Credible Cultural Incentives for Challenged Neighborhoods: Cultural Network Governance in the Netherlands

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical discussion of deliberative governance and credibility and relates it to empirical work on cultural incentives and cultural planning for challenged neighborhoods in the Netherlands. I will argue that deliberative governance theory promises that an increase of the deliberative quality of interactions between governmental and non-governmental actors, experts included, will lead to more credible and thus democratic decision making for the collective. More credible decisions will be the outcome, as it is in deliberations that participants enact the legitimacy and authority of other participants and their arguments. I will draw on an empirical example of network governance on cultural planning to demonstrate how credibility is established in deliberations. Members of this network are governmental actors, housing corporations, artists, schools and citizens of challenged neighborhoods. They collaboratively investigate how and why cultural planning, and the stimulation of cultural activities in challenged neighborhoods is or is not successful to regenerate the neighborhood. In their collaborative inquiry participants negotiate what credible cultural planning for these neighborhoods is.