The REED typology: understanding market-orientation and instrumental values in cultural policy across Europe

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article develops a typology of cultural policy in 30 European nation-states, based on the centrality of “neoliberal” market-based rationalities in subsidised cultural fields. This Resistant, Emergent, Established, and Dominant (REED) typology is based on two measures of marketisation, market-orientation and instrumental values, which are found in European “cultural policy assemblages” (networked systems of cultural policies, cultural policymaking bodies, cultural organisations, and cultural intermediaries). We show that all cultural policy assemblages in European nation-states are marketised to some degree, suggesting that Europe is “post-marketised”. Further, we find a heterogenous range of marketised practices, showing different instantiations of marketisation across nation-states. REED offers a new prism to conceptualise Europe’s subsidised cultural fields. Grounded in actual policy orientations, it overcomes limitations of earlier typologies and, crucially, it provides both a descriptive modelling of the contemporary European cultural field and an analytical methodology for comparing nation-states relative to marketisation.