The goals of national research policy are defined by the Storting and the Government, who are responsible for establishing the overall financial framework and identifying general priorities. The Ministry of Education and Research is the administrative agency responsible for co-ordinating research policy and administers roughly half of the total public funding for research activities. In Norway, research is organised at a sectional level, which means that each ministry is partly responsible for funding research within its sphere of responsibility. The Ministry of Trade and Industry (with responsibility for creative industries) is the second largest source of funding for the research sector.

The Norwegian Council for Research has the primary responsibility for developing and implementing national research strategy, and for identifying priority areas for basic and applied research. Approximately one-third of all public allocations to research is channelled through the Research Council.

Cultural research activities in Norway are primarily carried out by national universities and colleges and rarely by public and private research institutions. The University of Bergen is one of the centres for cultural studies, hosting the Cultural Studies Programme of the Norwegian Council for Research. This programme is situated under social sciences and supports cross-disciplinary humanistic and social scientific research on cultural understanding, cultural tension and cultural politics in modern Norway. Information on the programme is only to be found in Norwegian, but applicants are encouraged to make contact for translations. Please see http://www.forskningsradet.no.

The Nordic Cultural Institute is an interdisciplinary institute dedicated to cultural policy research. The Institute carries out research on a project-by-project basis with support from cultural agencies, institutions and research committees in Denmark, the Nordic countries and the rest of Europe. The Institute specialises in the analysis and evaluation of modern cultural policy in a comparative and international perspective. See http://www.nordiskkulturinstitut.dk/english/ for more information.