Cultural policy and evaluation of quality

Based on Danish experiences the article discusses the increasing role that the discourse of “quality” is playing in cultural policy. Throughout the 1990s, from the general cultural debate, this discourse has spread to more instrumental considerations and practices in the field of cultural policy. The article presents this process in a historical perspective and characterises the present tendency towards a technocratisation of the discourse of quality under the auspices of New Public Management and the general trend in modern state policy towards instrumentalising all societal resources in the global economic competition. Opposing this line of development, it is argued that “quality” could serve as a progressive, non‐instrumentalist discourse if it is defined in relation to a modernised understanding of the “rational core” of the cultural policy tradition of the Nordic countries. In this perspective, the article suggests a contextualisation of the concept of quality and possible ways of implementing the discourse in practical cultural policy.