The rhetoric of cultural policies and the issue of 'getting things done': Bologna cultural capital 10 years after

This paper focuses on the risk of disconnection between policies and practices in the field of culture. General (and abstract) approaches to cultural policies are likely to get the attention of politicians and officers in culture departments in local government agencies and the press in the name of city branding, cultural districts, creativity and the like. To what extent this rhetoric is translated into actual and consistent actions is open to debate. Work on institutional, organizational and resource aspects related to the implementation of elegant policy designs does not always enter the agenda. The short-termism of political cycles is likely to make things even worse. The same bias is usually found in cultural policy studies, with a few exceptions that pay attention to reconstructing actual cultural policies instead of the ritualism of making “grand strategies”.Drawing from management studies, the paper adopts a different approach to the evaluation of cultural policies, investigating the relationship between different phases of the process at the micro level: planning, resource allocation, actions and results. The analysis of 10 years of cultural policies in Bologna - one of the European Capitals of Culture for 2000 - will serve as a specific focus to test and develop the analytical approach.We note the lack of adequate accountability tools, and call for the identification of more empirically rooted ways of addressing attention to actual behaviour, implementation, and budget developed in management studies.

► We revisit 10 years of cultural policies of Bologna Municipality (Italy), looking at plans and debates. ► We reconstruct actual behaviours looking at actual resources allocation and impacts. ► We identify major inconsistencies between the rhetoric of cultural policies and actual achievements in the Bologna case. ► The need to address attention to actual behaviours, implementation and budget in this field is called for.