This article is a discussion of the concept of negative cultural policy, understood as intentional and systematic efforts to curtail the production, distribution and/or consumption of culture. It argues that this curtailing side to cultural policy deserves more academic and analytical attention than it has received and points to challenges and directions in which such an analysis can be developed. The article describes a series of core elements for negative cultural policy, and through examples, describes a sedimentary development of negative cultural policy. New elements have been added to the existing ones, thereby producing a policy field of increasing complexity. The research questions for the article are: What are the elements of negative cultural policy? How can we build a relevant analytical framework for negative cultural policy? In order to shed light on the importance of and analytical potential of negative cultural policy, the article combines a perspective of cultural history with conceptual perspectives from literature on policy tools.
