The Land of (Almost) No Central Government Arts Spending? Cultural Policy, Protestant Denominations, and the Cultural Policy Singularity of Unites States of America

Abstract

Cultural policy in USA has usually been considered an exception at the international level, not only because it constitutes a unique model due to its liberal orientation and its lack of central coordination, but also because it stands out for the limitations it places on federal action. The explanation for this has traditionally focused on external factors such as the rejection of totalitarianism or the strength of the private cultural market. However, this emphasis on factors external to the cultural system is exaggerated and above all, underestimates internal factors of a religious nature. For this reason, we propose that one of the explanatory factors for this singularity is Protestantism in its most fundamentalist variants, which promotes an anti-intellectual and puritanical political culture. Consequently, a part of the population and especially the political elite linked to the Christian right has limited the consolidation and empowerment of cultural policy since the 1960s.