Failures in Swedish cultural policy, and why cultural policy research does not seem to care

In this paper, we explore the argument that research on Swedish public cultural policy has not contributed to providing an academically sound and critical basis for assessing basic failures in Swedish cultural policy. The aim of our paper is to tentatively trace a limited selection of explanations for why this is the case and our contribution is thus perhaps best classified as belonging to the meta-study of cultural policy research. We conclude that a basic challenge for the cultural policy research field is its tendency to reproduce normative assumptions generated by cultural policy stakeholders. Research on Swedish cultural policy thus runs the risk of integrating research with the policy sector, rather than provide an autonomous knowledge basis. We argue that one important remedy would be comparative studies, between cultural policies in different countries as well as between different policy fields.