Finland/ 3. General objectives and principles of cultural policy  

3.1 Main elements of the current cultural policy model

The Finnish cultural policy "model" is first and foremost a model of horizontal and vertical decentralisation and arm's length implementation. On the level of the central government, a number of expert bodies and agencies advise the Ministry of Education and Culture and also implement agreed policies. These bodies also have some independent decision making power. The horizontal decentralisation is often corporatist in nature: associations of professional artists and cultural workers play an important role in the formulation and implementation of policies concerning artists, as well as in determining grants and project funding. This model is also reflected in the central role of the representative associations of artists and producers in copyright affairs and in the management of copyright organisations.

Vertical decentralisation revolves around the axis of the central government (the state) and the local self-government (municipalities). The state is responsible for the national art and cultural institutions, but it also promotes wider and more equal access to the arts and culture by providing financing for regional and local cultural institutions. Previously this work was supported by grants-in-aid that were specifically targeted by the Ministry of Education and Culture. In the early 1990s, these grants-in-aid were integrated in the overall system of statutory state transfers to municipalities. These automatic transfers, calculated on the basis of preset cost-compensation and equity criteria, now cover public libraries, institutions of adult education, non-institutional municipal cultural activities, basic arts education, museums, theatres and orchestras. After the 1991-1993 economic recession, the statutory transfer system did not function for a period of ten years, according to its premises. In the calculation of the transfer to municipalities and local cultural and art institutions, the central government did not compensate fully for the rate of inflation and the rise of labour costs; nor was the total funding increased, although the number of subsidised organisations increased. In recent years, the central government has compensated for the financial losses of the previous years and reformed the system to make it more just and equitable.

In the case of vertical decentralisation the "third sector" also plays an important role. The role of professional cultural and art organisations as lobbyists was already indicated. Yet, the "third sector" has two other roles. Firstly, the voluntary organisations are important in enhancing cultural participation and amateur arts. Secondly, although dependant on public support the majority of cultural and art institutions (especially museums, theatres, but also some orchestras) are operated as non-public organisations (voluntary associations, foundations, non-profit joint stock companies). The problem at present is how to adjust all these functions to diminishing public support and to the new conditions of the information society and media developments.

The Finnish model has three further unique features, which are, however, at present under pressure to change. The first feature is the reliance on public ownership and public budgets and, especially, on legislation, which has been used to guarantee the stability (statutory status) of public funding for the arts and cultural services. The statutory status implies that the criteria used for funding can only be changed through an Act of legislation passed by Parliament. In recent years, general "desetatisation" processes have started to undermine this strict legislative order. The budget allocations are subject to "performance contracts", their effects assessed by criteria set for efficiency and effectiveness, and the overall policies for outsourcing services in central government and municipal administration are also applying to cultural policy implementation.

The second feature has been the central role in the financing of the arts and culture of special earmarked funds, that is the profits from Veikkaus Ltd., the state owned company of lotto, football and games pools and sports betting company, which, alongside the arts and culture, are also used to finance sports, youth policies and science. As an aftermath of the economic recession of the early 1990s these funds, originally planned for discretional use only, were used regularly to finance statutory state subsidies e.g. to public libraries, theatres, orchestras and museum. Consequently, there was less central government money for new projects and initiatives. The reliance of the central government funding of Veikkaus profits also increased and reached in 2001 the highest level, about 70% of the funds allocated in the budget of the Ministry of Education and Culture to the arts and cultural services. The new Acts on Lotto, Football and Games Pools and Sports Betting and on the Use of the Veikkaus Profits, have started to increase the amount of tax-based appropriations and lowered the share of Veikkaus profits in the state financing down to the level of 44.6% in the state budget of 2008).

The third unique feature of the Finnish public sector administration has been the lack of autonomous regional level governance - neither in general nor in the arts and culture. On the other hand, the Arts Council system was extended, at the very beginning, to the regional level by creating the system of eleven provincial arts councils. The name of the councils was changed to that of regional arts councils and their number was raised to thirteen when the central government provincial office administration was reformed. The regional arts councils have been administered jointly by the Ministry of Education and Culture (policy guidance) and the Provincial Offices of the Ministry of the Interior (organisational management). In 2008, the regional arts councils were brought under the administrative umbrella of the national system of arts councils (Arts Council of Finland).

Already in the old state subsidy system some of the art and cultural institutions financed jointly by the state and the municipalities received the status of regional institutions (regional historical and art museums, regional theatres) and were granted additional subsidies for their regional functions. Within the present financing system the Ministry of Education and Culture can furthermore designate some institutions as regionally significant and allocate them additional funding. These funding arrangements do not actually make the institutions really regional, as to their ownership and management, intellectual resources or programming. On the administrative level the nineteen regional councils (that were originally associations of adjacent municipalities for physical planning) were reorganised for and invigorated by the EU membership and have taken over a variety of regional planning and development functions, some even in the field of culture. Yet they are still associations of municipalities, not independent regional bodies and their role in enhancing cultural development in the regions is still rather marginal.

There was a definite drift in the 1990s towards decentralisation and desétatisation in Finnish cultural policy. This was reflected in the reforms of state subsidy system to municipalities and cultural institutions; in the performance contracts and in the introduction of net budgeting within the state budget framework. Under the present stringent financial policies, these policy instruments have also provided effective means to centralised cost control. If we look at the issue of centralisation from the point of view of enhanced local and regional autonomy, a more unambiguous decentralisation trend is linked to the Finnish membership in the EU and the funding of regional and local projects from the Structural Funds. Financing within the framework of the Structural Funds has involved regional councils in cultural policy processes and released cultural energy at the local and regional levels in the form of cultural projects and new initiatives. The external EU programmes (Phare, Tacis), together with the national programme for co-operation with the adjacent transborder regions also created in 1995-1999 a leeway for autonomous regional and local initiatives across the border with adjacent regions and localities, e.g. in Leningrad oblast, in the Baltic Sea countries and in the Barents Sea region. The "Northern Dimension", the EU programme line launched by Finland, has also helped to enhance autonomy of regional and municipal authorities in international cultural co-operation.

The EU funding and the "consensual" management of the regional and local development projects by the Ministry of Interior, other ministries, regional councils and municipalities has created loose co-operation networks also for planning and implementing regional and local cultural policies. On the other hand, the recent re-organisation of the central administration has concentrated the municipal and regional development planning and policies to the two "super-ministries", the Ministry of Finance and the new Ministry of Employment and the Economy.

Chapter updated: 30-11-2008