Are polish theatres autonomous? Artistic institutions in a bureaucratic system of culture funding

Kamila Lewandowska

Policy Studies, 2018, vol. 39, issue 1, 1-18

Abstract: The culture funding systems based on the arm's length mechanism are generally believed to secure more autonomy of artistic institutions than ‘bureaucratic’ systems which directly involve politicians or public servants in the allocation of public funds. There is a wide range of academic literature that defend this approach. The aim of this paper is to readdress this view and show that it stems from typology-based preconceptions rather than real-life policy-making. To this end, the article analyses relations between public theatres and local funding bodies in Poland, where culture funding system is characterised by a bureaucratic decision-making. Mixed methods were applied using questionnaires and focus groups with public servants and theatre directors. The paper suggests that, although Polish local governments play a dominant role in the arts funding, their intervention in the area of culture has merely administrative nature and, in general, does not entail interference in the artistic activity.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01442872.2017.1376631 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cposxx:v:39:y:2018:i:1:p:1-18

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cpos20

DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2017.1376631

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Studies is currently edited by Toby James

More articles in Policy Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().