Ideological background of empirical ignorance

Abstract

The increasing need by politicians, in the second half of the last century, for evidence as a basis for decision making has led to the emergence of policy analysis as a new discipline. Since then the use of policy analysis has been shifting from core state sectors to others, including cultural policies. Policy analysis is becoming an instrument in making cultural policy an effective activity. However, there are many obstacles to the development of new agendas, strategies and mechanisms for research in, of and for cultural policy. This article concentrates on those impediments to cultural policy research that are connected to the ideological dimension of cultural policy. They are reflected in the following points: (1) governments too often deal uncritically with the arts as a domain of national interest; (2) contradicting the notion of public policy, cultural policy is conceived as a policy for culture as an autonomous field; (3) due to a strong functional differentiation the cultural sector has restructured itself as a highly specialized (sub)sector of society where autopoesis makes any outside observation a rather futile, even noxious, intervention; (4) the cultural administration favours complex administrative procedure and audits as principles of social organization and control; and (5) the mechanism of collective peer review in the allocation of public funds can very easily be misused as an alibi for cultural indifference of the politicians. These five points result, it is argued, in passive cultural policy and poor cultural policy research. In order to demystify cultural policy, more facts, figures and arguments should be brought into the cultural policy making. Mediation between internally and externally heterogeneous groups of researchers, policy makers and cultural insiders is needed, a kind of brokerage agency that could bridge this gap and actuate the process of de-differentiation between culture and society. The thesis of this article will be illustrated by examples from the present situation in Slovenia.