Institutions, Cultural Policies and Cultural Values1

Using an actors-oriented political science approach, this contribution attempts to illuminate the role of general and specific institutional rules for the outcome of public cultural policies within the context of increasing private corporation activities in the field of cultural business. Rather pessimistic about the chances of survival of public policies in this field, the author proposes strategies to empower public actors by means of activating institutional rules such as constitutional freedom, democracy or equity, Furthermore, he discusses some special institu-tions dealing with art's production and consumption likely to contribute to reinforcing public policy actors in their attempt to build up independent cultural policies in the public field. 1 I would like to thank those of the participants of the workshop who have reviewed this paper (espacially Norbert S. Baer), and my colleague Frédéric Varone for his comments.