Aase Marthe J. Horrigmo
Post doc proposal:
Explaining the wave of cultural houses
The construction and planning of cultural houses, that is multifunctional buildings that provide infrastructure for more than one type of cultural activities, constitutes a policy trend in Norwegian municipalities. This proposed project will examine and explain if and why this wave is spreading. The ambition is two-folded as the aim is to bridge two knowledge gaps. Firstly, there is a lack of systematic knowledge about cultural houses. To bridge this gap, the first part of the project is to conduct a mapping of cultural houses in Norway, both the already existing ones, and those under planning. Secondly, such clustered policy-making is the objective of study in both the policy transfer and the policy diffusion literature. This project aims at examining whether policy transfer or diffusion can be identified here and through which mechanisms and under whatconditions these processes take place.To do this, the project will address two overarching research questions:
First, what can explain that cultural houses pop upacross municipal borders within the same time period, and with similar, multi-functional organizational design?
Second, why are these policies diffused, under which conditions, from where, through which mechanisms and by whom?
The project will answer challenges raised in recent reviews of the policy transfer and policy diffusion literature(Benson & Jordan 2011; Marsh & Sharman 2009). This proposed project will study three challenges identified in these reviews: the need to focus on the mechanisms involved, the dialectic relationship between agency and structure and, finally, the need to study diffusion and transfer using both large-N and small-N methodology. The objective is to go beyond identifying transfer or diffusion and to offer a more nuanced theoretical explanation through borrowing from both the transfer and diffusion literature.
Why study cultural houses?
The term house of culture was first coined by architect Peter Celsing in 1970 (Laurell-Stenlund 2010). However, there are many types of cultural houses – or houses designed to host cultural production. Central to the current policy wave is the building of multi-functional cultural houses, i.e. houses, whichprovide infrastructure for varying cultural activities like performing arts, libraries or art galleries within the same building(Laurell-Stenlund 2010).
There are several reasons why cultural houses are relevant cases to study in order to learn something about public policy-making. First, the new multifunctional houses represent a general trend in the public sector, where there is a tendency to move away from single-function organizations and towards a “whole of government”-approach(Christensen & Lægreid 2007).
Second, there is little systematic knowledge about the number of cultural houses, the reasons why municipalities choose to build them, costs related to the building and running of cultural houses or characteristics of the municipalities that choose to build – or not to build. The lack of knowledge also means that there is little evidence on which to base policy-making. This project aims at reducing this lack of knowledge.
Third, the fact that many new houses are under construction at the same time makes it a critical case for a study on transfer and diffusion policy and under which conditions these processes take place. The high number of available cases makes it possible to examine the political processes and how policy-making in one municipality affects policy-making in another.Moreover, this provides an opportunity to select both negative and positive cases that otherwise share many similar features. Thus, it is possible to identify which conditions favor or hamper transfer and diffusion through a most-similar system design.
Fourth, while cultural policy is a small policy field in financial terms (on average 3-4 % of municipal budgets), cultural houses are an exception. These houses represent large financial investments, both related to the construction of the building itself, and to the running of the house and the production of cultural products. The size of the investments is likely to make cultural houses into a cross-cutting policy that involves the entire municipal council. Previous research has discussed the role flagship cultural projects as a measure for various types of ends, such as social (Laurell-Stenlund 2010), branding and marketing (Evans 2003) and urban development (Gómez 1998; Grodach 2010; Plaza 2006; Strom 2002). In other words, large investments in cultural houses involve several policy areas. This makes cultural houses a case that can be used to shed light on the power structures within the municipality. Moreover, despite the fact that the building of cultural houses is a concern for local authorities, the policy-process involves multiple levels of government, as funding has been provided from all three levels. Thus, the case opens up for studying how national and regional financial incentives and structure involves local policy-making.
Diffusion, transfer and convergence – what it is andwhat does it add to this project?
Both policy diffusion and policy transfer address the spread of policy trends or clustered policy behavior. These approaches to policy change rests on the assumption that affiliations, institutional memberships and negotiations influence from where and what governments learn (Simmons & Elkins 2004; Knill 2005). Yet, despite dealing with the same phenomenon, there are some important differences between the two that makes the combination of the two approaches fruitful.
Policy transfer is understood as a process, in which ”knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political setting (past or present) is used in development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political setting” (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000:5). Diffusion theory often takes a more general approach to the study of policy change, focusing on both the pattern of change and of structural factors that influence policy adoption (Jordana & Levi-Faur 2005; Marsh & Sharman 2009; Knill 2005). Diffusion is defined as the process through which policy changes in a given country affects policy-making in other countries (Braun & Gilardi 2006; Elkins & Simmons 2005). Hence, policy diffusion highlights how policy making is a social process, where the actions of others are factored in when making a decision.
While policy convergence, or clustered policy-making, is the phenomenon diffusion and transfer studies generally deal with, diffusion must not inevitably lead to convergence (Radaelli 2005). This makes policy diffusion a possible point of departure for studying under which conditions policy diffusion mechanisms lead to policy convergence and how political context influences the decision-making process. Cairney (2009), a transfer scholar,points towards the role of agency in influencing the outcome of transfer processes. As others have argued, diffusion theory has something to gain from including the study of policy processes and the role of actors in their analyses (Dolowitz & Marsh 2000; Benson & Jordan 2011; Marsh & Sharman 2009).
Although there is no unitary understanding of where the borders of transfer end and diffusion begins, there seems to be an agreement that diffusion is a voluntary process. According to Elkins and Simmons (2005) there are three sources for clustered decision-making: coercion, similar problems that lead to similar solutions and voluntary diffusion, where only the latter is categorized as a diffusion process. Policy transfer on the other hand includes both voluntary and coerced transfer of policies, as the continuum by Dolowitz and Marsh shows (Dolowitz & Marsh 1996, 2000). Dolowitz and Marsh see coercion and rationality as opposite to each other, and claim that only voluntary transfer can be rational. This could lead to a conclusion that also diffusion is a rational process, but in fact the opposite is often the case. As Radaelli (2005) states, seeing policy-making in the light of diffusion theory includes opening up to non-rational explanations for policy change. Governments adapt new policies to gain legitimacy and social acceptance among their international peers, but they also use the examples of others as basis for drawing lessons (Rose 1991; Mossberger & Wolman 2003), in other words, the policy process in other cases offer an opportunity for learning. Learning is understood as a both a diffusion and transfer mechanism (Marsh & Sharman 2009; Braun & Gilardi 2006; Elkins & Simmons 2005; Meseguer 2005; Gilardi 2010; Benson & Jordan 2011), and this means that diffusion processes also may have rational features. In other words, the notion of rationality cannot be used as a litmus test for whether diffusion mechanisms are used or not, as diffusion processes can be both policy and problem-oriented.
The third source of clustered decision-making is however neither classified as transfer or diffusion as this deals with a concept where similar policies develop independently as a response to similar problems. Braun and Gilardi (2006) have termed this spurious diffusion, as the outcome seems to be policy convergence despite the absence of coordination of the process. Thus, policy convergence is not in itself evidence of a diffusion process.
Added value to this project
The ambition of this project is not to identify either transfer or diffusion processes, but to use these theoretical approaches to identify the mechanisms involved when policy-makers look to others when deciding on implementing a certain policy. The following three points show how this proposed project can add to the existing literature.
The first point is related to diffusion theory. A central activity in this post-doctoral project will be to map the existence of already built houses of culture, as well as those under planning, and debates that have not lead to houses of culture. This mapping process will draw on classical diffusion studies to help identify leaders and laggards, the policy innovators and the borrowers. This map can the in the second phase of the study help understand the mechanisms at work, and whether or not these mechanisms are the same for both leaders and laggards. Moreover, through the mappinginformation will also be gathered on socio-economic and structural factors, to test how these influence policy outcomes.
Second, identifying the sources of policy convergence and whether or not they are a result of spurious diffusion, coercion or adaption is central to understanding the mechanisms in place. If the outcome is a result of similar problems with similar solutions, then neither transfer nor diffusion theory are likely to provide good explanations. When coercion is the cause of policy change, the mechanisms involved are not likely to be learning, as coercion is found to exclude rational mechanisms (Dolowitz & Marsh 2000; Elkins & Simmons 2005). Voluntary transfer processes are on the other hand likely to be of a more rational character, although diffusion theory also claims that voluntary policy change can be of a less rational character (Elkins & Simmons 2005; Dolowitz & Marsh 2000; Braun & Gilardi 2006). Identifying the different mechanisms at work is the first step in understanding under which conditions policy-makers are likely to learn from others, or when they are more likely to emulate or copy.
Third, Marsh and Sharman (2009) have pointed towards the need for transfer and diffusion scholars to learn from each other and include both large-N and small-N methodology in studies of policy trends. From diffusion comes the quantitative approach, while transfer literature has focused on case studies and the policy processes. While the diffusion approach includes the identifying structural factor’s influence on diffusion patters, the policy process-focus from the transfer literature opens up for combination with a multiple-streams framework (Kingdon 1995; Zhariadis 2007) that identifies both the central actors, or the policy entrepreneurs, and how windows of opportunity opens up. Thus, this is an approach that both include the possibility to study the role of agency, and how structural factors influence the policy processes, and this addresses another need identified by Marsh and Sharman (2009).
Methods, design and case selection
Cultural houses are selected as a case because they represent a current policy trend in local policy making in Norway - and in Scandinavia. The empirical study of this phenomenon will usetwo methodological approaches to understand the same phenomenon. The first step is closer to a traditional diffusion study. This phase focuses on a survey to the Norwegian municipalities to map the existing cultural houses, as well as those under construction and planning. The temporal dimension is important here, as one objective is to identify the leaders and laggards, as well as those that have chosen not to build a cultural house. Other central variables are organizational design, whether the houses produce cultural goods themselves, costs of building, the level of national or regional financial support. As a diffusion study the survey will also collect structural data, and the survey data will be supplemented by KOSTRA-data on such dimensions. These data will be the basis for statistical analysis to answer research question number one.
The second approach in this study is qualitative case studies of decision-making processes. Interviews with policy-makers involved in the processes leading to cultural houses will be central to the case studies, but the interview data will be supplemented with document studies. The cases will be selected based on survey-data, as well as on register data. A central factor will be to select negative cases, in order to examine under which conditions diffusion and transfer takes place, and when they lead to policy convergence or not. This means that the case studies will be most-similar system design, where the cases selected match on all other variables than those assumed to influence the policy outcome.
Activities, preliminary time-plan and suggested articles
The first article will study the demand-side of cultural policy and cultural houses. Through creating time-series data based on KOSTRA-information on local spending on cultural policy, the article will examine how different sub-groups of the population affects the spending on arts dissemination versus the spending on more popular types of cultural services. The aim is to understand how changes in population might affect the local cultural policy.
The second article will be based on the survey-material. While one objective is to describe the situation and the spread of cultural houses, the article aims at identifying patterns of diffusion, as well as leaders and laggards. What characterizes the municipalities that started the trend, versus those that started construction of a cultural house at a later stage or not at all.
Article number three will study cases that include both leaders and laggards. The aim is to identify the mechanisms at work in the policy process. Is there evidence of learning, emulation or competition, and are the mechanisms the same for leaders and laggards.
The fourth article will be based on case-studies of municipalities that have chosen to build or not to build cultural houses, i.e. positive and negative cases. The objective is to examine if diffusion or transfer can be identified in order to identify under which condition these processes lead to policy convergence.
The fifth article draws on the whole of government-literature and will deal with the design of cultural houses and the choice of multifunctional design versus single-functional houses.To examine these choices, the sources of the policy convergence will be studied, to understand if organizational design is a result of a similar problem, or if this is more related to policy trends than to actual problems. To study this, the article asks: Who transfers, why, and what do they transfer?
To strengthen the project, the aim is to apply for external funding from sources such as the regional research council and the Norwegian research council. Moreover, possibilities for international cooperation, especially with the other Scandinavian countries will be explored as this can add an international dimension to the study of policy trends.
Literature
Benson, D., and A. Jordan. 2011. "What Have We Learned from Policy Transfer Research? Dolowitz and Marsh Revisited." Political Studies Review 9 (3):366-78.
Braun, D., and F. Gilardi. 2006. "Taking ‘Galton's Problem’ Seriously." Journal of Theoretical Politics 18 (3):298-322.
Cairney, P. 2009. "The role of ideas in policy transfer: the case of UK smoking bans since devolution." Journal of European Public Policy 16 (3):471-88.
Christensen, T., and P. Lægreid. 2007. "The Whole-of-Government Approach to Public Sector Reform." Public Administration Review 67 (6):1059-66.
Dolowitz, D., and D. Marsh. 1996. "Who learns what from whom: A review of the policy transfer literature." Political Studies 44 (2):343-57.
———. 2000. "Learning from Abroad: The Role of Policy Transfer in Contemporary Policy-Making." Governance 13 (1):5-23.
Elkins, Z., and B. Simmons. 2005. "On Waves, Clusters, and Diffusion: A Conceptual Framework." The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 598 (1):33-51.