International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2003 VOL. 9(2), pp.

127–131

CULTURAL POLICY IN THE OLD EUROPE:

FRANCE AND GERMANY
Jeremy Ahearne*
Department of French Studies, University of Warwick, UK

THERE ARE many variables in terms of which we can compare and contrast national cultural
policy models. One such variable is the degree to which policy-making power is centralised or
decentralised. If we were to imagine a distribution of models along an axis moving from a high
degree of centralised power to a high degree of decentralised power, it is clear that the
traditional cultural policy frameworks of France and the Federal Republic of Germany would
be positioned at opposite ends of the resulting spectrum. The development of cultural policy
in France has been driven since 1959 by the first national ministry for cultural affairs to have
been founded in the Western democratic world (Jack Lang would protect his newly increased
culture budget in the 1980s from the Socialists’ programme of decentralisation through
recourse to various modes of “deconcentration” (see Looseley, 1995: 114–116)). This history
of centralised intervention in (and indeed production of) a national culture can be traced
further back past the French Revolution to the absolutist monarchy, particularly if we
understand cultural policy in a broad sense to include education and media regulation.1 In the
Federal Republic of Germany, by contrast, cultural policy in this broad sense has, since the end
of the Second World War, been almost exclusively a matter for regional states (the Länder) and
municipal councils. As is well known, this framework evolved partly as a prophylactic response
of the Allied occupying forces and the post-war German political class to the centralised “total”
cultural policy of the Nazis, and partly as a return to the historically constituted distinct political
identity of the regional states. The ensuing “cultural sovereignty of the Länder” has been fiercely
guarded—although paradoxically this basic principle is founded on the significance of
omission: in so far as the Basic Law does not ascribe responsibility for cultural matters to federal
government, authority for cultural policy remains with the Länder.2
The contrastive operation performed above constitutes a kind of topos for cultural policy
studies. The lines of opposition have, however, become less clear-cut over recent years. Despite
the initial efforts of the Ministry for Cultural Affairs in France to sideline local cultural policy

*E-mail: j.n.ahearne@warwick.ac.uk

ISSN 1028-6632 print/ISSN 1477-2833 online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1028663032000119189
128 JEREMY AHEARNE

initiatives, such initiatives—often directly emulating national programmes—have become an

increasingly important dimension of cultural provision in France.3 By 1993, the central State
was responsible for 49.7% of public expenditure on culture (with 19.8% coming from the
budget of the Ministry of Culture itself), while 50.3% of that funding came from the different
tiers of local government.4 At the same time that central State has been looking to redefine its
action in terms of a greater deconcentration towards regional level, thereby transferring
responsibility for the concrete implementation of policy.5 The result of such processes has been
what one commentator has called an increasing “multipolarity” of the cultural policy field in
France (Rigaud, 1996: 26). Meanwhile, the SPD–Green coalition that came to power in
Germany in 1998 set up for the first time in the Republic’s history what amounted to a federal
Ministry for Culture. Burns and van der Will, in the article they have written for this issue of
the journal, note how this move “immediately drew opposition from the Länder, from within
all the political parties and not least from the cultural pages of the broadsheets”. It is striking
that, four years later, at a federal level at least, this Ministry appears to have become an object
of relative political consensus. In a 2002 issue of Kulturpolitische Mitteilungen, the cultural
spokesmen of the political parties represented in the federal parliament were asked to review the
first four years of federal cultural policy. While there was considerable disagreement as to the
contents of that policy, its existence as such was not questioned (Nida-Rümelin et al., 2002).
Certainly, the division of powers between federal authorities and Länder (as well as municipal
councils) remains an issue. Nevertheless, it seems to be increasingly recognised that certain tasks
are best carried out at a federal level (the representation of German cultural interests within
European and international negotiations; the identification and protection of nationally
significant heritage; the provision and adjustment of a legal framework that aids cultural
development; support for the new capital city Berlin; film policy; etc.).
In terms of a comparative framework based on degrees of centralisation and decentralisation,
therefore, the contrast between France and Germany retains its structural significance, but has
become more complex as a result of what we might call a chiastic convergence (the most
centralised pole admitting elements of decentralisation, and the most decentralised pole
admitting elements of centralisation). However, if we change the variable producing our
comparison, a different distribution will emerge. If we imagine an ascending axis measuring
nations’ total public expenditure per capita on culture, it is clear that France and Germany will
both figure in close proximity towards the top of that axis. And the most significant contrast in
this perspective, at least in geopolitical terms, would be with the United States, where the
intervention of public authorities in cultural affairs is vastly overshadowed by the operation of
private foundations and, especially, the market.6
This contrast is not purely academic, and lies behind the emergence of new forms of strategic
alliance and conflict within the international cultural policy field. France’s pioneering
commitment to the notion of the “cultural exception” is well known. This has constituted the
heart of a negotiating strategy in successive world trade talks, through which it has been argued
that cultural goods and services cannot be considered in the same way as other commercial
goods and services, and that they should therefore be treated as exceptions to the laws of
international free trade.7 David Looseley notes in his article for this issue of the journal that the
term “cultural exception” has recently come to be seen as somewhat too inward-looking and
negatively constructed, and has been replaced as a negotiating tool by the term “cultural
diversity”. It is certainly the case that the latter collocation has proved to have greater mobilising
force in international terms. The International Network on Cultural Policy, a grouping of some
 CULTURAL POLICY IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 129

20 countries including France, considered in 2002 the first draft of an “International Instrument
on Cultural Diversity”.8 The purpose of this legal charter, that the group is looking to entrust
to UNESCO, is to lay down, as the French Minister of Culture put it, a set of “positive norms”
for the protection of the cultural domain (Aillagon, 2003).
Such issues figured very prominently in the meeting between the French and German
Ministers of Culture (Christina Weiss and Jean-Jacques Aillagon) in February 2003. The
resulting joint statement amounts effectively to the strategic assertion of a cultural policy
alliance:

There are currently negotiations taking place, in the context of the World Trade Organisation and the GATS
agreement, over further liberalisation measures in the area of service provisions. These also affect the programmes
of many cultural institutions, as well as film and radio. The [German] Minister of State [for Culture and Media]
and the French Minister of Culture agreed that the historically developed cultural landscape of Europe must not
be endangered by the proposed liberalisation measures. They explained that:
“The freedom of action in matters of cultural and media policy of the European Union and its member States
must also be preserved for the future. After the conclusion of the current round of GATS negotiations, it must
remain possible to preserve proven instruments such as the measures for the promotion and diffusion of films
produced in the EU and member States, public support of cultural institutions, or the financing through licence
fees of public broadcasting institutions; it must also remain possible in the future to take responsibility for
adjusting such instruments to new needs.”
They called upon the EU commission to check that the new offers of liberalisation would not have harmful
effects for culture [German: die Kulturverträglichkeit aller Liberalisierungsangebote zu prüfen; French: que toutes les
propositions de libéralisation sont compatibles avec la diversité culturelle], and to refuse any offers of liberalisation in the
cultural and audiovisual domain. (Aillagon and Weiss, 2003)

Where the French stress the notion of cultural diversity, the German minister currently
emphasises the notion of Kulturverträglichkeit—i.e. the question of whether legislation, be it in
the cultural field as such or elsewhere, is culturally “digestible”, or whether it is liable to
produce detrimental “side-effects” in a nation’s culture.9 Whatever their respective points of
emphasis, the adversary that justifies such a strategic alliance is clear. It is the pressure, issuing
principally from the United States, to subject all areas of cultural life (education, cultural
institutions, broadcasting) to the unfettered laws of “free” commercial competition. This
challenges not just the traditional “proven instruments” of policy evoked above, but the very
idea of something like a national cultural policy. It is in the context of this more global cultural
conflict that Christina Weiss could describe in a recent newspaper interview how the meeting
with the French Minister for Culture had increased her emotional attachment to “the axis of
the old Europe” (Weiss, 2003b).
The purpose of this special issue of the journal is to provide readers with a range of
perspectives both on the history of cultural policy in these two nations, and also on significant
contemporary developments. It begins with an article by Rob Burns and Wilfried van der Will
that provides a comprehensive overview of cultural policy in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Burns and van der Will analyse the different levels of cultural policy indicated above, and trace
the major phases in the development of cultural policy since 1945; they also explore the issues
raised by the creation of the new federal ministry for culture, and provide two case studies
(Frankfurt and Berlin) of cultural policy at municipal and Land levels. The next two articles
develop further issues of cultural policy in Berlin which, as the new capital of a newly unified
Republic, has represented a strategic and resonant locus of cultural policy debate in Germany
over recent years. Caroline Gay reconstitutes the long drawn-out debate over the Holocaust
monument in Berlin to illustrate both the politicisation and politics of cultural remembrance
130 JEREMY AHEARNE

in post-unification Germany. Jude Bloomfield identifies a number of tensions between the

image Berlin cultivates as an internationally open high cultural metropolis and its relative
blindness to the intercultural mixes it carries within itself. The next two articles focus on the
question of socioculture, a notion that carries with it a kind of practical analytic force in so far
as it foregrounds the frontiers instituted by succeeding cultural policies, delimiting what can
and cannot come under their remit. The article by Hermann Glaser (a previously unpublished
lecture dating from 1976) represents a classic statement of the sociocultural project in Germany
by one of the movement’s leading practitioners and theorists. The article by Dubois and
Laborier places the socioculture movements in France and Germany in a historical perspective,
while also raising new perspectives on how we compare the “categorisations” at work in
different cultural policy frameworks. Douglas Smith also develops an interesting comparative
approach: whereas Malraux is often presented as the inspiration behind a uniquely French
model of cultural policy, Smith explores substantial (and often disavowed) areas of convergence
between Malraux’s thought and German ideas. Philippe Poirrier provides a long-term historical
overview of the political concern with “heritage” in France, dating back to the French
Revolution, demonstrating how not only the measures deployed but also the very conception
of precisely what is being protected have undergone profound changes. Finally, David Looseley
reviews French cultural policy over the third Socialist quinquennium of the Fifth Republic
(1997–2002), tracing the manners in which ministers looked both to modernise in a national
and international context, and also to return to particular “first principles” of French cultural
action (public service, education, animation).

Notes
1
See e.g. Debray (1997: 51–5, 65–97); for a collection of cultural policy texts avant la lettre dating back
to the Revolution, see the first section of Philippe Poirrier’s invaluable compendium (Poirrier, 2002:
15–177).
2
See the article by Burns and van der Will in this issue of the journal; on the cultural sovereignty of the
Länder as a piece of “constitutional folklore” see Naumann (2000).
3
On the initial sidelining of local cultural policy agents, see Urfalino (1996: 101–59); on the subsequent
“municipalisation of culture”, see Urfalino (1996: 279–301) and Poirrier (2000: 148–157).
4
Ministry of Culture figures, published in Le Monde, 12 June 1996.
5
See e.g. Catherine Trautmann, “Charter of public service missions for the performing arts” (1998) in
Ahearne (2002: 196); the French text can be found in Poirrier (2002: 552).
6
Clearly, such statistical comparisons vary according to the categorisations adopted, and have rightly
become the province of an entire sub-discipline within cultural policy studies. Drawing on data produced
by the Arts Council of England (Feist et al., 1998), a research note for the National Endowment for the
Arts published the following per capita figures for public arts spending: USA $6 (1995); France $57
(1993); Germany $85 (1993) (National Endowment for the Arts, 2000). The accompanying notes explain
the caution that must be taken in interpreting such figures, which exclude, in the case of France, the grands
travaux, and also, more generally, indirect spending through tax foregone (a rubric that would affect
notably the USA figures). Jeannine Cardona (2002) cites more recent experimental figures by an EU-
sponsored task force on cultural financing (focusing initially on just four countries—France, Germany,
Austria and Italy) looking to develop a framework for the harmonisation of such statistics. This produced
gross public cultural expenditure figures of A180 per capita for France (1996) and A119 for Germany
(1998). I am grateful to Eleonora Belfiore for directing me to this data.
7
See e.g. Catherine Trautmann, “Cultural diversity and the cultural exception” (1999) and
accompanying notes in Ahearne (2002: 206–211); or “Intervention de Catherine Trautmann à
l’Assemblée nationale au cours du colloque sur l’OMC (extraits)” (1999) in Poirrier (2002:
561–566).
 CULTURAL POLICY IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 131

8
Information on this instrument can be found on the website of the International Network on Cultural
Policy—http://www.incp-ripc.org.
9
For a more extended deployment of this notion, see Weiss, 2003a.

Works Cited
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la Politique Culturelle (RIPC) au Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication”, at http://www.
culture.gouv.fr.
Aillagon, Jean-Jacques and Weiss, Christina (2003) “Gemeinsame Presseerklärung von Kulturstaatsministerin Christina
Weiss and Kulturminister Jean-Jacques Aillagon”, Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung,
Pressemitteilung Nr. 66; French version at http://www.culture.gouv.fr.
Cardona, Jeannine (2002) “Cultural Statistics in Europe: Updates and Trends”, Paper presented at International
Symposium on Culture Statistics, Quebec, 21–23 October; proceedings at http://www.colloque
2002symposium.gouv.qc.ca.
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Looseley, David (1995) The Politics of Fun: Cultural Policy and Debate in Contemporary France (Berg, Oxford).
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Naumann, Michael (2000) “Zentralismus schadet nicht”, Die Zeit 45.
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(2002) “Thema: Vier Jahre Bundeskulturpolitik”, Kulturpolitische Mitteilungen 98, 18–30.
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