Cultural Policy in France Since 1959: Arm's Lenght, Or
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Cultural Policy in France Since 1959: arm’s lenght, or ’up close and personal?’ – by David Looseley © David Looseley & Nordisk Kultur Institut 2001. Publikationen indgår i forskningsprojektet ”Nordisk Kulturpolitik under Forandring.” Alle rettigheder forbeholdes. Mekanisk, fotografisk eller anden gengivelse af eller kopiering af teksten eller dele deraf er kun tilladt i overensstemmelse med overenskomst mellem Undervisningsministeriet og Copy-Dan. Enhver anden udnyttelse uden skriftligt samtykke fra forfatteren/forlaget er forbudt ifølge dansk lov om ophavsret. Nordisk Kultur Institut | Amalievej 15 | DK-1875 Frederiksberg C Tlf. +45 33 21 36 53 | [email protected] | www.nordiskkulturinstitut.dk 1. Preface Before I begin, I would like to clarify my approach to the subject of French cultural policy. I am not French, nor do I work in cultural administration in any form. I am neither political scientist nor sociologist. What I am is an academic working in the area of French studies, the main object of which is of course France itself. As such, I generally adopt a cultural-historical perspective in my research field, which I define as the contemporary history of French cultural policies, practices and institutions. What my perspective brings to the study of cultural policy, therefore, is a concern not just with administrative and distributive structures but with the importance the arts have been accorded in France for several hundred years. In his paper for this Tribunal, Kevin Mulcahy evokes the French state’s ‘strong sense of cultural mission’ (Tribunal Reader, 1999, 255), while a French writer on the subject, Jean-Michel Djian, starts from the fearlessly unequivocal view that ‘cultural policy is a French invention’ (Djian, 1996, 11). Given this importance, my research particularly emphasizes discourses and debates, how central government and other interested parties have constructed and argued about culture’s place in the national community. In this paper, I want to address these questions of discourse and debate by paying particular attention, in keeping with the Tribunal’s concerns, to the absence of the arm’s length principle in France, using this absence as a guide through the history of the Ministry of Culture since its creation in 1959. However, I also want to argue, throughout the paper but in the second part especially, that this absence needs to be qualified, at least to a degree. 2. The absence of the arm’s length principle In France, that ‘strong sense of cultural mission’ has traditionally taken the form of direct state intervention. No form of independent or quasi-independent agency exists comparable to the Arts Councils of the United Kingdom for example. And even after more than a decade of decentralization, (1) central government still intervenes energetically in the arts, and the Minister of Culture, currently Catherine Trautmann, still wields a good deal of power, with a budget for this David Looseley – Cultural Policy in France Since 1959 2 year of some 15.6 billion francs (around £1.5 billion, or 15 billion Danish Kroner). (2) Throughout the Ministry’s forty-year history, this power has been intensified by two ministers in particular, André Malraux and Jack Lang, each of whom ran the Ministry for approximately a decade. The main reason for the prominence of the state is the tradition of centralism dating back to the Revolution of 1789 and the ancien régime. Under the monarchy, kings were patrons of the arts for the sake of royal prestige. But after 1789, the revolutionary government seized the works of art and heritage formerly owned by Church and Crown and consequently found itself faced with the problem of what to do with them. It opted to preserve and open access to them, as important means of establishing a unified nation of citizens. To achieve this, an administrative infrastructure was built up throughout the 19th century which was to form the core of today’s Ministry of Culture. The activity that infrastructure was concerned with was defined narrowly, as the fine arts. During the Third Republic (1870-1940), the state saw its job as mainly to preserve France’s heritage in the fine-arts and provide specialist training in them. Where new works were concerned--state commissions for example--it was content to avoid extremes and be guided by the appropriate Academies and the High Council for Fine Arts created in 1875 (Mesnard, 1990, 51). This was because the production and consumption of new works of art, in the here and now, were seen as essentially private activities, in which state intervention was undesirable. This was, then, an arm’s length philosophy of sorts, embedded in the liberal ideology of republicanism. The disadvantage with it, at least in the view of some, was that liberalism simply meant neglect: neglect of the contemporary arts (particularly in their more challenging forms, which were often sacrificed to academicism), and neglect of the entire problematic of cultural inequality. When De Gaulle came to power in 1958, establishing the Fifth Republic of today, two important things changed. First, a new constitution reduced the powers of Parliament and increased those of government and President. Second, in 1959 De Gaulle set up a full government department for the arts, under one of France’s most famous novelists and intellectuals, André Malraux. What these changes meant for the cultural sector was a new age of central-government voluntarism. Two new duties of the state were added to the original ones of preservation and training: encouragement to contemporary ‘creation’, the production and dissemination of new works; and democratization, putting an end to cultural inequalities by taking the arts to everyone. This basic trilogy--preservation (and training), creation, democratization--was the cornerstone of what became known under Malraux as the state’s ‘cultural action’. And it remains fundamental to the Ministry to this day, albeit in somewhat different form. Since Malraux’s departure in 1969, there have been four Presidents and thirteen Culture Ministers; but the Malraux trilogy has afforded a basic continuity. The one minister who, for a while, looked set to revolutionize it was the Socialist Jack Lang (1981-6; 1988-93), under President Mitterrand. But retrospectively, Lang can be seen more as Malraux’s heir, initiating a second decade of vigorous intervention (Looseley, 1995). What are the precise features of this interventionism? When in 1988 the Council of Europe adopted France as the first case study in its European evaluation programme, it was prompted to comment: ‘It has been said that the French system is, ultimately, a "cultural monarchy". This means that after gathering their information, where and how they wish, Ministers, whoever they might be, define their options and take their decisions in sovereign fashion, in a way according to the principles of "enlightened despotism"’ (Wangermée and Gournay, 1988, 41). First, as the report points out, Parliament makes relatively little substantive impact on cultural policy. At the annual budget Nordic Cultural Institute | All rights reserved Nordisk Kultur Institut | Amalievej 15 | DK-1875 Frederiksberg C Tlf.: +45 33 21 36 53 | [email protected] | www.nordiskkulturinstitut.dk David Looseley – Cultural Policy in France Since 1959 3 debate, for example, its interventions are largely a matter of form, though it does exert considerably more influence on government bills, by means of amendments. Second, the Minister is not theoretically constrained by any outside body. Not only is there no equivalent of the Arts Council but, as the report again outlines with a hint of astonishment (pp.31-2 and p.51), there is no overarching consultative structure representative of the arts world either (though the Social and Economic Council is sometimes consulted on cultural matters). This assessment needs to be softened somewhat, as there is in reality a network of mostly sectoral counterweights to central power. When it comes to artistic choices, for example, as with acquisitions in the visual arts or distribution of aid to new films, the Ministry consults specialist commissions, councils or other types of body whose members have expertise in the appropriate field, though the balance between state experts and others varies from body to body. A growing number of permanent councils with specific consultative remits has also been set up, such as the High Council for the French Language, The High Council for Dance, the National Council for Scientific, Technical and Industrial Culture, and so on. (3) Furthermore, since 1947 France’s economic development has been organized on a system of five-year ‘Plans’, drawn up by independent commissions and in which, from the early 1960s, culture has been included in one form or another. Some of these Plans, most notably the Sixth (1971-5), have had a significant impact on public policy as we shall later, though it must be said that their influence has weakened since the late 1960s. What ministers can also do--though it is up to them--is set up ad hoc commissions on particular topics, some of whose members are drawn from civil society. On coming to office, Lang immediately commissioned a large number of reports: on cinema, books, the heritage, regional cultures, and so on. The Centrist Minister Philippe Douste- Blazy (1995-97) set up a major commission under Jacques Rigaud on the whole future of cultural policy; and Catherine Trautmann has recently received substantial advice from a commission on pop music (les musiques actuelles). But such reports can also be ignored, and quite often are. Two other factors have added to this personalization of power. One is the growing trend for Presidents to involve themselves in culture, notably by initiating major building projects. This has sometimes led to a complicity between President and Culture Minister, whose combined efforts can work against the restraining influence of Ministers of Finances or even Prime Ministers.