Culture club: managing the sublime.

• Author: Freund, Charles Paul

THE INTERNATIONAL Network on Cultural Policy (INCP), a group of some 60 culture ministries, exists "to develop strategies to promote cultural diversity," diversity meaning creative works that haven't been exported from the U.S.

Called into being in 1998 by a Canadian minister, the INCP meets annually to brainstorm and to chew over learned papers. The 2003 conclave, held last fall in Croatia, produced a number of worthy thoughts, including a remarkable paper entitled "Research on Models of Financing Culture." Six years into its life, the INCP has taken up the issue of culture's economic value.

The paper offers four financial models, including the "liberal" market model in which people spend their money on whatever they like; the INCP thinks such markets consist of "cultural products intended for mass consumption." The other models involve the state's spending the people's money on what official cultural arbiters like, either at the national level, at the local level, or through private foundations.

There are some interesting moments in the paper, which recognizes a "linkage between culture and the economy" that is "reflected in two associated processes: 'acculturation' of...