CULTURAL POLICY IN EUROPEAN CITIES: An analysis from the cultural agenda of mayors Open Access

Culture policy is a rising issue in local governance. However, the character of this policy is not clear according to the classical division between developmental and redistributive local policies. A first reaction is that culture does not fit into either. But if we dig deeper, we can distinguish three different perspectives on the role of culture in city development following three conceptualisations of cities: (i) creative cities (culture as developmental policy), (ii) planning or educational city (welfare policy), and (iii) cultural scenes approach that stress cultural consumption (transversal policy). These conceptualisations are used by analysts as well as mayors, suggesting three hypotheses to be analysed using a cross-national survey of European mayors. The main results show the transversal character of cultural issues in mayors' agendas, as well as differences in handling cultural issues according the classical growth and welfare approaches to local policy analysis.

Culture has drawn the attention of some analysts of cities, suggesting that it constitutes a new driving factor in the coming post-industrial society. However, most analysis has concentrated on the urban economy, less on urban social structure, and less still on its socio-political analysis. This paper will develop an approach exploring how culture might generate a new local policy domain. This novelty comes from the emergence of a new local policy: cultural consumption; but above all because cultural issues often escape the classical growth-redistribution framework of urban policy analysis. From this perspective, culture – as cultural consumption – could appear as a transversal policy domain.

The main arguments about the nature of culture as a local policy domain are presented in section 1. Using a survey of European mayors, a cross-national analysis shows the variations in importance of cultural policy among them, as well as three factors that could explain it: the institutional capacities of municipalities regarding cultural policy, municipal size and local politics (ideology of governing party and influence of business groups and civic associations). These analyses are presented in sections 2 and 3. Section 4 presents the main conclusions.

The change from industrial to the emerging post-industrial society has shown the crucial importance of culture as a driving force of economic and societal transformations. Cities, as locations for the great changes from traditional to industrial societies, are also the best place to analyse the role of culture in the coming post-industrial society. In fact, cities are changing their typical character of places of production to places of consumption (Zukin 1995; Glaeser et al. 2000), in a new context where lifestyle, more than class, constitutes a force structuring social positions and relations, as well as political values and electoral competition around a new cultural cleavage (Clark and Hoffman-Martinot 1998; Achterberg 2006). Production relations and class politics are challenged by cultural consumption and a new political culture linked to lifestyle and cultural consumption. Parallel to this big change, the nature of cities as a place of production is also changing: from ‘industrial’ to ‘creative’ places or ‘entertainment’ cities (Clark et al. 2001; Clark 2003). The ‘new economy’ linked to creativity, innovation, information technology and tourism, implies a new scenario for cities where competition is more about the attraction of creative industries and new kinds of persons as cultural consumers: a rising ‘creative class’ and/or visitors (Judd and Fainstein 1999; Eisinger 2000; Florida 2002a; Scott 1997, 2004).

These changes engage cultural policies in the core of policy analysis, and introduce new challenges to the study of local policies and politics. In fact, the analysis of local policies has been enclosed within the growth-redistribution divide where culture and cultural issues do not seem to fit clearly. This divide, conceived as a dilemma for cities and local officials, has been widely articulated in the analysis of local policies and governance. Briefly, the socio-political dynamic of cities has been, analytically speaking, a struggle between ‘pro-growth machines’ and ‘progressive alliances’, where economic development and welfare service are the classic competing policies. Business groups versus unions and left parties competed in the traditional class cleavage on the right-left continuum; the main ideological criteria and political values were similarly aligned (Clark and Hoffman-Martinot 1998).

This ‘class politics’ dilemma is also present in literature about local cultural policies. From a historical point of view, three large phases concerning the conception of culture as a local – and national – policy could be identified. Before the 1960s, culture in cities was linked to the promotion of ‘high arts’ as a remote domain from economic development or ‘popular culture’. At the end of the 1960s and 1970s, at the beginning of the post-materialist cultural shift and the action of new urban movements around collective consumption, culture was integrated in municipal agendas in an effort to bring culture closer to the inhabitants and to promote more ‘popular’ cultural expressions by them and their new movements. Local governments ruled by leftist parties across Europe were the main actors in that change. In the 1990s, when a new economy linked to creativity, information technology and tourism was rising, culture was reconceived as an economic tool for city development (Bassett 1993; Bianchini 1993; Kong 2000). From this perspective, cities seem to confront a basic dilemma regarding the nature of culture as a local policy: an ‘instrumental approach’ where culture is a tool to promote economic development by using important cultural events and ‘high culture’, versus a ‘planning approach’ aimed towards promoting cultural services and events among local inhabitants (Bassett 1993; Lucchini 2002; García 2004; Hesmondhalgh and Pratt 2005; Nakagawa 2010).¹

A similar double-edged perspective is found in the literature on the role of culture in contemporary cities. The ‘creative city’ or ‘creative class’ theses stress the role of culture as an economic tool for local development. Here, the key focus is ‘cultural and/or creative industries’ and the employment generated by this economic sector. These are tools to situate cities in the new socio-economic and territorial structure of post-industrial global societies. The main objective is to generate or attract cultural and creative industries and the ‘creative people’ linked to them (Frith 1991; Landry and Bianchini 1995; Landry 2000; Dungey 2004; Scott 2007; Florida et al. 2008).

Instead, the ‘educational city’ focuses on educational and cultural services geared towards encouraging cultural life among their citizens. Here, the main objective is to promote equalitarian access to culture, leisure and education as one of the main components of citizenship, in addition to past redistributive welfare policies. Cultural or creative industries, public infrastructures and services, such as libraries, schools, theatres, museums and diverse cultural events and other services geared towards increasing the multi-cultural character of the local social structure, are emphasised. More than just economic development, communitarian integration and citizen participation are the objectives (Semm 2011).²

There are, however, quite mixed effects. The ‘instrumental approach’ seems to have an impact on the local economy, as well as on local social structure, residential patterns and opportunities of cultural consumption among inhabitants. Besides local growth, this strategy could generate a kind of ‘tourist bubble’ (Judd and Fainstein 1999), segregating spaces of cultural consumption between downtown and peripheral areas (Mullins et al. 1999) according to gentrification processes (Zukin 1987). This implies new intra-municipal inequalities among resident, as well as an increasing sector of manual and service working people around the maintenance of cities and their lifestyles in order to promote the new economy and creative activities (Scott 2009).

Some the services and infrastructures promoted by a ‘planning’ approach also seem critical as ‘cultural capital’ to promote economic development. A more vibrant cultural life around cultural amenities and unconventional lifestyles increases the attraction of the ‘creative class’, the neo-bohemians and visitors (Florida 2002b; Lloyd 2006; Markusen 2006). ‘Folk culture’, communitarian lifestyles, heritage, artisan products as well as a vibrant night-life supposes resources to improve inhabitants’ quality of life and to attract economic activity. The local authenticity of place is a resource to promote welfare among inhabitants, as well as a resource to increase the attractiveness of the city and promote urban growth (Silver et al. 2011; Zukin 2011). These mixed effects could imply that cultural issues have a more transversal character that the classical divide between growth-redistribution might indicate. In fact, local cultural policy normally includes issues coming from the growth, as well as the redistributive spaces of local policy combining instrumental and planning strategies. Municipalities across Europe have incorporated ‘extrinsically interests’ of culture regarding local economic development together with the classical ‘intrinsic interests’ of culture focused on diffusion and educational spaces and services (Négrier 2007).

Thus, the nature of cultural issues could demand a new vision or approach to cities as ‘places for cultural consumption’ where different kinds of people (creative or not, visitors or inhabitants, high and popular sectors) develop different kinds of substantive cultural consumption, different interests regarding cultural events, services or spaces in the city. Cultural projects and initiatives attract economic activity and/or promote access to culture, but above all they promote different opportunities for cultural consumption in cities. Beside local growth and redistribution, cultural consumption appears as a different perspective in order to analyse local cultural policy. As the ‘cultural scenes’ approach indicates, each amenity promotes different values which orient cultural consumption and lifestyles. From this point of view, cities, as clusters of distinct sets of amenities, offer multiple scenes for cultural consumption attracting different kinds of people (Clark 2003; Silver et al. 2010). Here cultural policy is conceptualised not only for its economic impact or for equalitarian access to it. The new question concerns the kind of cultural consumption encouraged by the city in terms of differentiation in content (bohemian, local authenticity, traditional, etc.) and this relationship with intrinsic and extrinsic interest of local cultural policy, or both.

This implies that the type and quality of cultural consumption, from the perspective of the citizen/consumer, is becoming a more central criterion to evaluate local socio-political and governance process regarding cultural policy. These challenge earlier criteria of economic growth or redistribution, not by direct confrontation, rather by suggesting that cultural consumption is either a new issue or one that does not neatly fit the past divisions. While some cultural initiatives might still be linked to these two classical policies, others lack a clear relationship with them. This distinctiveness of culture also joins with new values and citizens’ demands as regards lifestyles and cultural consumption which escape the classical ‘class politics’ (Clark and Hoffman-Martinot 1998; Achterberg 2006; Sharp 2005). This reconceptualisation provides a new approach for socio-political and local governance processes of local cultural policy, as contingent on the specific cultural issues. That is some cultural policies may still exhibit specific traits that link to characteristics of the classical framework (development-redistribution), such as a theatre targeted to disadvantaged citizens or the big Congress Bureau. However, the local cultural policy appears a transversal policy domain containing growth and redistribution issue and initiatives.

These three conceptualisations are summarised in Table 1. Clearly, these are analytical approaches to study local cultural policies. Within the same empirical city, one might still find all three as complementary and simultaneous elements of overall local cultural policy, with embattled advocates of each. Some often seek to append the new components to the past; others claim new ground. How? The ‘creative city’, advocates of economic development often hold, should promote a governance process similar to the classical pro-growth machine model where local public officials and business groups form a governing coalition around development initiatives. Instead, the ‘educational city’ should promote a classical progressive model where public officials and civic associations support welfare initiatives and against renewal process that promote spaces for new styles of cultural consumption oriented to creative sectors and/or tourists (Zukin 1987; Eisinger 2000; Ostrom 2002). By contrast the ‘cultural scenes’ approach implies a more contingent perspective where the character of the governance process depends on the issues under consideration by public officials and other local socio-political actors according to the patterns of cultural consumption they stress (and their publics). Furthermore, in this view, some local cultural policies could show traits from both the development and redistributive governance processes. The scenes approach extends the pluralism and issue-specific concepts to synthesise the developmental and redistributive by conceiving the city as a context where different actors support different cultural issues that compete for inclusion in the local cultural policy, in the cultural agenda of local governments, according their interests, as well as their pattern of cultural consumption and lifestyles.

From this perspective, opportunities for cultural consumption, as a public good, could attract the support of a majority of political actors and citizens (Clark 2003). More possibilities for leisure and cultural activities for citizens imply communitarian development, as well as socio-economic development. Building a public library or holding a large event means more services, as well as more employment. This is a trait common to local development as it is ‘in the (economic) interests of the city’ (Peterson 1981). However, this transversal or double-edged character should trigger the involvement of a more pluralist group of actors than classical pro-growth coalitions. Cultural consumption involves decisions about the use of local land, as well as the distribution of services to citizens that have no direct implication with it. For instance, cultural events, such as a pop concert, are held in different parts of the city, where historical heritage is already situated, involving in this case people who are not necessarily concerned with land use. Young people, recreational or leisure associations, the State Department of Culture or a lyric group do not necessarily have an ‘interest’ in land use, but they will be interested in the opportunities for cultural consumption promoted by local government. In a nutshell, cultural issues will mobilise many actors, like pro-growth policies, but coming from more diverse sectors including some who favour culture as welfare policy.

However, this should depend on the character of concrete cultural issues, according to their instrumental or planning character (Navarro 2012), as well as the importance of culture as local policy delimitated by upper levels of government. In fact, countries differ according the importance of different policies as the responsibility of local governments. This also holds for cultural policy. ‘Intergovernmental institutions’ also matter regarding cultural policy; policies depend on the degree of responsibility municipalities have about culture in different countries. This implies that the development of a ‘creative city’ or an ‘educational city’, and its effects, also depends on the institutional opportunities that local governments have to promote and manage cultural issues according to the institutional design of local government system in each country. The efforts to attract creative people or visitors or to improve cultural offerings could be moderated or facilitated by the institutional capacity of local government to manage it. More concretely, a higher level of local responsibility regarding culture, should promote the importance of culture, as well as its orientation towards a planning strategy, which frames provision of ‘cultural public services’ to citizens as a responsibility of local government.

These above conceptualisations and on-going debates imply: first, that cultural policy is not free from institutional factors and political orientations, the ideological profile of local actors and political process in the community; institutions and political conflict matter; and secondly, that the influence of these factors could vary according the issue under analysis due to the transversal character of cultural policy.

Culture has become a central concern on the agenda of local governments. To assess this phenomenon across European cities, we use the survey of the ‘Euromayor project’, where more than 2000 European mayors across 13 countries listed different issues as priorities in their agendas.³ Evidently, this only shows the orientation of the municipal agenda according to one of the most important local political actors, the importance they give to different issue regardless the real implementation or the importance of these orientations in municipal budgets. Thus, our analysis only shows one of the main elements of the political process that conform municipal policy not the complete picture. However, these data offer the possibility to compare this political input across very different cities in several European countries. In fact, among the issues included in the question used to know the agenda of mayors there are clear pro-growth and welfare issues (attract economic activities and wealthy people, or enhance services for the poor and marginal), as well as issues that the literature identifies as cultural issues (to improve the external image of the city, the aesthetics of the city, tolerance and diversity, rebuild city-centre, or to improve leisure and cultural offerings).

According to Magnier et al. (2006), these priorities show three main agendas on the classical growth-welfare continuum: pro-growth, care-taker and deprivation remover. And these agendas are linked to the traditional right-left distinction according to the party membership of mayors, to their typical main associates (business groups and civic associations), and conforming different local governing networks in the classical pro-growth vs. progressive distinction (Clark and Goetz 1994; Ferman 1996; Imbroscio 1997; Ramírez et al. 2008; Navarro 2009). However, a more detailed observation shows that while cultural issues are partially situated along these three types (in Table 2), they also vary according to the three perspectives on cultural policy in Table 1. They may comprise an ‘instrumental strategy’ around the improvement of the aesthetic and external image of the city linked to classical pro-growth issues (attraction of economic activities and population); a ‘planning strategy’ around the improvement of leisure and cultural offerings linked to classical welfare issues (housing, pollution or poverty), and a ‘communitarian strategy’ around local lifestyle and well-being.⁴

Table 2 shows that culture, for European mayors, can be placed in a cluster of issues linked to the classic growth-redistribution distinction. Nevertheless, we might point out that cultural policy could shift in meaning according to the general strategies and perspective of the local government; for instance, according to instrumental and planning strategies regarding cultural policy. From this perspective culture might be understood as a ‘transversal’ local policy domain challenging both the redistributive/developmental and instrumental/planning typologies. Culture items are neither the first priority in the local agenda in Table 2 nor are cultural items consistently linked to other priorities of local policy; many even reverse in sign (see Annex 1 for example). For mayors, cultural issues conforms a transversal domain across classical development and welfare policies.

What is the importance and character of the ‘cultural agenda’ among European mayors?, what kind of factors explain the presence of cultural issues in the agenda of mayors?, and, what kind of issues link to developmental/redistributive or instrumental/planning continuum? To analyse these questions, two more concrete indexes were constructed from the same agenda items:

• 1.

  The ‘integrated cultural strategy’ index: by adding the positive responses to all the cultural issues (bold in Table 2); thus, a higher integrated index shows more cultural items included in the mayor's agenda. The index has been standardised to (0,1) scale, where value 1 means all selected priorities by the mayor are cultural issues, and 0 that none are cultural issues.

• 2.

  The ‘oriented cultural strategy’ index: as the difference between an ‘instrumental strategy’ linked to a pro-growth agenda minus a more ‘planning strategy’ around local culture and services linked to a communitarian development. Higher values of this index show a more ‘instrumental strategy’ (external image, aesthetic, rebuilt city-centre), whereas a negative index shows a more intensive ‘planning strategy’ (cultural offerings, local lifestyle, diversity and tolerance). ‘Instrumental strategy’, ‘planning strategy’ and ‘oriented strategy’ indexes has been standardised in scale (0,1). Thus, values near 1 on the last index indicate more of a planning strategy while values near to 0 indicates more of an instrumental strategy.

Thus, the integrated index captures the importance of culture in the mayor's agenda, while the oriented index shows an instrumental vs. a planning strategy. The planning strategy is closer to the ‘creative city’ thesis oriented to local economic development, cultural industries and visitors (tourism), while the planning strategy suggests the ‘educational city’ thesis oriented to improve cultural life and services for inhabitants. Results show some balance between instrumental and planning strategies, although the first is slightly more important than the second (Table 3). These figures also show diversity among European mayors (high standard deviations relative to their means). What explains these differences?

Considering the literature on comparative urban governance, at least three factors could explain differences among mayors regarding the importance and orientation of culture in their agendas: (i) ‘intergovernmental institutions’, (ii) ‘local resources’, and (iii) ‘politics’ (Clark 1974; DiGaetano and Klemanski 1999; Sellers 2002; Pierre 2005; Savitch and Kantor 2005). The first refers to the functional role of local governments regarding cultural policy. Countries differ in the range of functional responsibilities assigned to local governments; this could structure the policies localities develop as well as preferences among their local authorities (Clingemayer and Feiock 2002; Navarro et al. 2008). A common proxy to capture these differences among countries is public expenditure, in our case, the share of public expenditures in ‘culture, sport and religious activities’, as a standard entry in national accounts. More concretely, using national aggregate data included in national reports, two indexes could be used. First, the degree of national centralisation of this kind of expenditure, as the share of local over total public expenditures on these issues. Second, a specialisation index, the importance (share) of expenditures in culture over total local government expenditures.

These indexes roughly map onto two broad models in Europe: (1) the decentralised North-Central model, where municipal intervention around cultural activities is a secondary function in comparison with classical welfare policies and (2) the Southern, more centralised model, where culture is a more important function at a local level.⁵ In Central and Northern Europe if a high percentage of total public expenditure on culture is concentrated in local governments, this means a low percentage of the total expenditure of local governments, since the expenditure on social services and education is more important. In the South, the more basic welfare functions are the competence of supra-municipal governments while municipalities have a high level of heritage resources (historical or archaeological sites, for instance). In this case, municipalities concentrate a low percentage of total public expenditure on culture, whereas culture concentrates a higher percentage of own local governments’ expenditure than among northern countries (Figure 1). In addition to the role of local government, cultural policy at the national level used to be more geared towards literature and scenic arts in the Northern model, giving a more important role to the private initiative, whereas the Southern model seems to be more oriented towards lyrics, cinema and cultural heritage, where public intervention is more important and oriented toward increasing the public offer of cultural infrastructures and services (Lucchini 2002). This implies that Southern countries should show a higher level on the ‘integrated index’ (more cultural issues in the mayor's agenda), and lower score on the ‘oriented index’ (a more intense planning strategy).

Following this typology, the percentage of expenditures on culture over total municipal expenditures will be taken as our index of the institutional factors affecting cultural strategies of cities (from the mayor's agenda). A higher level of expenditures, as a proxy of the importance of culture in the local government institutional agenda, should imply a higher ‘integrated strategy’, as well as a more planning-oriented strategy, due to the character of culture as a municipal service in the North/South typology.

The second factor from past work to explain cultural policy refers to the resources and capacities local communities have to support different kind of projects, their ‘market position’ (Kantor and Savitch 2002). Regarding cultural policy, cities differ in levels of ‘cultural capital or resources’ they accumulate, as heritage (tangible or intangible), cultural infrastructure, identity or intellectual capital. Normally, in Europe, ‘central cities’ concentrate more and more diverse cultural resources, which make it easier, for instance, to hold large and diverse cultural events. City size correlates with diversity and concentration of cultural amenities (Lorenzen and Vaarts 2009) promoting agglomeration affects that generate more opportunities to establish a bigger and specialised cultural market combining services oriented to inhabitants together with entertainment services and big cultural events to attract visitors, and cultural industries (Florida et al. 2011). In fact, according to the ESPON projects analysis, more inhabitants and urban concentration correlate with more ‘cultural capital’ across Europe (ESPON 2005). This could imply that mayors of the biggest cities introduce more cultural issues in their agendas to try to transform their places into more ‘creative cities’, implying more cultural issues as part of an overall more intense instrumental strategy. The size of the municipality, as the number of inhabitants, is used as an index to consider this idea in our analysis.⁶

The third factor from past work is the ideological orientation of local government and the configuration of power among local groups. The former, due to the classical association between ideological profiles across the left-right continuum, and policy preferences linked to them, welfare and development, respectively. The second, due to the classical relationship between business groups with pro-growth agendas, as well as voluntary and civic groups with a more progressive agenda. However, according to new political cultural theses, the new character of cultural issues is not clearly situated on that ideological continuum (Clark and Hoffman-Martinot 1998; Clark and Rempel 2001). Cultural issues cross this ideological continuum making it difficult to explain the presence and importance of culture as a policy in local government agendas from this perspective. This implies that an ‘integral strategy’ will not be explained by the ideological profile of mayors or the influence of different groups in local political society because this strategy show the transversal character of local cultural policy integration issue coming from planning (redistributive) and instrumental (development) strategies.

Related hypotheses: an ‘oriented strategy’ should be explained by these factors due to the preference of left mayors for the planning strategy, and their support from local civic groups to develop such an agenda. Right-wing parties and influential business groups should promote a more instrumental strategy. The presence of a left-wing party and the degree of perceived influence of voluntary groups against business are the index elaborated to test these hypotheses.⁷ Finally, the transversal character of cultural policy suggests that a stronger ‘cultural agenda’ of mayors should be associated with a new political culture profile, where many specific issues are salient, distinct, and weakly linked to general ideology due to looser party organisations and programs.

Basic descriptive analyses show ‘intergovernmental institutions’, ‘local resources’ and ‘local politics’ correlate with cultural orientations among mayors’ agendas (Table 4). More cultural issues are mentioned by mayors (the integrated index) in countries with a greater share of municipal expenditures on culture. This also implies a more intense planning strategy. The average values for these indexes show important differences among European mayors across countries: from the minimum of Sweden to the maximum of The Netherlands or Italy in the integral index; and from the minimum of Portugal and Spain to the maximum in Poland and Hungary in the oriented cultural index. That is to say, institutional factors related to the role of local governments in culture policy matters: countries explain around 8% of variance in the presence of cultural issues in mayor's agenda, as well as in their orientation (according to the Eta2 index in Table 4). This suggests that while national governments establish responsibilities and may provide fiscal support for local cultural policy, so do some localities have different preferences than their neighbours. Case studies, such as by Saez and Saez (2012) on the Grenoble region and Le Galès and Vion (1998) on Rennes, as well as analyses across Spanish municipalities (Navarro 2012), also show these differences.

What kind of factors explain these differences across municipalities? According to the correlations in Table 4, we see that municipal size, as proxy of ‘cultural capital’ of cities, the ideological orientation of mayor's party (according to the classical left-right continuum), and the degree of influence of business and voluntary groups perceived by mayors, also matter⁸ : more urban centrality (city size) and influential businessmen imply a more instrumental strategy (correlations = 0.051 and 0.098), whereas left parties seem to stress the planning strategy (correlation = − 0.138). Conversely, these ‘local factors’ are less associated with the integral strategy index: this appears as a strategy spread among European cities associated with country differences in importance of culture as a municipal responsibility.

To assess the relative impact of these factors, a regression analysis was completed. It shows that the more the institutional responsibility for culture is in municipalities, the stronger is the presence of cultural issues in the mayor's agenda (the ‘integrated strategy’). No other variables are significant. But for the second dependent variable, the oriented strategy, all three factors are significant. A high score on this oriented strategy denotes more instrumental-oriented cultural policies, and as hypothesised, it increases with municipal size, the presence of a non left-wing party, and business influence. Conversely, mayors with cultural policies that are more planning oriented (i.e., they score low on the oriented strategy) are in cities with influential left parties and voluntary associations. Finally, cities where the national institutional responsibility for culture is stronger have more instrumental-oriented cultural polices, and less emphasis on the planning strategy (Table 5).

Of course, other variables could also affect the importance of culture – and different cultural issues – in mayors’ agendas, such as patterns of cultural consumption among local inhabitants, the presence and role of cultural associations and artists, and other factors salient for cultural policy which may be less linked to other local issues. Indeed the two regressions explain only 2 and 4% of the variance in local cultural policies, which is statistically significant, but strong enough that one might offer this as robust support for the interpretation that cultural policies are transversal to the classic processes of left-right party politics, business and civic engagement in European cities. That is, cultural agenda of mayors are often transversal to the classic drivers of city politics in much past and current discussion. Instead, differences appear according to the importance of instrumental or planning issue in these agendas.

We offer four main contributions or ideas to future work on cultural policy and general urban politics. First, ‘cultural issues’ have a clear and important appeal for European local authorities. These are present in at least a quarter of the agendas of European mayors, less than ‘pure’ development issues (attract economic activities), but more than the classical redistributive policies (i.e., social exclusion and poverty). Thus, culture serves as a relevant tool for governing European cities from the perspectives of their political elites.

Second, we find that culture, as local policy, is often a ‘transversal tool’, ambivalent from the classical developmental-redistribution framework. Some ‘cultural issues’ could surely be integrated into both of the classical poles, such as development officials judging and funding cultural activities solely for their impact on population growth, or some municipally-owned cinemas in French communist cities that favour egalitarian films. But despite this strong past, shared by many local officials and analysts, it is an empirical question as to how well new cultural policies fit into these ‘old bottles for new wine’. Cultural policy is emerging across European cities as at least a partially distinct policy domain within local politics because include issue and initiatives coming from developmental, and well as redistributive policy domains. The three findings supporting this point are: first, cultural issues are situated across these domains according to our multidimensional analysis; second, the 2 and 4% of variance explained by all variables in our regression models of cultural policy, other factors than ideology or local power configuration need to be included to improve our knowledge about it; and third, the finding that the importance of cultural issues on the mayors’ agenda (the ‘integrated strategy’) is only explained by the national/local ratio of cultural spending, i.e., largely the institutional capacities of municipalities regarding this policy in the context of intergovernmental institutional frame. Business leadership, left party dominance, and civic group activity were all insignificant in affecting the magnitude of cultural issue in the mayors’ agenda.

Third, nevertheless, some cultural issues can still be clearly linked to one of these poles. Local authorities clearly differ in the importance they give to instrumental or planning ‘uses’ of culture as a tool for governing their cities. And these differences are partially explained by the classical factors of ‘class politics’: the ideological profile of the party governing the city and community actors supporting it. This implies that the governance dynamics of some cultural policies vary according more general strategies developed by cities. The ‘creative city’ strategy is more likely to emerge as a cultural policy from a pro-growth governing coalition, whereas an ‘educational city’ strategy is more likely to find support from a progressive governing coalition. This confirms previous case studies about downtown development process. Nevertheless, the transversal character of cultural policy, as shown by our ‘integrated strategy index’, makes it more amenable than many other issues to finding support among governing coalitions involving all sorts of participants, from pro-growth business groups to redistributive and other civic associations. Indeed some support for cultural consumption, sports, and other less ‘partisan’ issues may come from political leaders who find it easier to form a governing coalition featuring such issues. Especially if local citizens seem to be increasing support for them. However, results suggest that the transversal character of cultural policies does not imply the absence of political conflict according classical political orientations and interests: the support depends on the character of specific issues or initiatives stressed in the local agenda.

Fourth, intergovernmental institutions also matters. The importance of culture as a municipal responsibility implies the inclusion of more cultural issues on the local agenda, as we find. However, this responsibility may imply a stronger orientation towards a planning strategy and not only an option to improve local development and quality of life, but an obligation to extend cultural services to all inhabitants. Yet our findings show that this institutional structure provides modest constraints on local policies, as measured here. Most of the few studies to date of cultural policy have been case studies of individual cities, where some factors seem to have loomed very large in constraining options. Or in other studies, local policies seem to emerge without extra-local institutional constraints. We look forward to future work on cultural polices that can add more subtlety to these specific findings.

Of course, these results are not conclusive, and they focus on the agenda of one of the main actors in local politics, other analysis using other evidences could confirm – or not – these findings. However, this is a very new area for urban politics scholarship; and mayors are ahead of most scholars in their attention to culture. And cross-national urban research on culture consumption as a local policy domain is minimal to date. More and more specific variables should be included in cross-national comparisons (a better measurement of cultural resources, more specific for cultural issues, a better analysis of institutional design of cultural policy at national and municipal levels, data on municipal budgets more than aggregate data at the national level) and more cases and issues ought to be used in comparative case studies. More analysis is needed concerning the local cultural policy domain to permit more conclusive analysis of this emerging policy domain, its character and surrounding political logic. However, the analysis has shown that ‘cultural policy’ is not simply ‘non-ideological’, that the institutional design of local governments, their responsibilities, local authorities and community actors play a significant role about including cultural issues in the local agenda, as well as the character of the cultural policy adopted. There is a politics of local cultural policy, the cultural markets and services it promotes.

This article has been developed with the support of the National Research Framework, Government of Spain (the Cultural Dynamics of Cities project, grant CSO2008-04288), as well as the Cultural Policy Centre at the University of Chicago, and Urban Innovation Analysis.

Clemente J. Navarro is Professor of Sociology, and head of the Centre for Local Political Sociology and Policies, Pablo de Olavide University (Spain). His research focuses on urban political sociology. He is currently coordinating the Cultural Dynamic of Cities Project, Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation (FAUI) Project in Latin America, and the Local Government Observatory (Regional Government of Andalusia). He also has participated in the Political Leadership in European Cities Project. He has published in scientific journals as Analise Sociale, Revista Internacional de Sociología, Sociologia Ruralis, Local Government Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Social Forces

Terry N. Clark is Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He holds MA and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, and has taught at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the Sorbonne, University of Florence, and UCLA. He has worked at the Brookings Institution, The Urban Institute, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and US Conference of Mayors. His books include Citizen Politics in Post-Industrial Society, City Money, The New Political Culture, and Urban Innovations. Since 1982 he has been Coordinator of the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation (FAUI) Project, which includes a data base of over 10,000 municipalities in up to 35 countries.