The "French Model" and its "Crisis": Ambitions, Ambiguities and Challenges of a Cultural Policy

Abstract

French cultural policy is often regarded as a model. However, in France, the crisis of national cultural policy has been endlessly discussed since the 1980s. This disillusionment is partly due to overestimation of the model’s consistency from the outset. This paper looks at the foundations of French cultural policy, showing that the present difficulties stem from the model’s foundational ambiguities and contradictions. We thus offer a critical view of the legacy of a policy that has been vigorously pursued over the last fifty years and analyse the difficulties it currently faces and their roots. The paper concludes with proposals for new ways of approaching these issues.

Keywords

• cultural policy, cultural field, French model, cultural democratisation, centralism, State, France