The article focuses on analysis and research that has chiefly developed in response to the state's growing intervention in society. Reflecting the increasing need for expert support for political decision-making in policy processes, policy analysis as a new discipline developed in the second half oflast century. The use of policy analysis has been shifting from the core state sectors to others, including cultural policies. In the article, we analyse the development of systems for monitoring and evaluating cultural policies in France, the Netherlands and Finland on the basis of both previous research and 23 interviews conducted with governmental and nongovernmental experts in these countries in 2002. The institutional, contextual and methodological characteristics of these systems are compared. Research has shown that state actors (political decision-makers) are privileged due to their monopolistic positions and access to expert knowledge (policy analysis findings) in the policy process. Still, we are witnessing the strengthening ofthe civil society sector in democratic societies. This phenomenon is also expressed in the shrinking state monopoly in the mentioned systems. Policy analysis is becoming a tool of the democratisation of cultural policy-making. Through civil society actors' involvement in the monitoring and evaluating of cultural policies the state-centred systems of collecting primarily quantitative data for the needs of political executives are being altered by both the enrichment of sources and the methodological complexity of monitoringand evaluating cultural policies.
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