004, p. 3). Accordingly, the engagement of a wider plethora of non-institutional actors has been experimented with throughout the policy cycle, from ideation to implementation. Public policy scholars have questioned how these soft modes of governance operate as instruments of the Europeanisation process (Bruno et al., 2006) and what their effects are, even if “there is no pressure to conform to EU policy models” (Radaelli, 2000, p. 124). These modes of governance are non-coercive processes based on the voluntary agreement of the actors involved, with the cognitive dimension playing a fundamental role in enabling a horizontal mechanism of Europeanisation (Radaelli, 2000) via “framing mechanisms” (Radaelli, 2001; as cited in Bruno et al., 2006).

In such an understanding, Europeanisation is no longer studied in terms of national policy convergence or divergence, but rather as a set of influences and content produced within these horizontal processes. Soft instruments were first acknowledged and promulgated by the Lisbon Treaty and have subsequently been implemented via the EU’s institutional framework over the years. The literature regards these tools as, on the one hand, “evidence of a democratic-participatory turn in the European Union,” but, on the other, as a process that will undermine democracy in the EU in the long term (Cram, 2011, p. 637). Furthermore, the Lisbon Strategy (Council, 2005), which sought to pursue the production of European knowledge has emphasised a new cycle of governance and mechanisms. These include the open method of coordination (OMC), TNs and structured dialogue between the EU and civil society. The propagation of these soft instruments depends on the maturity of the EU’s international governance system (Jacobsson, 2004), the degree of exclusivity of national competence on specific policy areas, and on each policy sector’s regulations. These tools initially emerged in employment and social policies, then in the policy concerning the information society and enterprise, and more recently in education and research. When referring to the EU cultural policy and heritage sector, literature has noticed that there is no unique instrument design (Zito & Eckersley, 2019, p. 2), and also policy tools have often been adopted in non-specific ways from other sectors (Capano & Lippi, 2017, pp. 283–284, on contamination). This means that soft instruments like the OMC and TNs have been copied from other sectors and readapted to operate within the cultural sphere since the 2000s.

More broadly, soft mechanisms have predominantly been implemented in fields where the EU otherwise lacks the legitimacy to intervene (Cram, 2011, p. 649), and where ordinary elected representation is undermined and the engagement of civil society has played a fundamental role in the European integration process. There are arguments in the literature that in transforming civil society organisations into political “communities”, the European Commission has performed the role of a “purposeful opportunist” (Cram, 1993, 1997, 2011) and “policy entrepreneur” (Cram, 2011), seeking to legitimise the EU’s activity in policy sectors that would otherwise remain beyond its reach.

The EU’s employment of these tools seeks to harmonise rules and measures and achieve policy convergence by bringing together a wide array of actors – that is, by setting common EU objectives that member states are expected to achieve (see compliance). Through these means, the processes adopted contribute to the facilitation of Europeanisation via learning in subtle and complementary ways. These tools, also labelled as social mechanisms, in fact trigger knowledge and meaning-making, which is combined with and legitimised via social peer pressure. Their main objective continues to be the creation of a common vocabulary (i.e. knowledge base) and cognitive frameworks for use in describing the challenges that form the basis of political strategies (Jacobsson, 2004, p. 360; Borrás & Jacobsson, 2004).

Networks are not only conceived as a response to the new form of non-constraining co-ordination that has been developing since the mid-1990s (Bruno et al., 2006), but also as a reaction to the participative turn endorsed in the EU’s governance arrangements, as first highlighted in the White Paper on Governance published by the European Commission in 2000. This document attributes five main features to networks: 1) high flexibility, thereby enabling complex issues to be tackled; 2) improved identification of comprehensive problems; 3) the provision of resources like information, empirical knowledge and expertise that public actors cannot access; 4) making a contribution to consensus building; and 5) allowing socialisation to be employed as a process for the depoliticisation of issues (Börzel & Heard-Lauréote, 2009, p. 141, p. 142).

The following section considers whether these features are also valuable when applied to TNs in the cultural sector. Conclusively, however, these coordinative soft mechanisms arose as complements to hard laws within new experimental modes of governance, specifically as a way of adopting soft means to advance processes of knowledge production as the engine of Europeanisation (Radaelli, 2008). The question of whether or not these learning-based modes of governance leverage significative transformative changes in the normative and cognitive components of related sectors, beyond the merely symbolic, is an open question in the literature (Bruno et al., 2006; Radaelli, 2008). In fact, since these soft systems are highly “related to language use and knowledge making” (Jacobsson, 2004), it is often a challenge to trace their outcomes in addition to their “subtle impacts of socialization processes, ideational convergence, learning, and re-definitions of policy paradigms and ideas” (Radaelli & Pasquier, 2007, p. 38). This article aims to address this knowledge gap by adding to the debate with preliminary findings on how transnational networks operate in the CCS.

Transnational networks in the cultural and creative sector: from emergence to mainstream

This section examines the emergence of TNs in the CCS in two complementary ways: as a top-down effort in line with EU outgrowth in a network governance structure, and with the development of soft modes of coordination, as explained in the previous section; and as bottom-up civil society–initiated experiences taking place in the cultural sector. Empirically, networks approved within EU cultural funding schemes are in a hybrid position between the two main administrative bodies responsible for the cultural activities of European Institutions: the Directorate General of Education and Culture (DG EAC), and the Executive Agency of Culture, Education and Audiovisual (EACEA). In truth, transnational networks can be regarded both as coordinative tools steered by the former and as granted projects managed by the latter. These structures are thus considered to be a coordination mechanism, like the structured dialogue between European institutions and civil society, as well as bottom-up initiatives established by grassroots cultural actors and, therefore, as implemented via the Creative Europe funding scheme. The hybrid organisational structure of these tools has made it challenging to interpret these practices from a scholarly perspective. Nonetheless, complementing the previous section that touched on the broader emergence of TNs within EU governance, this one uses a discursive approach (Wodak, 2007) to analyse the development of TNs in the CCS into three main phases: institutionalisation, consolidation and mainstreaming.

Such a reading certainly acknowledges the tangled origin of networks. It also clarifies their nature as both structural and conceptual hybrids: these structures are, in fact, positioned between the EU’s policy system and cultural operators. Moreover, the emergence of these soft policy tools in the cultural sector can also be related to the Lisbon Strategy (2000), which “seeks to direct Europeanization towards a learning society model whose cornerstone would be a European knowledge area” (Bruno et al., 2006, p. 523). It is in fact during this period that practices of “benchmarking,” the “exchange of good practices,” and “learning” proliferated (Borrás & Radaelli, 2012), with TNs playing a role in facilitating them, including in the CCS. The following analysis reveals that the combination of institutionalisation and a grassroots movement is still evident across the various phases of the evolution of TNs as they respond to both the cultural policy priorities as well as to the emerging paradigms of the sector.

Institutionalisation phase: 1980–2004

The 1980s saw independent cultural professionals across national borders gather together informally to exchange knowledge and practices from their respective sectors of interest. Later, these gatherings became increasingly formalised in order to participate in the EU political system through the establishment of both representative bodies (e.g. the Board of Directors and the Presidency) and an executive body (the Executive Office). This transition from informal meetings to non-profit international organisations, often with an official membership fee and a structured secretariat based in Brussels, is how the majority of the networks emerged. Then, around 2000s, cultural networks began to engage in negotiations with the relevant authority, the Directorate General of Education and Culture (at that time, the DGX, as referred to in the Introduction). The purpose was to establish a bespoke funding mechanism to facilitate the expansion of these networks under the aegis of the cultural programme of the time, Kaleidoscope (1996–1999). These negotiations probably occurred either informally, or as part of a direct pursuit of institutional advocacy objectives. Regardless, this moment is identified as a starting point in the institutionalisation of networks within the EU framework. As explained by the practitioners themselves, the financial support for these networks was initially somewhat unofficial, being a response to a budget line (known as the “a.line”) dedicated to the tasks for which the European Commission had neither the internal resources, nor the competencies and mandate. It was precisely for this reason that the DGX began to finance organisations without the imposition of strict requirements for addressing particular policy priorities, such as specifying that the grants be employed to meet the operational and running costs of network organisations. Examples from this phase include networks like the Network European of Museum Organizations (NEMO), the Informal European Theatre Meeting (IETM), EFAH (now Cultural Action Europe) and the European Network on Cultural Management and Policy (known as ENCATC).

In parallel, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000) and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the Treaty of Lisbon (declared in 2000 and come into force in 2009) established the basis for the White Paper on European Governance (European Commission, 2001), which paved the way for the direct participation principle in policymaking. Moreover, it can be argued that this first phase also overlaps with the initial stages of the European integration process, during which cultural resources were instrumental in building the discourse of a shared common European identity and European cultural heritage. In such an understanding, networks contributed to the creation and dissemination of this discourse (Lähdesmäki, 2016, 2017), as well as a diffuse sense of belonging to a common cultural membership, thus striving to maintain cultural diversity in relation to national cultural competences. In this regard, cultural heritage can be viewed as one of the first sectorial approaches developed within the context of the EU’s cultural policy. Therefore, gatherings, meetings and shared practices via TNs not only become instrumental to the discursive creation of a collective European transnational identity, but also to the empirically enabled, frictionless cross-border mobility of cultural professionals.

Consolidation phase: 2004–2014

A second phase began in parallel with the preparation period for the first Strategic Plan for Culture, i.e. the Agenda for Culture, 2007, and, more specifically, the Work Plan for Culture, 2007–2013 (European Commission, 2006). The priorities of “improving the conditions for the mobility of artists, promoting access to culture, developing data on the sector; maximising the potential of cultural and creative industries and promoting and implementing the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions” (European Commission, 2007) all contributed extensively to supporting network development. Indeed, for the first time, networks were identified as being eligible for structural grants under the Agenda for Culture, 2007, with three different categories of beneficiaries labelled in this call: 1) ambassador; 2) advocacy network; and 3) platform. The first of these refers to organisations which, “through their influence in the cultural field at [the] European level, have [a] clear aptitude to perform as European cultural ‘representatives’ and, as such, can fulfil their role of European Cultural Ambassadors” (ibid.). The second addresses “advocacy networks entrusted by the associated members of the network, which ensure a significant representation of specific category of cultural operators or the cultural fields at [the] European level” (ivi). Finally, the third indicates a civic society platform engaging in a structural dialogue with the European Commission within the framework of the European Agenda for Culture. These three categories highlight the need, on the one hand, to have a stronger representation of the cultural sector at the EU level and, on the other, the desire to establish “representative” ambassadors of European culture for diplomatic purposes, ultimately engaging civil society actors more actively in the policymaking process.

In this period, network funding was specifically referred to for the first time as “operating grants for cultural bodies of European interest” (ibidem). Under this label, the European Commission called for “bodies working for cultural co-operation by providing representation at [the] European Union’s level, collecting or disseminating information for facilitating trans-European cultural co-operation, networking at the European level (…) and acting as ambassadors for European culture” (European Commission, 2012). In this call, some of the main network functions were outlined for the first time, including: 1) having representation in the EU; 2) collecting or disseminating information; 3) facilitating trans-European cultural cooperation; and 4) networking at the European level. Alongside the significant acknowledgment of networks in the Work Plan for Culture, 2007–2013, their function was further clarified as being ambassadors of European culture for the purpose of enhancing representativeness in the policymaking process and, at the same time, opening up space for civil society organisations and independent actors to advocate for the field. From an institutional perspective, there was a need to aggregate a political voice from the cultural sector in order to: 1) represent a plethora of stakeholders and civil society organisations; 2) obtain grassroots recommendations; 3) construct an epistemic community around specific policy issues; and, most importantly, 4) build a sort of “observatoire” of the cultural field at the European level. To this end, it can be argued that the European Commission acted as a “policy entrepreneur” (Cram, 2011) by transforming civil society organisations operating in the cultural sector into political communities also capable of facilitating the Europeanisation process. The structuring effect of the cultural sector’s political voice, the strengthening of an actor’s ability to engage in dialogue with European institutions, and the empowerment of cultural professionals by giving them roles within the international political setting can all be seen as the outgrowth of the formal establishment of TNs. Furthermore, this was in line with the EU’s cultural policy objective of capacity building, as well as with the wider “democratic-participatory turn in the European Union” (Cram, 2011, p. 637). Examples of this phase included the work of the European Festival Association (EFA), which was also in charge of establishing a consortium of diverse networks (the European House for Culture) in pursuit of a structured dialogue with the European Commission, the European Music Council (EMC) and the European Theater Convention (ETC).

During the first phase of network institutionalisation in the late 1980s, when the EU was consolidating around a project of political integration, national societies were themselves undergoing a process of Europeanisation (Delanty, 2018, p. 208). In that phase, cultural heritage was considered to be an engine for the formation of a collective European transnational identity (Thiel & Friedman, 2012). Later, due to the political sensitivity of the concept of European identity and the consolidated national political legacy on cultural matters, cultural diversity increasingly gained ground as a discursive strategy to legitimate EU actions in the cultural sphere. Cultural diversity, which was consolidated in this period conceptually, served to legitimize the creation of a common cultural space aimed at strengthening processes of European integration and, at the same time, safeguarding national differences. Furthermore, the concept of cultural diversity fully embraces the EU paradigms of “mobility and pluralism” (Calligaro, 2013; Sassatelli, 2010) and emphasises the principle of subsidiarity. In fact, this discursive strategy has been at the core of the EU heritage and cultural policy discourse ever since, as was then clearly conveyed by the official motto of the Union: “United in Diversity”, that came into force in 2000 and has been then drafted by the European Convention in 2003. Additionally, in the same period the relationship between cultural and Europeanisation processes has been reinvigorated in light of the Eastern Europe enlargement of 2004 and 2007. And policy documents have underscored a shared cultural heritage as a factor that highlights the cultural similarities between the post-socialist candidate countries and the EU, as noted by Lähdesmäki et al. (2019b, p.137). In this context, TNs have made a major contribution to the creation of a common vocabulary, frames of reference and discourses that have bridged diverse Eastern and Western geo-political contexts. In turn, this has facilitated continuous cross-border exchanges and cooperation, not only organisationally, but also ideationally.

Mainstreaming phase: 2014–2021

This last phase corresponds to the introduction of the new Creative Europe programme for the period 2014–2020, which signalled a shift in policy priorities towards a more predominant creativity and innovation paradigm. This led to a greater emphasis on promoting transnational mobility and cross-national circulation through an entrepreneurial approach, which reverberated in both the funding scheme and network activities. Moreover, the New Agenda for Culture (European Commission, 2018b) has emphasised the role of culture and cultural heritage as leverage for “an active citizenship, common values, inclusion and intercultural dialogue within Europe and across the globe” (ibidem, 1, cited in Groth, 2023, p. 26). This stressed the principles already stated in the Council of Europe’s Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Council of Europe, 2005; henceforth, Faro Convention). This shift saw Creative Europe funding grants being increasingly targeted at project-based activities with more defined deliverable outputs. Consequently, structural funds for networks (covering the operational and running costs of a network’s secretariat, e.g. office, staff) were instead transformed into project funds, again with more defined deliverables. The change in policy frames from those of the Culture Program, 2007–2013, to those of Creative Europe saw a new entrepreneurial sensibility emerge and networks were obliged to modify their strategies, priorities and business models accordingly. Under Creative Europe, 28 cultural networks (EACEA, 2016), defined as membership-based organisations that bring together culture and creative actors “who contribute to strengthening the competitiveness and diversity of the European cultural and creative sectors” (EACEA, 2021²), received grants and were classified according to the sector represented, namely: music (eight); cultural heritage and museums (four); theatre—dance—circus (five); architecture and design (two); and multidisciplinary (nine). Two examples of these newly granted include the EU National Institutes of Culture (EUNIC), Circostrada and the European Dancehouse Network (EDN).

Moreover, the New European Agenda for Culture (European Council, 2014; European Commission, 2018;) and the European Year of Cultural Heritage, 2018 (henceforth, EYCH 2018) were further instrumental in merging innovation and participative paradigms. These events highlight culture and cultural heritage as a vehicle for shared sources of remembrance, understanding, identity, dialogue, cohesion and creativity. This required a community-driven approach to heritage to be at the forefront of significant policy discussions, with greater civil society involvement supported by new governance mechanisms. In this regard, networks provided multilevel governance platforms that facilitated the experimentation of the envisioned participatory models.

Conclusively, a detailed policy analysis reveals that the three main phases in the development of networks correspond to the three semantic clusters in the EU’s cultural policy discourse outlined in the literature: ontological, intercultural and participatory (Staiger, 2009). These discursive policy shifts support the argument that networks have evolved based on the EU’s priorities: in fact these soft tools were initially implemented in order to disseminate more traditional EU identity-based values across levels during the European integration process. Then, networks have been sustained to disseminate more abstract values as evolved in the Culture programme. Since then, networks’ activities have been reframed via entrepreneurial and innovation paradigms as promoted in the Creative Europe programme. In short, networks initially intended to disseminate traditional EU identity-based values by facilitating transnational cultural practices, cross-border cooperation and, more generally, a Europeanisation process. However, the evolution of networks has seen these platforms becoming more inclined to both embed innovation paradigms incrementally, and to facilitate the multilevel diffusion of abstract values and frameworks, such as participation, communication and cooperation.

Conclusion: transnational networks, policy paradigms and the public sphere

This article has shown how networks are linked discursively with the process of participation, cooperation and, more widely, the principles of Europeanisation. The general overview on the emergence of TNs in terms of how the EU is arranged and the specific historical reconstruction of their evolution in the CCS have outlined that European networks emerged not only as the result of institutional fragmentation, but also as highly legitimated instruments within the discourse on European integration. The demand for frictionless mobility present in both the economic and political dimensions of the integration discourse has clearly contributed to generating the need for such networks. In fact, these soft policy instruments have become fundamental tools in building up the new spatiality and polity of Europe. Moreover, they have been employed as a key asset in the creation of the European space (Jensen & Richardson, 2003), albeit mostly in symbolic terms, but also supported by a cognitive and organisational dimension. In more detail, these tools appear to instigate the creation of “a space of flow” (Castell, 1999; Castells, 2000) that is increasingly organised around cultural movements, enabling a “simultaneity of social practices without geographical contiguity” (Sassatelli, 2010; cited in Lähdesmäki et al., 2021, p. 185). This type of transnational practice contributes to the delineation of building a European identity. There are three elements to this process, which is: 1) “shaped by transnational experiences that also involved personal mobility and various forms of cross-border interactions” (Lähdesmäki et al., 2021, p. 185); 2) a so-called “European cultural space” in which mobility and participation are deemed, as cultural professionals have highlighted (EFAH, 2003); and, foremost, 3) a common vocabulary, shared behaviours and experimental practices – in other words, a political community and a sense of belonging based on shared negotiated values.

The article also identifies three main discursive shifts in the development of the EU’s cultural policy, whereby cultural heritage: 1) is an engine for forming a collective European transnational identity; 2) operates as a framework for cultural diversity; and 3) reflects a people-centered approach, with the increased involvement of civil society. This demonstrates that the evolution of networks has occurred as part of the response to these three discursive shifts in policy priorities.

In short, networks’ emergence, consolidation and usage have been legitimised in the debate on the EU’s cultural policy, as well as in the political discursive frames of its policies more broadly. Conclusively, networks not only operate as a vehicle for mobility, cultural diversity and exchange, but also mirror the values of subsidiary principles like cooperation, direct participation and complementarity; above all, they represent EU-added values. Indeed, disentangling this argument further highlights how networks initially embedded core EU values such as peace, liberty, democracy, the rule of law and human rights (Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union), but then came to reflect the principle of subsidiarity (Article 128 of the Maastricht Treaty), whereby cultural policy can only be implemented through cross-border cooperation. Moreover, networks have thus not only been employed as strategic resources in the participative turn of the EU’s policymaking, but have also been used to foster a wider integration process. As Groth (2023, p. 24) has noted, the “mainstreaming of culture and heritage entails processes of legitimation on different levels, piercing through local contexts, domestic debates, and supranational processes”, and here one can argue that networks have facilitated this multilevel process.

The argument made here is that this type of embeddedness in policy principles has facilitated the acceptance of connecting the policy and the cultural sector via these soft policy instruments. This has turned the limitations of the subsidiarity principle into an opportunity for a plethora of diverse actors – including cultural professionals – to intervene in the institutional political setting. In summary, it can be concluded that networks are organisational formats for collaboration that have emerged in increasingly complex contexts (Steinkamp, 2013), combining resources to tackle wicked problems and transnational challenges. Nonetheless, in relation to the networks that specifically benefitted from EU funding schemes, these new forms of governance not only operationalised conceptually the mobility demand embedded in the political discourse of European integration, but also fuelled the aim of the political discourse on culture that employs the notion of transnational mobility, thus safeguarding cultural diversity. Ultimately, the article has shown how EU intervention via diverse soft policy instruments “not only functions to bolster the legitimacy of the EU project” through cultural assets, but “also enlarges the scope of EU power and authority extending its competences into new ‘occupied fields’ of governance” (Shore, 2006, p. 2). Networks are employed in this process of interference to disseminate the ontological, intercultural, or participatory semantic assets of the EU’s cultural policy, and have been essential in encouraging cooperation as the basis for building a European public sphere in structural, cognitive and symbolic terms.

Acknowledgments

I’m grateful to Enrico Bertacchini for his comments at the initial stage of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported as part of the PhD grant from DIST, Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning of the University of Turin and Polytechnic of Turin in the years 2018–2021.

Notes

1 To locate primary sources, we conducted initial research using the Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) platform, which only incorporates citations from peer-reviewed journals listed on Scopus. The search keywords were “EU cultural policy” and “Europeanization”. For secondary sources, preliminary research was conducted on the English version of EUR-Lex using the search terms “Culture” and “Networks”. Only communication documents deriving from the European Commission within the timeframe 2000–2020 have been considered.

2 https://culture.ec.europa.eu/creative-europe/creative-europe-culture-strand/european-networks (accessed 15 March, 2023).