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Intellectuals, culture and public policy in France

The book aims to analyze the relationships between French intellectuals and policy making in the cultural field. The author’s ambition is to go beyond the prevailing idea that French intellectuals do not get involved in the policy process. He recalls, and illustrates all through the book, that French intellectuals have got involved in the policy process. His analysis applies to non-communist Left intellectuals interacting with domains related to culture, which go far beyond the (itself moving) sphere of competence of the French Ministry of Culture. With a background in cultural and intellectual history – rather than political science – the author provides in Part 1 a cross-disciplinary framework that helps us understand how the intellectuals’ involvement takes place, and what can be the consequences of such involvement. In Part 2, he describes a set of issues related to cultural policy making: the long-term emergence and popularization of the notion of laicity (Chapter 3) and its interplay with equality in curricular reform (Chapter 5); Bourdieu and Malraux’s different types of involvement in policy making and the impact of such involvement on their own thinking (Chapter 4); the description of Jeanson and de Certeau as figures of cultural democracy (Chapter 6); and the opposition between cultural democracy and cultural democratization as applied to issues related to television programming (Chapter 7). A first important idea in the book is that there are varying rhythms in the life cycle of ideas: it takes time for ideas to emerge and for policy-makers to implement them even though they give the impression of being approved by a majority of people. Thus, it takes more than a century from the expression of the political concept of laicity to its implementation. The intellectuals’ role here is crucial because they can become the references that will allow ideas to keep a political charge while being latent. In Chapter 2, the author recalls Lindblom’s distinction between, on the one hand, standing volitions, i.e., values and norms, and, on the other hand, action volitions, i.e., particular things to be done in particular circumstances. The book illustrates the fact that since intellectuals have more of a long-term view, their main contribution is the questioning of standing volitions rather than the proposal of action volitions. Another interesting feature of the book is the questioning of intellectuals’ peculiar position in the policy process. The author asserts in Chapter 2 that intellectuals are sometimes part of what Rosanvallon names ‘indirect democracy’, i.e. they receive some legitimacy on behalf of elected regimes because they represent some International Journal of Cultural Policy Vol. 18, No. 1, January 2012, 126–130