Mapping cultural policy in Portugal: From incentives to crisis

Abstract

Taking into account the course of cultural policy in democratic Portugal, and against the backdrop of the international crisis of 2008 and the sovereign debt crisis of 2011, this article seeks to interpret recent changes in the cultural sector in Portugal. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods it focuses on three main aspects: institutionalisation of democratic cultural policy; government funding; cultural organizations and facilities. The 2008 crisis put an end to a period in which investment tended to grow. We place Portugal in the broader European context, concluding that the Portuguese cultural scene may once again diverge from that of other European countries.

Keywords:

• Portugal
• cultural policy
• public expenditure on culture
• systems of cultural administration
• European Union

Notes

1. Indicates the percentage of persons aged 18–24 who stopped attending school without completing their secondary education.

2. Eurostat – National Statistic Institutes, PORDATA. In 2014 the highest rate of early dropout from school and training programmes was found in Spain (22.3%) and, as in Italy, the percentage of the population with secondary education is under 60%, which is below the EU average (75.8%).

3. Equatorial Guinea adopted Portuguese as an official language in 2010 (after Spanish and French).

4. The Socialist Party (Partido Socialista) (PS) was founded in 1973 and is an affiliate of the Socialist International and the Progressive Alliance. It is a member of the European Socialist Party.

5. The Social Democrat Party (PSD) was founded in May 1974, under the name Popular Democratic Party (Partido Popular Democrático) (PPD). It is an affiliate of the Centrist Democrat International and member of the European People’s Party. For a number of years it adopted the initials PPD-PSD.

6. The CDS – Popular Party (CDS – Partido Popular) (CDS–PP) was founded in July 1974, under the name Party of the Social Democratic Centre (Partido do Centro Democrático Social) (CDS). It later changed its name to Popular Party (Partido Popular) (maintaining the initials CDS–PP). It is affiliated to the International Democrat Union and a member of the European People’s Party.

7. Council of Europe/Ericarts. http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/countries-profiles-cr.php.

8. See, by way of example, the Reading Promotion Programme launched in 1997 and aimed mainly at municipal libraries, which currently ‘has no overall budget of its own’ (in http://www.dglb.pt/sites/DGLB/Portugues/livro/promocaoLeitura).

9. Source: GEPAC/Ministry of Culture.

10. In 2013 there was a break in the series at source. For the purposes of this article two main changes were made: a different ordering of the domains and sub-domains previously treated in accordance with the ESSNet-Culture report (Bina et al. 2012); and the inclusion of three new domains – architecture, design and crafts. Despite this break in the series the comparison holds good, although some caution is called for, bearing in mind the main implication for the total values obtained, which is the increase resulting from the addition of these three domains. Together they represent no more than 3% in either of the two years in question.

11. Council of Europe/Ericarts. http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/statistics-funding.php.

12. European statistical information has no common definition of the concepts of facility and creative organisation and cultural and artistic production and dissemination.

13. A cultural map of the country is yet to be drawn (although there is a current project at the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (Statistics Portugal) to geotag cultural facilities).

14. The limited supply of cultural statistics on facilities and organizations, alongside the need to define public policies for the sector (Hasitschka, Tschmuck, and Zembylas 2005) demands uniform European statistics as far as typologies and tools of quantitative analysis are concerned. Only in this way will it be possible to ensure the reliability and comparability of results and measure the significance of the local activity of cultural facilities and organizations, as well as the consequences of that activity for strengthening social cohesion in European societies. For a comparative perspective on the specific case of organizations dedicated to architecture, with the ability to achieve reputational impact internationally, see Garcia et al. 2014.

15. This source is of limited value, particularly on account of the small size of its samples at the national level. It identifies major trends rather than providing rigorous numerical data.