The OECD Guidelines and Their Impact on National Policies for Cultural Heritage

Public intervention for culture is widespread, showing differences among countries in terms of focus, institutions, and tools. The cultural economics approach considers the reasons justifying governments’ intervention in favour of the cultural sectors, the tools adopted and the actors involved. Particularly interesting in the present context is the role of internationals organisations like UNESCO, European Union (EU), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Bank (WB). These organisations have been playing an increasingly important role, which goes beyond the definition of general guidelines, and have become more actively involved in the definition and implementation of national cultural policies. This work looks specifically at the OECD and, looking at the organisation’s documents on culture, aims to provide an overview of the approach and activities undertaken for culture and cultural heritage, more specifically. The activity of the OECD involves local levels of government to collect data and evidence and diffuse new topics, renew policies and procedure, and promote the adoption of new policies. It can be considered an effective example of policy transfer which tries to favour knowledge building and knowledge sharing, training of local decision-makers, peer learning.