Croatian cultural policy in transition: a quarter of a century lost

This article deals with the reasons, possible causes, and manifest missed opportunities due to which Croatian culture did not have a successful transition. It especially focusses on the mechanisms and instruments used by the relevant authorities in the Republic of Croatia when it comes to decision-making in the field of culture. Implicit decisions with no strategic documents allow those in charge of cultural systems to continuously avoid setting up strategic planning, carrying out an analysis of the present situation and introducing professional criteria into practice – not to mention the unavoidable continuity of a bad practice from the past. The absence of all this unavoidably leads to non-transparency, which introduces harmful mechanisms such as conflict of interest and clientelism as the dominant levers of action at the highest levels of all procedures. There are many reasons for such a model, the foremost being that, like all the countries that came into existence within the territory of the former Yugoslavia, in times of political upheaval and the introduction of multi-party systems following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the wars that ensued, Croatia too has missed its chance to develop culture as a space for the enrichment of society, for expanding horizons and promoting tolerance, instead orienting it towards the sphere of ideological and political control and (self-)censorship. Acting in the mentioned ways, cultural policy stakeholders in Croatia have so far failed to build trust in cultural value that would enable development, innovation, reform, continuity, inter-cultural dialogue, pluralism, diversity, and something that is nowadays essential, yet wilfully ignored – the development of cultural management.