Market and managerialism have met the art worlds in France and Switzerland according to their specific national traditions. Through the discourses of both cultural administrations, the contribution analyses the changing role of the cultural state facing the contrasting effects of globalisation and digitalisation on individualisation, identities and demography. While in traditionally art-friendly France the trend is towards new forms of territorialised but also European governance, in federally structured Switzerland the state, usually discreet in cultural maters, newly stresses the necessity of a stronger national cultural policy to take up these challenges. Transcending both cases is the trend to put the social, economic, cultural and cognitive dimensions of culture and communication forward to legitimize these profound changes in cultural policies, altering the definition of culture itself.