Call for papers

Croatian International Relations Review (CIRR)

Special issue on ‘European Union and Challenges of Cultural Policies: Critical Perspectives’

Guest editors: Jaka Primorac, Aleksandra Uzelac and Paško Bilić, Department for Culture and Communication, Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO), Zagreb, Croatia

Vol. 24 No. 83 (2018)

The Croatian International Relations Review (CIRR) now accepts contributions for its special thematic issue with the provisional title ‘European Union and Challenges of Cultural Policies: Critical Perspectives’ that will focus on the systematic and critical reflections on the impact of the European Union on the national level policies that are framing the cultural field, shedding light on the challenges of implementing cultural policies, as well as, on the challenges of creating and thinking about new cultural policies. CIRR (ISSN 1848-5782) published by the Institute for Development and International Relations, is a peer-reviewed journal in the social sciences that is indexed by Scopus – Elsevier and over 30 other services.

Description and scope

The world in which we live is changing rapidly and hence, local and global levels are no longer easily separated. In the 21st century, cultural policies have to deal with a (post) globalisation context that is marked by cultural, social and economic transformations; issues of rapid technological change and digital shift driven mostly by economic interests, market concentration and the dominance of global corporations; mobility and migration movements; rapid urbanisation; social and financial instability, etc. All this has an impact on the conditions under which the cultural sector operates today.

In the context of EU politics, culture has increasingly been used as an instrument for different social, political or economic objectives. EU international relations are increasingly becoming intercultural, while the concept of culture as public value is weakening in comparison to its commodity value. The crisis in Europe and of the European model has implications for the cultural field as well; today’s Europe needs to reimagine itself – its aims, values and identities – and needs to find an adequate model for its sustainable cultural development. Due to the subsidiarity principle engrained in the Lisbon Treaty, the European Union has not been involved in formulating an explicit common cultural policy. Nevertheless, the EU has been indirectly contributing to the creation of common cultural policy frameworks through its soft cultural policy instruments and mechanisms that represent a de facto policy approach to the various cultural policy issues and their related instruments (e.g. Open Method of Coordination – OMC, the Creative Europe programme, the European Capitals of Culture (ECOC) as the EU cultural programme initiatives and other similar mechanisms). The EU has been also contributing through other explicit policies that affect the field of culture (e.g. through the strategy on the Digital Single Market (DSM) and other similar strategies). It is questionable whether such an approach is still adequate for today’s cultural and social challenges, and whether national level cultural policies can tackle complex global problems, especially in the context where many other public policies are increasingly influencing the field of culture.

The Special Issue on ‘European Union and Challenges of Cultural Policies: Critical Perspectives’ calls for contributions that critically address the different issues and challenges that the EU and national cultural policies are facing in the 21st century, including, but not limited to:

• EU and cultural policy issues: What are the limits of subsidiarity?
• What are the impacts of EU soft policy mechanisms on national contexts (OMC, Structured Dialogue, Creative Europe, European Capital of Culture)?
• How to contextualise explicit and implicit cultural policies in the context of transversality and convergence of policies?
• What is the role of civil society and networks in formulating cultural policies?
• Who are the new actors in intersectoral connection (culture, education, science, ICT)
• The role of culture in EU international relations – what are the benefits for the cultural sector?
• What are the implications of digital shift to sustainable culture of the future?
• What is the role of the strategy of the Digital Single Market for sustainable digital cultural resources?
• Media and communication policy issues: What is the place of media freedom and media pluralism?
• How to tackle socio-cultural inequalities in Europe from the cultural policy perspective?
• Innovative cultural policies: what new models are there for achieving sustainability in cultural development?
• What new theoretical perspectives on cultural policy can be used?

We welcome articles that develop theoretical arguments or offer strong empirical evidence as either comparative or single-case studies.

Submission and Important dates

We welcome original articles written in English up to 8000 words in length (including footnotes and an abstract of 150 words, and excluding the bibliography). All selected articles are subject to double-blind refereeing by at least two reviewers. Please consult the Instructions for authors before submitting your contributions.

Articles should be sent to cirr@irmo.hr with the subject line stating ‘Article submission for the Special Issue on ‘European Union and Challenges of Cultural Policies: Critical Perspectives’.

Article submission deadline: December 17th, 2017
First round of notifications: February 2nd, 2018
Revised papers due: March 6th, 2018
Further reviews and acceptance: April 17th, 2018
Expected publication date: June, 2018

In case of further inquiries, please feel free to contact our Guest Editors: Jaka Primorac (jaka@irmo.hr), Aleksandra Uzelac (auzelac@irmo.hr) and Paško Bilić (pasko@irmo.hr).

About the journal:

The Croatian International Relations Review (CIRR) is an interdisciplinary academic journal published in English since 1995 and is dedicated to social sciences with a focus on political science, sociology, law and economics. Each issue includes scholarly, double-blind peer reviewed articles, and book reviews. CIRR is a member of COPE – Committee on Publication Ethics – and is published electronically, by the Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO) in Zagreb. The journal is supported by the Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia and is published in collaboration with De Gruyter Open, the world’s second largest publisher of Open Access academic content. For further inquiry on CIRR, please write to the editorial board at cirr@irmo.hr or visit our website at http://cirr.irmo.hr/en/.