The concept of quality is difficult to identify clearly. Many attempts to define quality havebeen made, but the resulting definition remains vague.The quality concept (in the artistic sense) has since 1974 played a leading role in Swedishcultural policy. In the spring of 2009, a publication, named “Kulturutredningen” waspublished. This report suggested a number of changes for the Swedish cultural policy. One ofthe changes suggested is an altering of the quality concept which could lead to a lessimportant role, for the quality concept, in Swedish culture policy. This would also have aneffect on how the Swedish government distributes subsidies to the cultural sector.The purpose of this thesis is to identify how The Swedish Art Council and the County Councilin Stockholm deal with the problematic aspects of quality and how they define it. Ininterviews, the handling officers in the area of dance and theatre, has described their views onquality and how they use it in their work with distributing subsidies to the cultural sector.Through these interviews we have noted similarities as well as differences. One of thedifferences that we discovered is that the Swedish Art Council, contrary to the CountyCouncil in Stockholm, always uses an external group of people, working in the cultural sector(for example as directors or choreographers), to help them decide who will receive subsidies.Nevertheless, both the County Council of Stockholm and the Swedish Art Council havealmost identical views on the definition of quality. That is: the definition has to be individualand is therefore subjective.We have also discovered signs of the New Public Management movement appearing in theorganisations. For example, in work of the Arts Council these signs were found in the designof the Art Councils application for subsidy.