Boards play a crucial role in ensuring that public and nonprofit publicly accountable and perform well. Following various failures and scandals they face increasing scrutiny, pressure and expectations. Serious questions have been raised about the ability of boards to govern effectively. Such concerns have stimulated a renewed interest in organizational governance, and a growing literature on the subject. Much of the current literature, however, has been criticised for underestimating the constraints and conflictions demands that boards face and recommending unrealistic solutions. There have been relatively few detailed empirical studies of what boards do in practice. This book fills that gap by bringing together analyses based upon some of the best recent empirical studies of public and non-profit governance in the UK. Using a new theoretical framework that highlights the paradoxical nature of governance the book throws light on the questions at the heart of recent debates about nonprofit boards: * Are boards publicly accountable or is there a democratic deficit? * Are boards able to exercise real power, or does management run the show? * What do boards do? Are they effective stewards of an organization's resources? Can they play a meaningful role in setting organisational strategy? * What effect are regulatory and other changes designed to improve board effectiveness having? The book will be essential reading for academics and students with an interest in the governance and management of public and nonprofit organisations. It will also be of value to policy makers and practitioners who wish to gain a deeper understanding of how boards work and what can be done to improve their performance.


Hardcover, 288 pages

Publisher: Routledge; 1st edition (December 2002)

ISBN: 0415258189

In 1999, The Pew Charitable Trusts launched an initiative to foster broader public appreciation of non-profit arts and culture and its role in American society. This initiative, "Optimizing America's Cultural Resources", was largely premised on the idea that the develoopment of supportive cultural policies depended on providing more and better information on arts and culture to policymakers.

In "Informing Cultural Policy", international cultural policy scholar and researcher J. Mark Schuster relates the findings of a study that toook him from North America to both Eastern and Western Europe. His taxonomy organizes the array of reserach and information models operating abroad into a logical framework for understanding how the myriad cultural agencies collect, analyze, and dis-seminate cultural policy data. Schuster discusses priavte- and public-sector models including reserach divisions of government cultural funding agencies, national statistics agencies, independent nonprofit research institutes, government-designated university-based research centers, private consulting firms, cultural "observatories", noninstitutional networks, research programs, and publications. For each case study undertaken, the author provides the Internet address, names and information for key contacts, and background documents consulted.

A collection of key works in the emerging field of cultural policy. The culture wars of the early 1990s obscured broader challenges facing America's cultural life in the next century. Artists, scholars, and policymakers from many disciplines and across the political spectrum have recognized the need to move beyond debates over government funding for the arts and humanities and toward an array of issues regarding culture's role in society. What should be the ideology underlying federal arts funding? What innovative ways can be found to improve the financial stability of arts organizations? How can new talent be encouraged? What are the differing impacts of private, governmental, and nonprofit support for the arts? What might be learned from a better understanding of international models of cultural policy? How will policy be affected by global transformations and the challenges of cyberspace? The Politics of Culture brings together the most important recent thinking on these questions and provides a compelling agenda for the future of American cultural policy.

Contributors include:
Carol Becker-Dean, Art Institute of Chicago
William Bennett-former Chair of NEH
Robert Brustein-American Repertory Theater, Cambridge, Mass.
Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean, NYU Tish School of the Arts
Milton C Cummings, Jr.-Johns Hopkins University
Paul DiMaggio-Princeton University
Michael Kammen-Cornell University
Samuel Lipman-late founder of New Criterion
Margaret J. Wyszomirski-Ohio State University

The Fourth Pillar provides a clear definition of culture, analyses its function within the emerging new planning paradigms, and proposes practical measures for the integration of a cultural perspective into the public sphere. The key conclusion of this work is that a whole-of-government cultural framework, operating in parallel with social, environmental and economic frameworks, is essential for the achievement of a sustainable and healthy society.



Cultural vitality is as essential to a healthy and sustainable society as social equity, environmental responsibility and economic viability. In order for public planning to be more effective, its methodology should include an integrated framework of cultural evaluation along similar lines to those being developed for social, environmental and economic impact assessment.

An overview and analysis of the politics of the arts in Britain since 1945, and especially since 1979. The changing nature of arts politics will be examined in the light of developments at the local, regional, national, and European Union levels. Case-studies will be used to illustrate how central government attempts to commodify arts policy have been undertaken, and what the consequences of these attempts have been.

Up-to-date directory of addresses and basic facts on cultural policy in Europe with contributions from 48 European Countries written in their original languages


- developed at the initiative of the Council of Europe (Strasbourg)
with additional support from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Bosch-Stiftung and the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S.


- prepared by members of the C.I.R.C.L.E. network and of ERICArts (European Research Institute for Comparative Cultural Policy and the Arts), other experts and an editing team at the Zentrum für Kulturforschung, Bonn


- English, German, Russian, French


Details and Order: http://www.arcultmedia.de

There is among many nations a growing awareness that the arts and culture have an important role to play in forming the image that nations hold of themselves and that they convey in the international arena. At the same time, increased pressure on the public purse, new trade environments, and the revolution in communications technology are forcing the reexamination of cultural policy objectives and strategies for achieving those objectives in countries throughout the world. This book, based on the research and expertise of practitioners and scholars in the field of cultural policy, provides a broadly based cross-cultural analysis of policy in two countries with very different cultural traditions. The authors move beyond cultural boundaries to define "art" and "culture," explore the role of cultural policies in a nation's cultural development, and evaluate policy effectiveness and relevance. Case studies of organizations in art, music, dance, and drama, in both the United States and Japan, examine the elements that contribute to effective arts management and policy-making. Arts managers, cultural policy-makers, researchers, practitioners, and educators will find this an excellent resource that provides valuable teaching materials in the field of cultural policy and facilitates cross-cultural learning about arts management.


Textbook Binding: 320 pages

Publisher: AltaMira Press (March 22, 1999)

Since the late 1980s privatization has been a feature in the field of culture in Europe. However, the cultural political debate on this issue has been hampered by speculations and prejudices. Many connect the term only with selling public institutions to private firms, and with governments passing on their responsibilities for the arts and culture to the market. Privatization and Culture is a pioneering venture, confronting fables with facts. It focuses on European experiences in the performing arts (theatre and opera), heritage (museums and built heritage) and cultural industries (film and television broadcasting and the book industry). The result is an up-to-date insight into privatization in the cultural sector and its consequences for cultural policy and development in Europe. The contributors are academics, practitioners and policy-makers, working in different cultural fields and in different countries. They offer a rich spectrum of concepts, experiences and perspectives.


Hardcover: 224 pages

Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (November 1999)

Academics and cultural workers who seek to define or delimit the notion of "cultures" are confronted by the enormity of their task. The contributors to this book trace how "culture" functions in debates about national integration and identity, socioeconomic development and underdevelopment, tradition and modernity. Each contributor seeks to denaturalize discourses of culture and cultural policy and, in turn, represent culture as a social discourse and a shared social practice.
Essays in this volume focus on Singapore, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, and the People's Republic of China as sites rife with discursive complexity. From small to large, young to old, former colony to former colonial power, these six examples do well to represent situated voices and cultural values meted out in a larger "global" space.


Hardcover: 404 pages

Routledge; 1 edition, October 1998


Further Information: http://www.uiowa.edu/~anthro/facpages/dominquez.htm

In a series of speeches and specially written chapters, Secretary of State Chris Smith spells out the benefits of the arts to both the social and economic health of the nation and demonstrates that the nurturing and celebration of creative talent must be at the very heart of the political agenda.

Originally published in 1995 and now available in paperback, an investigation into the relationship between British art and politics since 1940 which illustrates how attempts to secure a national identity are reflected in official and unofficial cultural policy and politics.


Paperback: 366 pages

Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd (12 May 1997)

Analyse économique de l'intervention publique dans la culture, dans une optique essentiellement théorique et transversale aux différents domaines culturels. Quelques exemples extraits de l'expérience française en la matière.

Cultural Economics and Cultural Policies offers a unique guide to the state of the art in cultural economics. First, it alerts scholars and students to the necessity for careful definition and measurement of the `cultural sector'. Second, it affords examples of how economic analysis can shed light on the motivation of creative and performing artists and of artistic enterprises. Third, CulturalEconomics and Cultural Policies widens the discussion of public policy towards the arts beyond general economic appraisal of arguments for government financial support. It does so by considering the government's role in defining property rights in artistic products and in regulating as well as financing the arts; examining how the criteria for government support are actually applied. Cultural Economics and Cultural Policies will be of interest to economists, students and policy makers.

The essays in this collection examine the history of government support for the arts. Whether the government should aid the arts is not addressed, but the book delves into topics ranging from artistic freedom to the decentralization of arts funding. The opening chapter, written by political scientist Milton C. Cummings Jr., presents a useful overview showing that recent controversies like those concerning Robert Mapplethorpe have historical precedent. Academics in a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, arts administration, and sociology, closely examine the genuine controversies within a broad spectrum of issues: the kinds of art education children should receive, how government can effectively support individual artists, the implications of providing more federal art funds to the states, and whether government should help achieve cultural democracy. Overall, a lucid presentation on a timely subject. Highly recommended for most libraries.

Gary D. Barber, SUNY at Fredonia Lib. (From Library Journal)