Cultural policies in the South of Europe after the global economic crisis: is there a Southern model within the framework of European convergence?

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, culture has become a valuable resource for European countries, particularly those with abundant cultural heritage, as is the case in Southern European countries such as Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. This is why cultural policy in these countries has experienced two decades of expansion and, to some extent, convergence with other European countries. Thus, can we still speak about a cultural policy model in the South of Europe? Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses, we show that these countries still have their own cultural policy model but that, after the global economic crisis in 2008, the trend towards the European convergence of this public policy has stopped.

Keywords:

• Cultural policy
• Southern Europe
• cultural heritage
• European convergence

Notes

1. Research on cultural policy has significantly developed over the past decade, both at the conceptual level – although without consolidating a single perspective that balances political-science focuses with other approaches closer to cultural studies (Gray 2010) – as well as at the methodological and empirical levels (Dubois 1999). The analysis of cultural policy in Spain has developed considerably (Rubio Arostegui 2003; Barbieri 2012; Villarroya 2012; Rius-Ulldemolins and Rubio 2013; Rubio Arostegui, Rius-Ulldemollins, and Martinez 2014; Rius-Ulldemolins, Flor Moreno, and Hernàndez i Martí 2017), especially in terms of its internal cultural diversity and the dynamics of urban policy; in Italy, cultural management and its efficiency is intensely debated (Fedeli and Santoni 2006; Slavich and Montanari 2009; Montalto 2010; Zan et al. 2012). Cultural policies in the other countries analysed (Greece and Portugal) have received less attention. Among the critical analyses published about Portugal, its institutional organisation, influence on urban development, and post-colonial ties, stand out (Balsas 2004; Fishman and Lizardo 2013; Garcia et al. 2016; Vargas, Sarmento, and Oliveira 2017). Finally, analyses of Greece focus on its limited development and centralised character, as well as its historical links to the Olympic Games (Konsola 1988, 1999; Zorba 2009).

2. This article does not focus on the processes of cooperation or convergence of cultural policy patterns in different European countries as it has been analysed by Sassatelli (Sassatelli 2002, 2007), but rather, we address the basic small and large-scale details of the convergence or divergence from the European reference models, such as the Central European Model or the Anglo-Saxon Model, in Southern European countries (Mulcahy 1998; Dubois 2016). The deeper aspects of ‘how to do things’ in cultural politics is an interesting subject; some specific aspects of it, such as relationships with cultural agencies, have been studied according to diverse models (Rius-Ulldemolins and Rubio 2013), but it would be impossible to approach this topic here in this article because of its complexity and the lack of current and complete comparative studies.

3. A more extensive comparison of Southern European countries, including countries in former Yugoslavia, or even Turkey or countries which have extensively developed their cultural policies – as seen in their Compendium reports or in articles published in international cultural policy journals (Shoup, Bonini Baraldi, and Zan 2014; Aksoy and Şeyben 2015) – would have been desirable. However, the inclusion of these countries, with their different historical and cultural trajectories and recent inclusion in the European area – or its current distancing in the case of Turkey (Boşnak 2016) – would have overcomplicated these comparisons and would have introduced excessive heterogeneity into this article, which concentrates on analysing the definition of certain common patterns that define a Southern European cultural policy model. It would also be interesting to include Eastern European countries in a future comparative analysis, which would start by using data from the Compendium and studies on these countries (Vos 2017). This objective is beyond the scope of this article, but without doubt, in the future it would be interesting to undertake further, more focussed, comparative research into the cases of these countries.

4. In the case of Portugal, the data come from the Ministry of Culture/General Secretariat and the Secretary of State for Culture/Strategic Administration, Cultural Planning and Evaluation and for cultural spending, from the General Account of the State. Regarding territorial administrations, our source was the National Institute of Statistics and the Survey on the Public Financing of Cultural, Creative, and Sporting Activities in the Municipalities (2013–2014).

5. In every case, the data and observations we provide were contrasted with the literature available in the national statistical institutes and in publications in specialised academic cultural policy journals such as the International Journal of Cultural Policy, Cultural Trends, the Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society City, or Culture and Society.