In the nearly three decades since the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts, the political dynamics and focal issues of federal arts policy have changed considerably. Initially, arts policy developed as a relatively simple distributive policy subgovernment focussed on increasing financial resources for the NEA and, through it, to the arts constituency. During the 1970s, this distributive subgovernment matured into a stable system, characterized by low visibility issues and cooperative relations among its triple alliance partners - the arts community, the NEA and its authorizing and appropriations subcommittees in Congress.

Together this alliance secured resources and distributed subsidies to artists, arts organizations, and arts agencies on the premise that the arts were desirable and of public benefit to society as a whole. During the 1980s, however, the mutuality of interest within the subgovernment triad began to show signs of divergence, even as the number and type of issues affecting the arts increased and diversified, often engaging political players from outside the original policy subgovernment. Not only did Congress increase reporting requirements on the NEA, but the decade began with a special Task Force and ended with an independent Commission both convened to consider the NEA's purposes and procedures. (p. 47)

Beginning in 1985 and emphatically since 1989, regulatory policy issues concerning grants supporting allegedly offensive, pornographic, obscene, indecent and/or blasphemous activities have gained considerable prominence. The emergence of this regulatory element challenged heretofore prevailing public benefit assumptions and promoted different policy politics. In this new environment, policy actors other than those with direct artistic interests provoked visible and heated debate that destabilized the interrelations of the arts policy triangle and often deflected issue resolution into a broader congressional area, such as conference committees or floor action in the House and/or Senate. As is common to other regulatory issues, the proposed regulations concerning the content of arts to be funded with public money provoked considerable conflict and invoked repeated debate between 1989 and 1992. The attendant constitutional issues only intensified the political conflict. (p. 76)

CONTENTS
Policy and policy systems.
Prelude: establishing the arts on the federal agenda.
The development of an arts subgovernment.
A mature arts subgovernment in action.
Counterpoint in the 1980's: conflict and erosion.
A changed policy politics.