Abstract
The literature on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) tends to concentrate on the politics of arts funding or on micro-policy development through individual programs. This article aims to reveal the evolution of agency-wide macro-policy that was undertaken by NEA Chairs acting strategically as policy entrepreneurs in adapting policy goals in response to changes in the political and socio-economic context. This process of policy evolution gradually shaped and institutionalized a triple-bottom line for its organizational grantees – financial sustainability, artistic vitality, and recognized public value. Through legitimation processes in which the agency and the arts community cooperated, these values became field standards and best practices, a meta-policy that influenced all nonprofit arts organizations in the USA. Using policy documents, research reports, the memoirs of NEA chairmen, and journalistic coverage, this article investigates how cultural policy at the micro-, macro-, and meta-levels interacted to shape the triple-bottom line through the policy entrepreneurship of NEA chairs.
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