Cultural policy as development policy: evidence from the United States

Cultural policies and cultural projects in the United States have been reframed to emphasize their economic benefits to cities. New alliances between arts advocates and place promoters are apparent at all levels, but are most prominent locally. These new alliances are facilitated by the changing interests of local officials and business people, who have come to believe there is economic value in the arts and of arts administrators, for whom attracting broader public support has become imperative. In some cities, entirely new organizational structures have sprung up to plan and implement projects that serve cultural and economic development advocates simultaneously. Such new institutions are most prominent in more economically disadvantaged cities.     

麦卡锡主义与美国中国学研究

美国重视对远东和太平洋地区的研究 ,尤其是对中国的研究是随着战后政治、经济、军事实力的大增而兴起的 ,美国对新中国的关注 ,目的是使美国的“中国学”研究 ,从单纯的学术探讨转而公开为美国全球战略、国家利益服务 ,这是战后美国研究中国的一个重要特点。本文探讨的是麦卡锡主义时期美国中国学研究状况。     

Infrastructure shortfall in the United Kingdom: the private finance initiative and government policy

Investment infrastructure is essential for long term economic growth, sustainable regional economic development, and the quality of urban life. Yet the available evidence suggests a significant shortfall in current UK government investment on infrastructure, and a long term pattern of low investment compared to other European countries. Given the pre-occupation of the Labour government with managing expenditures within the parameters set by the previous government, and the vulnerability of any government to financial markets' valuation of current spending plans in relation to interest rates and currency exchange rates, there is little likelihood of major new public spending on infrastructure in the near future. In this context, the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is very important for the government's plans to make up the shortfall. Although inherited from the previous Conservative government, the PFI has powerful advocates within the Labour government. The PFI is the formal mechanism by which government departments, agencies and instrumentalities, like the National Heath Service, utilise private sector investment capital and, in particular, pension fund assets, to revitalise public services. This paper sets out the institutional history of the PFI, beginning with the Thatcher government's Ryrie Rules, the efforts of the Major Conservative government to make it a viable operational practice, and the reasons why the new government supports PFI and has made significant moves to improve its effectiveness. Still we are sceptical about the future of the PFI. We show that the PFI has foundered upon fundamentally flawed design and the politicians' obsession with control of public sector spending. Notwithstanding recent `reforms', PFI may only succeed if the PFI process is decentralised and linked explicitly with regional development programmes. In any event, given the difficulties posed by the PFI process for private investors, perhaps different institutional responses to infrastructure shortfall should be contemplated, including the introduction of traded infrastructure bonds.     

Power,ideology and economy cultural policy in China

Abstract: Relying on the institutionalist framework, much literature conflating the structures of public action in the field of culture has been produced (e.g. papers concerning the targets of cultural administrations, levels of action, ways of financing cultural policies). In this context, cultural institutions have been considered as something given, but the question of their origins and shape has hardly ever been at stake. In other words, institutionalist theories make comparisons possible, but they deny any form of inner life to cultural administrations. It allows one to make static comparisons, but it fails to explain why national cultural administrations differ from each other. Hermeneutic philosophy mixed with historical institutionalism could then be used to refine traditional models. My point will be made with references to the French and American case-studies.     

Sub-national cultural policy--where the action is: Mapping state cultural policy in the United States

Abstract

This paper argues that cultural policy analysts should turn their analytical attention towards the cultural policies of sub-national levels of government. State level cultural policy has become an increasingly important locus of interest for those who are concerned with the health and stability of the arts, culture, and humanities in American life, and the same is undoubtedly true elsewhere. This rise in the importance of cultural policy at the state level has not been accompanied by a similarly evolving understanding of the cultural policy system that has developed at this sub-national level. Cultural policy at the level of an American state has been the sum total of the more or less independent, uncoordinated activities of a variety of state agencies and allied organizations and institutions. This paper lays out a number of hypotheses concerning what we might be likely to find in such an inquiry and reports some preliminary findings from a cultural policy mapping project in the State of Washington.     

论中国共产党的国际抗日统一战线思想

面对愈演愈烈的日本侵华战争态势,针对国内抗日力量的不足和内部斗争,中国共产党主张不仅要建立以国共两党合作为基础的抗日民族统一战线,而且要积极争取国际援助、支持,建立国际抗日统一战线.国际抗日统一战线于1936年7月提出,1937年7月全面抗战爆发后逐渐形成,1941年12月7日太平洋战争爆发后,中国共产党于12月9日发表《中国共产党为太平洋战争的宣言》,公开呼吁建立国际抗日统一战线.1942年1月《联合国家宣言》的签订标志着世界反法西斯统一战线的建立,也即国际抗日统一战线的正式建立,但在1945年国际抗日统一战线内部矛盾加大.抗战胜利后国共矛盾激化,1946年6月全面内战爆发和国际上冷战兴起,国际抗日统一战线结束.     

一部研究当代中国政党制度的力作--读《当代中国的多党合作制度》

中国共产党领导的多党合作制度,是在长期的革命、建设和改革的实践中逐步形成和发展起来的具有中国特色的社会主义政党制度.研究和分析这一政党制度的形成和发展过程,总结多党合作实践的经验教训,探讨其中的规律,对于进一步推进多党合作的制度化、规范化和程序化建设,发展社会主义民主政治,推进社会主义政治文明建设,有着十分重要的意义.最近,吴美华教授的新著《当代中国的多党合作制度》[1]正是多年研究这一课题的力作.该书作为中国人民大学马克思主义学院中共党史系承担的教育部"211工程"项目"当代社会主义理论与实践"的系列成果之一,运用马克思主义立场、观点和方法,全面而系统地阐述了当代中国的多党合作制度.具体来讲,该书具有以下几个特点.     

Cultural policy in the United Kingdom: Collapsing rationales and the end of a tradition 1

The aim of this article is to critically assess the content and rationale of the French 2003 law on private patronage and foundations. More specifically, it investigates the extent to which this law can truly encourage companies to become more involved in arts support. Before reviewing and explaining the major aspects of the reform and the advantages it is meant to bring to corporate donors, a short historical account is offered to demonstrate that even though the involvement of the private sector in the support of the arts has been on the agenda of various Ministers of Culture over the last forty years, the development of adequate and effective measures to encourage such an involvement has been difficult and erratic and, above all, has been met with little success. The third part of the article questions the relevance of a law largely based on tax reductions to support the arts in France and wonders whose interests it will really serve.     

Firing up craft capital: the renaissance of craft and craft policy in the United Kingdom

Crafts have recently been experiencing a renaissance. This revitalization sees craft increasingly recognised as a growing industrial sector with benefits linked to educational, cultural and economic development policy agendas. This paper engages with policy debates around the place of craft in the United Kingdom from 2010. Drawing on craft sector perspectives and UK government policy initiatives it situates the disciplines and practices of craft within their institutional support networks, organizational contexts and draws attention to the role of individuals in driving agendas. The paper focuses on the national facing crafts development organizations, the UK Crafts Council and the UK Heritage Crafts Association, alongside recent policy discussion emerging from the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Recognizing that the legacies of past practice often inform contemporary agendas, the paper explores how the advocacy of craft in the recent past has shaped the place and positioning of craft in contemporary UK politics.     

Cultural rights and citizenship in cultural policy: Taiwan and China

From the 1990s, academia has paid increasing attention to cultural rights and cultural citizenship. This paper reviews existing literature on the construction of cultural rights and cultural citizenship and argues that cultural citizenship expands the concept of ‘citizenship’, promotes citizens’ consciousness, and confirms the content of ‘cultural rights’. The concept of cultural citizenship provides a new perspective from which to examine the challenges of cultural inequality, taste differences, symbolic struggle in cultural participation, and consumption. Based on western theories, this paper discusses the development of cultural citizenship and cultural rights in cultural policy in Taiwan and China, and it finds the tension between control and autonomy and between the government and the civil society in the practice of cultural citizenship. In Taiwan, most cultural policies are developed and implemented by the government, and those affected by them often do not have the necessary critical awareness to judge or examine them. In China, the protection of cultural rights provides a new type of control rather than autonomy from the Chinese Government. In both Taiwan and China, it is important to empower civil society to balance the governments’ control over the practice of cultural citizenship.     

Italy's foreign policy toward China: missed opportunities and new chances

Abstract

This essay provides an account of the erratic and troubled history of the relations between Italy and the People's Republic of China since the 1950s. After reaching their highest point in the two years immediately following the Tiananmen events – when Italy, more than any other Western country, worked to break China's international isolation – they have considerably frozen for a long time. The reason has to be found not only in the crisis that, since 1992, has overcome the Italian political system, but even more so in the structural limits of Italy's economic foreign policy and in the lack of a coherent strategy aimed at promoting Italian goods in world markets that provide huge opportunities – opportunities mostly neglected by the political-economic Italian establishment. The Berlusconi government replaced this negligence with fear-mongering behavior and recurring and outspoken protectionist remarks of various centre-right leaders, who feared the potential damage caused by China's increased competitiveness (which represented, in their opinion, an unfair trade practice) to the national industry. Though too recent to say if it will bear fruit, Prodi has made a desperate attempt for Italy to make up lost ground by leading to China what has been emphatically defined ‘the greatest institutional and business mission ever organized by Italy’ just a few months after his comeback to Palazzo Chigi.     

Australia's diplomatic asylum initiative at the United Nations: comparing international law rhetoric with foreign policy practice

In 1974, Australia took the initiative to have an item on diplomatic asylum inscribed on the UN General Assembly's agenda for that year. Its original ambition was to procure an international treaty on the subject. This article traces the history of that initiative from its inception to the acknowledgement seven years later that it had come to nothing. It also investigates the impact that Australia's initiative at the UN had on its foreign policy practice in relation to diplomatic asylum through two administrations: the Whitlam government (5 December 1972–11 November 1975) and the Fraser government (11 November 1975–11 March 1983). It demonstrates that, while the initiative generated a great deal of bureaucratic work, it wrought no real change in Australia's practice on the ground.