Cultural policy has been changing in similar ways across many countries in recent years, with these changes placing an increasing emphasis upon the use of "culture", and particularly the "arts", as instrumental tools for the attainment of non-cultural, non-arts, goals and objectives. It is argued that this process is closely related to a broader set of societal changes -specifically the establishment and acceptance of a commodified conception of public policy -and that the future shape of cultural policy cannot be fully understood without reference to these changes. The fact that the precise nature of both the cultural policy and societal changes that are taking place differ considerably between nationstates implies that arguments concerning the "globalisation" of culture and cultural policy require reformulation to take into account the specific variations that are generated by governmental choices.

The widening of roles and expectations within cultural policy discourses has been a challenge to museum workers throughout Great Britain (GB). There has been an expectation that museums are changing from an 'old' to a 'new museology' that has shaped museum functions and roles. This paper outlines the limitations of this perceived transition as museum services confront multiple exogenous and endogenous expectations, opportunities, pressures and threats. Findings fromThis paper then explores four factors that limit the implementation of the 'new museology'.The role of professional differentiation is first explored showing that there is often still a perceived, and real, polarisation of factions within museum services. These are clearly related to museum functions and the negotiation of power relationships within the museum services studied. The hierarchical differentiations within the services are then outlined, which paints a complex picture of working relationships, especially between managerial and collections-based roles. The paper then explores the effect of policy and role ambiguity, as well as what could be considered to be the effective implementation of policy. Overall, key discourses related to the 'new museology' were evident, but there were also important restraints on the practical implementation of activities relating to the 'new museology' throughout the services studied. The 'new museology'Mairesse and Desvallées (2010) offer five distinct meanings of museology, although they prefer the definition of museology as the entirety of theoretical and critical thinking within the museum field. The 'new museology' evolved from the perceived failings of the original museology, and was based on the idea that the role of museums in society needed to change:in 1971 it was claimed that museums were isolated from the modern world, elitist, obsolete 3 and a waste of public money (Hudson 1977, 15). Traditional ideas around museum practice, which were seen to have contributed to this, were functionally based around collections and held curatorship as being central to the museum enterprise. The original idea of a museum as a collections-focused, building-based, institution prevailed, with the existence of a general public understanding that the museum is a 'cultural authority' --upholding and communicating truth (Harrison 1993).The consequence of this was perceived to be that the interests of a narrow social grouping dominated how museums operated on the basis of a claimed exclusivity in determining the role of museums (Hooper-Greenhill 2000). This

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