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Although there has been a rapid growth in the globalisation of sport and its delivery to world markets, nevertheless there is a variety of models of sport-business whose characteristics are the product of local histories, local political and sporting cultures, local economic conditions and so on. This paper does not seek to deny the increasingly obvious impact of globalisation on professional sport, but rather it seeks to articulate the ways in which such global phenomena are locally mediated in professional soccer systems in five countries, to identify and to explain local responses to global pressures. The five examples include the oldest professional football system, that of England, and a second contrasting European system, France, together with three relatively recently established professional football systems in Japan a developed capitalist economy, Algeria, which is developing a post-socialist sports economy, and China which is experimenting in sport as in other areas with a ‘socialist market economy’. The resultant evolution of professional sporting systems represents distinctive configurations of stakeholders in what are in effect contrasting business models, and reflects a situation of ‘diminishing varieties and increasing contrasts’, in contrast to the claims made by Elias in relation to global cultural phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper draws on research into child welfare services in France, Germany and England which compares the subjective experience of mothers who have been in contact with family support and child protection agencies in the three countries. The mothers' stories suggest that successful help-achieving strategies differ according to the nature of the child welfare regime, and that behaviour which is effective in getting a good response in one country may work less well elsewhere. The stories of two mothers in each of the countries have been chosen to demonstrate how the structures of different social welfare regimes affect the efforts of welfare users to get the help they need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]