Performance measurement as policy rhetoric: the case of federal arts councils

Results-based steering as a tool for centralizedart policy management and instrumentalization? Analysis of the Finnish ArtsCouncil’s reformation

“…autonomy because the latter gave detailed directions on budgetary matters and the council's financial management was to a large extent carried out by the ministry (Adams et al 2004). Like other public organizations, arts councils have also been connected to performance management systems during the past decades following NPM-oriented administrative reforms (Woronkowicz, Rabovsky & Rushton 2019). In addition to the historical task of allocating funding to especially high-quality arts and artists, there have been contemplations on wider objectives and societal benefits of arts funding agencies and arts councils in Finland (e.g.…”

Is it really about the evidence? argument, persuasion, and the power of ideas in cultural policy

“…The capacity of the sector to produce proof of socio-economic impact is seen to lend legitimacy to the explicitly instrumental case for cultural expenditure. Interestinglyand counter-intuitively in an allegedly evidence-based regimeit is widely documented that explicitly instrumental policies are increasingly popular, in Britain and beyond, despite mounting evidence that the underlying data and performance measurements are often flawed, and methodologies for their collection either dubious or under-developed (Crossick & Kaszynska, 2016;Woronkowicz et al, 2019). Indeed, concerns over the quality, reliability and comparability of cultural sector data and other policy-relevant research consistently feature in cultural policy studies (Bilton & Soltero, 2020;Schuster, 1996Schuster, , 2002Selwood, 2002Selwood, , 2010.…”

“…Rather than enhancing accountability and transparency in policy making, the pressures placed on English publicly funded cultural institutions to produce evaluations of their performance, and to subject themselves to the constant attempt to measure their efficiency and impact, has been pivotal in the escalation of very dubious "evidence" (Belfiore, 2009). Recent research focusing on the case study of the NEA, the US arts funding agency, reveals this is not limited to England, but a much broader issue to do with the purpose and use of impact and performance management data (Woronkowicz et al, 2019).…”