In this volume, a number of scholars from various Dutch universities and research institutions have shed their light on the past quarter century of the Dutch cultural policy system. This book as a whole, however, is not intended to be a historical overview. On the contrary, the book looks forwards with the aim of discovering the directions the Dutch cultural policy system might need to take in the coming decades. In this epilogue, we will take a step back and give ourselves free reign to use the insights brought to light in this book to dwell on Dutch cultural policy in the next 25 years. If anything, the analyses in the preceding chapters have revealed that Dutch cultural policy is very systematic: it developed into an intricate system with particular roles for policy agents and particular subsidy regimes for different types of cultural institutions. For example, there is the Basic Infrastructure for those institutions deemed indispensable to Dutch culture, the funds supporting the more experimental producers of culture, a different subsidy scheme for enhancing audience reach, and a specific budget for international cultural policy. Dutch cultural policy can truly be described as a system. Therefore, in this epilogue we will use a systems theory perspective as a guiding framework. Luhmann (1984) describes how social systems evolve as a consequence of the process of functional differentiation in society. Each system that evolves deals with a particular issue, solving a particular societal problem. Luhmann refers to this as the function of social systems for society as a whole. In order to do so, each system develops its own internal logics and adjusts its internal operations to pressures from the environment as it sees fit.

We first revisit the question of why the cultural policy system developed. What was it designed for, and what are its benefits? These benefits tell us something about the societal function of the cultural policy system. Using the insights of the different chapters in this book, we will then describe in sections 2 and 3 of this epilogue some of the internal logics of the cultural policy system that became apparent as it developed over time, and how it reacted to pressures from the political and economic environment. Section 4 takes a more topical perspective, focusing on the most recent cultural policy document of the current Minister of Culture, Ingrid van Engelshoven (Ministerie OCW 2018).