AbstractsPolitical Science

This article identifies the policy change occurring to the policy subsystem of American culture and arts-based urban revitalization. To inform policy-oriented learning, the analysis of the policy change applies the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to understand the internal and external policy actors and their interactions mobilizing policy change from 1965 to 1995. The Advocacy Coalition Framework provides a panoramic lens of understanding the policy process influenced by different policy coalitions based on their three-tier policy belief system, which delineated the evolving policy beliefs on urban revitalization in relation to the external societal changes.The analysis took the role of the National Endowment for the Arts and its policy decisions relevant to American urban issues as a vantage point to understand American arts and culture-based urban revitalization. The formation of American arts policy system is marked by the NEA’s institutionalization, which created an important policy actor in the policy system of urban revitalization, and evolved into a policy subsystem of arts and culture-based urban revitalization. This study also brings up points of interest for future research based on the current theory and analysis.