Exploring the Gap between Museum Policy and Practice: a Comparative analysis of Scottish, English and Welsh Local Authority Museum Services

This paper explores the gap between museum policy and practice in the United Kingdom (UK) by offering empirical evidence from a comparative street-level analysis of museum services in Scotland, England and Wales. Exploring devolution in cultural services from the ground-level using Lipsky’s (1980) ‘street-level’ approach gives new insights to the role of groundlevel workers in cultural policy. It shows that museum workers had an awareness of national policies, but implementation was mainly influenced by a mixture of challenges in the everyday delivery of the museum services studied. Museum workers understood policy as something symbolic rather than relating to action, which reinforced policy distance. Workers at the groundlevel had more similarities than differences throughout Scotland, England and Wales and the structural challenges within museum services indicated a complex negotiation that increased agency at the ground-level. These findings outline