When Cultural Policies Change

Elodie Bordat-Chauvin holds a PhD in political science (Institut d'Études Politiques d'Aix-en-Provence) and has been a researcher at CHERPA since 2014. Her research focuses on cultural policies in Mexico, Argentina and France. Her work has been published internationally, including in the International Journal of Cultural Policies and Pôle Sud. She currently teaches cultural policy at Aix-Marseille University and comparative political science at Sciences Po Aix.

How can change in cultural Policy be explained? Through a comparative and historical analysis, this research sheds new light on the emergence, institutionalization and transformation of the cultural policies of two major Latin American countries: Mexico and Argentina.
Elodie Bordat-Chauvin's investigation is based on the material gathered in ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2008 and 2010. It gathers observations, unique archive material and more than ninety semi-directive interviews with the majority of Secretaries of Culture in office between 1983 and 2010, several intellectuals, interest groups leaders, cultural managers and members of unions who all played a role in these countries' cultural policies in the last thirty years.
This work challenges the common assertions that Mexican cultural policy is characterized by inertia and Argentinean cultural policy by instability. It analyses factors of changes - such as the neo-liberal turn, transnationalization, decentralization and politico-institutional changes - and their consequences - including reductions in cultural budgets, transformations in cultural industries and modifications in the balance of power between national, subnational, public and private actors.

Through a comparative historical analysis, this book shows the emergence, institutionalization and evolution of the cultural sector's public policy in Argentina and Mexico, from 1983 to 2009. This dynamics of change is analysed by taking into account the socio-economic and political contexts, and by drawing on actors, cognitive representations, institutional frameworks and public policy instruments.

Contents: The First Public Actions in the Cultural Sphere - Different nation-building projects, different cultural actions - A dominant Mexican State, a dynamic Argentinian associative sector - Mobilization for the inclusion of culture on the agenda - Similar processes for the institutionalization of cultural policies? - The changes brought about by decentralization and the private sector's participation - Cultural policies and transnationalization processes - Changes in actors, changes in representations? - The instrumental and institutional dimensions of change.