Why we need European cultural policies: the impact of EU ...

The main goal of this study is to find out how enlargement of the European Union influences ormight influence the development of cultural policies in transition countries. It seems logical to startwith some of the methodological problems in comparative research of cultural policies in Europe.In my view, these have contributed to the rather confusing assessment of culture and culturalpolicies in the European Union. These methodological challenges include the basic definitions ofculture and cultural policy as well as methodological choices.Policy analysisThe most appropriate methodology to approach this complex problem seems to be policy analysis.The chief goal of policy analysis is to understand what governments do, how they do it and whatthey achieve from it (Dye, 1976; Heidenheimer et al 1990; Petak, 2001).According to Heidenheimer there are four elements that are important for research (Heidenheimeret al ibid). The study of what governments do includes, primarily, an analysis of the scopeof government intervention. Secondly, says Heidenheimer, it is equally difficult to answer thequestion of why governments do certain things as it is important to ask this particular question.Answers often include historical reasons or particular features of certain states, which are verydifficult to analyze and explain in an objective way. The third element important for research ofpublic policies is to analyze the consequences of governments’ actions; this is usually the mostobvious one and is what counts for citizens/voters who will, in the end, decide if they will renewtheir government’s mandate. The fourth element is the decision of whether a certain policy areawill be regulated at all, in other words, an analysis of a government action or inaction in a specificpolicy field.This general framework is extremely pertinent to our topic – both for looking at specificgovernments’ choices at the national level and also for analyzing the policy-making process at theEU level. There is still much confusion about the approach to culture and it is not always clearwhy a certain decision has been taken or why certain policy areas have been included on theEU policy agenda while others have been left aside. It is in fact difficult to analyze any of the fourelements identified by Heidenheimer et al, if we apply this conceptual framework to the policydecisions about culture which are made by the European Union.Looking across bordersThe explanation by Heidenheimer et al as to why it is important to undertake comparative analysisof public policies is also particularly relevant for this study (Heidenheimer et al, ibid). The firstPolicy analysis17