Dependent Programming

Many cultural organizations are dependent of subsidies and sponsoring as sources of income. To receive sponsoring, agreements are made on conditions. But, applying for subsidization, organizations also have to present why they believe to qualify. These qualifications can be seen as unilaterally conditions set by the government, which possibly interfere with the autonomous programming behaviour of the applicant. This study researches to what extent governmental interference, by subsidization and by the attached policies, influences the programming behaviour of the professional Dutch symphony orchestras in the Netherlands. To be able to test this, a conceptual model is built based on existing literature. This enables the testing of the correlations questioned in the hypotheses: (H1) Government subsidies influence the programming behaviour of the Dutch symphony orchestras; (H2) Government emphasis is positively reflected in the musical content programmed by the Dutch symphony orchestras; (H3) Government emphasis on audiences is positively reflected in the locations and formats programmed by the Dutch symphony orchestras. The various hypotheses are tested using bivariate relations of government interference and the related programming aspects. A multivariate model derived from all statistical significant relations is analysed in a final test to answer the main research question. This research is a pilot study; it is an attempt of a quantitative approach to test whether the governmental policies attached to subsidization have any influence on the programming behaviour of subsidized arts organizations. The analyses are based on existing empirical material, being two Cultuurnotas that represent the governmental policies and the programs and annual reports of three professional Dutch symphony orchestras. The analysis conducted confirms only hypothesis 1 and 2. The overall model that reverts to the research question by combining the findings of the various hypotheses shows that 23.6% of the variance of the programming behaviour of the professional Dutch symphony orchestras can be explained by the variance in subsidies and in policies. The lowness of this percentage is most likely due to the lack of variance of the policy variables since only two terms were included in the dataset. The statistical findings justify a firm stating of these outcomes. It is important to note that, due to the limitations of the dataset, the external validity of these conclusions is not very strong.