Strings Attached to Arts Funding: Panel Assessments of Theater Organizations through the Lens of Agency Theory

Abstract

Agency Theory deliberates the relationship between principals and agents, and the agency problems that originate in information asymmetries and goal conflicts. Through the lens of Agency Theory, with mixed methods, I investigate the decisions about funding of theatre organizations by governments, based on assessments by third parties. In two settings "artistic quality" is the major determinant of public support, to the detriment of criteria as participation, social objectives, efficiency and entrepreneurship. I argue that, next to previously recognized principal-agent relationships between governments and theatres, and governments and panels, a third relationship is very influential: between an arts field and panels.

Striving for Consensus: How Panels Evaluate Artistic Productions

“…Without strong external constraints, deliberations about art tend to be inconclusive (Merriman 2017). At the same time, consensus-building is an essential part of many decision-making practices in the art world, such as auditions (Nylander 2014), publishing (Merriman 2017), or public funding (Loots 2019). Our case study demonstrates that when art evaluations require a final outcome, they share many characteristics with consensusoriented practices in other fields; for example, we have found many similarities between artistic and scientific decision-making bodies.…”

“…Nevertheless, we still know considerably little about what evaluative criteria and concepts of artistic value are operative in group evaluations, whether members support different evaluative standards and, if so, how they define those differences. Nylander (2014) and Loots (2019) offer useful analyses of evaluation criteria used by expert panels-in music and theater, respectively-but they do not study differences between panelists, or how those differences provide opportunities for group identification.…”

“…At the same time, much remains to be known about artistic panel deliberations, where collective judgments are shaped by the constraints of the agreement-making process. Given that panel reviewing plays an increasing role in subsidizing art (Loots 2019), it is important to understand how evaluative panels work and how experts arrive at collective decisions.…”