The NEA has posted a very interesting interview between their Sunil Iyengar and the critic Leon Wieseltier. It raises interesting questions about the role of measurement in arts policy, and so here is something of an annotation of part of the interview (and do read the whole thing).
IYENGAR: To measure the value of arts and culture in society: is this a fool’s errand, then, or do you think there are probably legitimate ways within the social sciences?
WIESELTIER: I think the question of what the value of art is in society is not a scientific question. By the way, I think that the question of what the value of science is in society is not a scientific question either. Science cannot tell us what the place of science in our lives should be. That’s a philosophical question. Philosophy is even grander and greater than science. Similarly, the question of what the arts mean in a society, what place they should have in our lives, is not a question for science to answer. It’s a category mistake. It’s another misapplication of the terms of one field aggressively against another field.
Iyengar asks a good question. Wieseltier says something interesting, though it is not really an answer to the question. I agree that the value of art in society is not a scientific question – values are values, and science cannot answer questions about values. If we are talking about the values of art and of science in society, it is in the end a political question: these are collective goods, funded to a large degree by collective means, and that means there is a political question at stake. When other countries have different collective policies towards art and science, it isn’t because philosophy has generated a different way of valuing those things, but because they have made a different collective, practical decision on how to fund the arts and science.
Economics has tried to find ways to measure collective preferences – through contingent valuation models for example – but neither science nor economic theory tells us that the adding up of citizens’ willingness-to-pay for collective goods is the right way to set policy (I highly recommend reading David Throsby on this question – paywall article here, working paper version here). Again, this is a political question, to be resolved through the give-and-take of deliberation and public policy setting.
IYENGAR: But in a policy arena, where one constantly has to justify public spending, for example, or build public will for these kinds of initiatives, whether in the arts or humanities—without relying on performance measures or evidence, how would we do that?
WIESELTIER: There are many, many realms of social policy in which numbers are entirely appropriate. When you aggregate individuals, and make generalizations about them, for the sake of understanding certain social behaviors, it may not be germane to wonder about the specificity of those individuals or their feelings or their worldviews because you’re not asking that sort of question. So of course, without numbers, without generalizations, there would be no social policy.
This is not to say that one can make social policy for happiness or for love. What bill are we going to put through Congress to maximize love in our society? It can’t be done. It must be done in the sense that we need more love in our society, but it’s not going to be done by means of social policy. And it’s not going to be done by means of numbers.
So here is a question: what really is the demand for performance measures in public spending? After all, the biggest spending item in the US government (excluding transfer payments to individuals) is far and away the military. It is not my impression that defense spending is determined by the latest set of performance indicators. Farm subsidies? Transportation infrastructure? The tax expenditure involved in granting an income tax deduction for charitable donations (which, as we know, amounts to far more dollars of arts subsidy than the NEA budget)? I really don’t know the answer – I am a Washington outsider to say the least. But do performance metrics really determine budgets?
And if so, what metrics? Measuring the size of the creative sector, and trends within that sector, is interesting for social science research, but it doesn’t give us a lot in terms of input into policy decisions (though I see a lot of advocacy that follows the ‘1. the cultural sector is bigger than you thought it was, 2. ???, 3. deserves more public funding’ model).
I’m all for using evidence when making policy. But I agree with Wieseltier that quantitative evidence isn’t likely to give us much when it comes to the arts.
Is the need for quantitative evidence being unfairly demanded from the arts sector? Here’s a thought: what if advocates for the arts in the public and nonprofit sectors have themselves chosen to emphasize quantitative evidence, in part because the rhetorical case for arts support is so very challenging? Presenting numbers, after all, has the virtue of being just so easy, even if in fact they are numbers that don’t mean anything (I’m looking at you, ‘economic impact’ studies). Just asking.
“But do performance metrics really determine budgets?”
I’d argue, no, they don’t. It’s Congress (specifically, the House) and its majority party that makes the difference. The NEA adopted a pretty quantitative performance measurement plan in 2012. At that point, Republicans controlled the House. NEA appropriations since that time have remained pretty much stagnant. Prior to that time, when the Democrats controlled the House (2009-2011), appropriations levels were markedly higher, and the NEA did not have a highly quantitative performance measurement plan (actually, for a while the agency didn’t use performance metrics at all). Further, NEA performance plans have become less quantitative since 2012, and appropriations levels have not changed much. One could argue that while majority party in the House is the primary influence on NEA appropriations, performance metrics may give those levels additional boosts. But again, I’d argue no, since not once has the House Appropriations Committee cited (at least on record) the NEA’s performance metrics in determining appropriations.
It’s hard to know what the counterfactual to this situation is (in other words, what would’ve happened to NEA appropriations levels post-2012 in the absence of a performance measurement plan), but based on history, I still doubt that the use of quantitative metrics in the arts haven’t affected funding levels. If you look at NEA appropriations levels throughout history, they’re always at their highest when Democrats control the House. It’s political will that determines how to fund arts and culture.
(Also interesting to note is that both Ivey and Gioia were reluctant to subscribe to performance measurement at the NEA, and appropriations increased during both their chairmanships.)
Interesting post Michael thank you.
Here in the UK, yes, we are moving beyond the instrumental debates of the noughties to a position where both qualitative and quantitative evidence are used in arguments about the arts and public good/funding. I do think numbers have a role to play but it’s more a question of scale: Yes economic evaluations of small local practices leave a lot to be desired, but at the national level numbers should count, and I’d argue they should count more. It is a political decision, but politics is informed by numbers (or at least the oppositional discourses are) and that’s a good argument for scholars of cultural policy to become more politically engaged.
The more significant point I think is now about what to measure–most economic evaluations are measures of proxies of cultural engagement (contingent valuation, willingness to pay, etc.) I’m interested in getting more of the aesthetic engagement with arts into the quantitative debate–hard but not impossible.
Still very useful questions for a growing field.
all the best,
Simon.
Thank you Joanna and Simon for your comments. I think there is still much to learn here as to the degree to which ‘numbers’ matter in arts funding. As I write in the follow-up post to this one, the size of the sector, or growth in the sector, in terms of employment or spending, do not give a case for subsidy, which rests on the non-market benefits – otherwise, *every* sector could make a case for subsidy. Numbers can matter, performance evaluation can matter, but it’s important to be sure the right things are being measured.
Insightful points made by all. Thank you Michael. It does make me wonder about the utility of studies such as the new public opinion poll from AFTA (http://www.americansforthearts.org/by-program/reports-and-data/research-studies-publications/public-opinion-poll-overview) in terms of impacting cultural policy. We’d ideally like to see positive outcomes for such a study, but are negative outcomes possible too?