The autonomous world reversed: comparing liberal policy and autonomy in the performing arts

Abstract

Comparative studies of cultural policy commonly emphasize the way in which states treat the autonomy of the arts. Such studies often claim that liberal states promote autonomy, while social democratic states promote more external, instrumental values, such as solidarity, universalism and equality. This article challenges this conception by claiming that in actual cultural policy-making it is in fact the other way around. Based on a comparative study of theater policy in England, Norway and the Netherlands, I find that the focus on artistic autonomy is surprisingly absent in the liberal state of England, compared to what it is in the social democratic state of Norway. Conversely, English theaters are more obliged to work for, and with, the citizens and the community than theaters in Norway are. In the Netherlands, where recent development in general policy has headed in a liberal direction, artistic autonomy actually appears to be increasingly challenged.

Keywords:

• cultural policy
• liberal democracy
• autonomy
• theaters
• performing arts

Notes

1. Several scholars have claimed that for Kant, esthetic experience and practical reasons are two aspects of the moral (Scruton 1982, p. 91).

2. Mangset (2009) also discuss this in his article on the arm’s length principle.

3. In this article, the theaters are referred to as The Norwegian Theater, The English Theater and The Dutch Theater.

4. The Norwegian case study was done some years ago as part of another research project (Kleppe et al. 2010) and (Mangset et al. 2012).

5. Smaller fringe theaters receive support from Arts Council Norway. Additionally, there are also some private theaters in Norway that do not receive public support.

6. All Norwegian citations are translated by the author.

7. In 1994, The Arts Council of Great Britain was divided to form the Arts Council of England (now Arts Council England), the Scottish Arts Council and the Arts Council of Wales.

8. http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/pdf/DCMS_funding_agreement.pdf (7 January 2014).

9. According to the annual survey of National Portfolio Organisations 2012/2013, 32% of the theaters’ total income were subsidies, 58% was earned income, while 10% was contributed income.

10. ‘In October 1969, students at the Amsterdam Drama School interrupted a performance by the prestigious Nederlandse Comedie by hurling seven tomatoes. The rising generation of theatre makers was airing the view that Dutch repertory theatre was “rotten” and needed to become more socially committed and artistically innovative. The protesters, calling themselves the “Tomato Action Group”, believed that theatre, which attracted hardly any audience from the lower classes, had become a bourgeois institution’ (Hamersveld 2009, p. 183).

11. In line with Blomgrens assertions (2012), one might also question whether the autonomy of the citizens is weakened by the autonomy of the artists in the Nordic countries.