A Study on the Direct State Intervention Cultural Policy in France
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Hwang Hae-Jin 
Published: June 2018

In this paper, the direct state intervention cultural policy in France is introduced via the era of Andre Malreaux and Jack Lang. In France, the national government takes a leading role in supporting its culture policy and has a traditional form of direct state intervention. In 1959, De Gaulle set up a ministry of culture under Andre Malreaux who became a first minister of culture for 10 years. Malo presented his basic policy as “democratization of culture” in which the local public could meet the arts in the 'Houses of Cultures'via decentralization. However, he could not complete his democratization of culture policy into success by ignoring the class and level of general public in the region and importing a notion of Parisian notion of aesthetic excellence. He created a regional administrative body as DRAC(Regional Directorates of Cultural Affairs) to be a valuable intermediaries connecting the state and the region in 1969 and later became an important administrative post in France.
As to the era of socialist government of Francois Mitterand, France enters a new era of modernization of culture policy via Lang who became a minister of culture for 12 years. Lang had a broader definition of culture by supporting mass culture including the concept of 'everything is a culture'. This notion of culture includes a wide variety of area including the everyday lifestyle of the people. His policy encourages amateur cultural activities to break down the hierarchy of existing between the fine and low art. He supported the art of common people to boom the economy. He also constructed many facilities for the mass culture including the first Rock Concert Hall, national center for Photographic art and creating International comic festivals.
The most striking projects were undertaken under Mitterand's Grand Project including the Grand Louvre, the National Library, the Opera Bastille and the Grand Arch to use enormous budgets during the era. Because of this Grand Project, Lang had to confront the problems of lack of funding for his diverse cultural programs.
Two most important concepts of cultural policy in France during this two era were 'democratization of culture' and those of 'decentralization'. In this study, the actual key concepts were compared during this era of Malo and Lang's. Since these two ministers had both a close relationship with their presidents to enable to carry utmost cultural projects in their times, the direct state intervention of cultural policy model was reached to its peak during this time period.
Even if the French model of state intervention received many criticism around the world, the general public, the government, and its regional government of France, all of them had a concept of 'French Cultural Exception' which was represented in GATT 1993. As to most people in France, the culture is the very asset of the nation to be preserved, protected, and encouraged to be created. In this time of globalization and the era of technological information society, the power of culture is still the center of attention of government, region and the people as their national asset. It is widely considered on both Right or Left from Malreaux to Lang, the culture is the national asset of France while the State and the ministry of culture to be the major agents in the active support of cultural programs and projects whether the fine arts or to the comics or the street level performances.
The in-depth study on the area of cultural policy is needed for its further studies to be applied in establishing Korean cultural policies confronting the era of globalization while to keep our nation's identity. The key issues from this study need to be explored in scrutiny.