Local culture and cultural policy: opponents or accomplices?

Which is the relationship between local cultural practices and cultural policy? And how public action can modify such a relationship? By comparing two different regional case-studies, the Tourist Association «Sa Corona Arrùbia» in Sardinia and the Collective Operator «Local Plans and Programmes» in Basilicata, this paper suggests that there is a relationship of interdependence between local cultural practices and cultural policy based on legitimacy and the collective organization of public action. In particular, the capacity of understanding local collective stories, that is peculiar to cultural policy, as well as its complementarity with a system of locally active public policies, and the capacity of involving an increasing number of local actors and of favouring their functional specialisation, that is peculiar to policy process, represent the most frequent chances of public action to settle local cultural practices.