Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Arts Policy and Administration

In this thesis, I track use of cultural economic rationales employed by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to secure public funding. I conducted a content and discourse analysis of Appropriations Hearings in both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees for FY 1967, FY 1982, and FY 1997 and articles from the Journal of Cultural Economics. My methodology, based on Focault's policy geneology and Kingdon's policy streams, helped explain how the NEA discusses and argues for public funding in a policy arena via the use of theories derived from cultural economics scholarship. The results show that depicting the arts as a public good was an overarching theme in the problem stream, with supporting arguments changing due to circumstances in the political or policy streams. This work has implications for how arts advocates can continue define and articulate their desire for increased public funding using the work of cultural economists.

Committee: Margaret Wyszomirski PhD (Committee Chair); Wayne Lawson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Economic Theory; Economics; Fine Arts; Linguistics; Political Science; Public Administration; Rhetoric