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On 17th May 2020, the New Zealand Government announced a $265 million investment to support sport and recreation amid the country's first COVID-19 lockdown. The Sport NZ Recovery Package (RP) focused on three investment outcomes for the sector: 'Reset and Rebuild', 'Strengthen and Adapt', and [become] 'Different and Better' (Sport NZ 2020a). This study examines the overall design features and funding initiatives of the RP as a novel policy response to 'turbulence'. Of particular interest is whether this instrument was 'system changing' (McDonnell and Elmore 1987) and how it might enable future transformation or stability in the sports sector. Drawing from documents and interviews with officials from Sport NZ, one National Sports Organisation (NSO), and six Regional Sports Trusts (RSTs), three key findings relate to 1) the characteristics of the RP as policy instrument; 2) the novelty of Tū Manawa relative to Sport NZ's shifting strategy; and 3) the way in which organisations coped with the administration of new funds. The findings suggest that Sport NZ's funding strategies were multidimensional (targeting a wider array of activities and organisations than those pre-COVID-19) and could themselves be 'turbulent-inducing'. Future studies should examine the long-term legacy of the package and its associated goals to interpret if Sport NZ's initiatives are sustained for the [promised] readjustment and strengthening of the New Zealand sports sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government sport agencies maintain an enduring interest in National Sport Organisations (NSOs) and deploy a number of tools to make them more effective and efficient. Independent, consultant-led reviews are increasingly used to assess aspects of capability, sustainability, governance, management, and programme delivery. However, it is unknown how NSOs respond to these instruments and the latter's capacity to induce substantive change. This research investigates how and why NSOs respond to independent reviews of their organisations, whether purposefully, passively or politically. Drawing from documents and interviews with NSO officials, findings demonstrate that NSOs respond both purposefully and passively to recommendations advising centralised control over their networks. While there is evidence that responses to reviews invite further state involvement, the mix of responses, along with the finding that 'reviews beget reviews', suggests NSOs maintain considerable agency to 'muddle through' recommendations. This study speaks to why reviews may be repeated and why they may face increasing scepticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With growing governmental involvement in sport, there has been a corresponding demand on national sport organizations (NSOs) to operate within performance measurement systems. In this study, we analyze data from New Zealand to determine NSO officials’ perceptions of (a) their reporting relationship with the central agency (Sport and Recreation New Zealand), and (b) the system of performance contracts (or “investment schedules”). Following Norman (2002), we found differing perceptions regarding the legitimacy of performance systems and three tensions emerged. First, the clarity of focus enabled by performance measurement was tempered by the perception of an ever-changing political environment. Second, NSO officials acted strategically and opportunistically at times, marshalling arguments around performance measures to “capture” their principal. Third, neither trust nor distrust in the system necessarily translated into compliance; some NSOs sought independence from the system. This research speaks to the legitimacy of performance systems, a significant but tenuous element to their sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study illustrates how the rules and practices of a task force inquiry shaped the formulation of its policy. Adopting an institutional approach, it analyzes New Zealand's Ministerial Taskforce on Sport, Fitness and Leisure (2001). Specifically, this article investigates the role of institutional arrangements (including public consultation and submission procedures) in shaping, delimiting, and circumscribing that task forces findings and recommendations. The investigation consists of a critical analysis of available texts—including recorded observations of public consultations, written submissions, committee notes—and interviews with task force members. Two features of this task force are described and analyzed: (1) its terms of reference and operative assumptions and (2) its rules and procedures that guided the public participation processes. It is shown that the institutional arrangements can channel debates and thereby recast political relations among interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taskforces, commissions of inquiry, and advisory committees are significant institutional features in the development of government sport policy. This study analyzes New Zealand's Ministerial Taskforce on Sport, Fitness, and Leisure (2001) and uses empirical data gathered from observations of consultations, interviews with committee members, and available documents. It is argued that procedural, organizational, and political considerations significantly shaped and constrained the Taskforce's findings and recommendations. Two fundamental contradictions are discussed. The first concerns the expectations for these bodies to develop both innovative and pragmatic recommendations in light of their ad hoc nature, their broad mandates, and short time lines. The second contradiction speaks to the paradoxical nature of taskforces in developing sport policy, noting in particular their dual roles as both advocates for the sport sector and investigators responsible for addressing problems and issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National taskforces and inquiries are used extensively by governments wishing to review their involvement in sport. Underpinning these reviews are dominant ideas like "national unity," or "excellence." Ideas matter in public policy because they form the basis for framing political judgments and because their meanings are continually translated into future plans and actions (Hoppe, 1993. This study investigates the role of ideas in shaping and circumscribing the findings and recommendations emanating from a national taskforce in New Zealand. Information was gathered through interviews with Taskforce members, observations of public consultations, and analysis of submitted documents. Key ideas included notions of efficiency, competitiveness, and leadership. These ideas are discussed, focusing in particular on their contradictory/paradoxical nature and their role in (re)producing power relations. The paper concludes with future research questions and a call for more critical investigations into sport policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New sport stadia are always contentious projects but in small cities, the stakes may be proportionally higher. This study analyses the turbulence generated by a stadium's approval and financing in Dunedin, New Zealand (2004-2017).It analyses: 1) the city's deferment of advice and fundraising to a charitable trust, 2) the financing apparatus that used council-owned companies (COCs) to obfuscate costs, and 3) the resultant consequences including legal proceedings, COC reforms and company failures. It is suggested that the porousness of governance arrangements invited scrutiny of the links between the city and its COCs, and by extension induced a temporary halt to the softening public-private boundary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governing state-funded sport is tenuous because of the need to maintain legitimacy and support from political authorisers, stakeholders and network partners/members. The purpose of this paper is to compare/contrast how central sport agencies in Norway and New Zealand create, build or sustain legitimacy through their accountability regimes. More particularly, this comparison distinguishes between input and output sources of legitimacy, where the former is associated with democratic processes (e.g., electoral procedures and public consultation), and the latter is linked with results and demonstrable benefits. While the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF) draws legitimacy from its representative membership structures and status as a social movement, Sport New Zealand claims legitimacy on the basis of achieving targets and outputs. In both cases there are emerging pressures to recast input-output legitimating narratives, suggesting their 'depleteability' over time. These shifts are discussed in relation to their influence on policy reforms within environments of accountability that are fluid and incomplete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date there has been little explicit theorization concerning the role of risk in global migration studies. Drawing upon Beck's concept of the 'risk society,' this paper presents an investigation of the interplay between societal risk and micro-level migration decision-making. Thick historical contextualization and interview data are used to examine the process of decision-making of South Koreans' migration to New Zealand. Four risk factors were found to contribute to their 'exit' decisions: South Korea's highly competitive, work-oriented society brought about by compressed modernity; North Korea's threat of war and the South's consequent political and military culture; the home nation's obsession with education and academic performance; and the difficulties of reconciling traditional collectivist values with upward mobility. It is argued that while elements of risk may be universal, they need to be understood within specific cultural contexts and in relation to how they influence peoples' lived experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small states are broadly distinguished on economic, political and cultural grounds and more particularly in relation to their vulnerability and resilience. This paper examines how legitimations around a country’s small size can induce compromises to buttress particular sport policies. Drawing from the New Zealand context, it explores how domestic cooperation can be prompted by the discursive frames of smallness itself. It further suggests that New Zealand’s corresponding ambition to ‘punch above its weight’ has enabled policy transformations to make the sport system appear more legitimate but no less vulnerable. Because scale invites consolidation, targeting and rationing, central sport agencies in small states may have to paradoxically invoke strategies to break the very communal bonds that provide them with the ‘fertile’ conditions for growth and competitive advantage. The study of small states may help scholars and policy-makers to better understand the significance of ‘managed intimacy’ as a counterbalance to neoliberal doctrines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The performance measurement regimes instituted by central government sport agencies have both intended and unintended effects in relation to their network partners. The purpose of this article is to investigate the actions and interpretations of national sport organizations (NSOs) in relation to a performance regime. Drawing from data in New Zealand, two broad categories of institutional effects are identified and discussed. The first category of effects relates to the tendency for performance measurement and monitoring to reinforce the delineation/demarcation between elite and community sport due to the relative clarity of the former’s measures, and the institutionalization of ‘cream-skimming’ at national and sub-national levels. The second category of effects surrounds the apparent paradoxes and vulnerabilities of performance measurement that include the demand for indicators to ‘mushroom’ and the development of ‘gaming’ behaviours. This study highlights the tenuousness of performance measurement schemes as a feature of ‘good management’ as well as their ultimate contribution towards (or disruption of) ‘good policy’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies aiming to enhance sport participation and physical activity are prone to change and highly influenced by shifting government priorities and instruments. In 2009, the New Zealand Government and its agency Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC) abolished programmes aimed at inducing general physical activity and in their place establishedKiwisport, an initiative to get more school-age children involved in organized sport. This study analyses the impact of these changes on regional sports trusts (RSTs), as regional implementers of national sport policy and theKiwisportinitiative. Based on a process of induction from available texts (interviews with chief executives of RSTs and both public/nonpublic documents), three emerging challenges are presented and discussed. The first concerns how RSTs can fulfil Kiwisport's promises of minimal bureaucracy in the light of the limited capacities of community organizations and increasing demands from SPARC for evaluation. The second surrounds the difficulty in reconciling Kiwisport's allowance for greater RST discretion/autonomy with the demands for integrated national–regional delivery. The third challenge is with regard to creating sustainable community initiatives under conditions of depleting resources and shifting policy priorities. Findings raise fundamental questions as to how and to what extent RSTs should realign their organizations to meet central government objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In conjunction with the extensive growth of new media technologies, stadium debates and competing claims on civic resources are being increasingly played out in cyberspace. Using case material from Dunedin, New Zealand, we critically examine the deployment of popular video sharing websites like YouTube that allow dominant interest groups to articulate their 'unfiltered' ideological positions. We suggest that stadium proponents (in the private and public sectors) are utilizing new media technologies (e.g., websites, blogs, etc.) as part of highly orchestrated public-relations campaigns that are designed to create the impression of popular support and optimistic momentum for development. In bypassing traditional media and skirting oppositional viewpoints, we argue that these types of promotional strategies have profound implications for local democratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of city officials, proposals to build new stadiums are tenuous because of the dual local government imperatives of having to be both visionary (i.e., entrepreneurial) and conservative (i.e., fiscally responsible and publicly accountable). Based on case data in Dunedin, New Zealand, we investigate two related dilemmas that emanate from that city's stadium deliberation process. The first is with regards to the dichotomy between politicians and bureaucrats, and the degree to which deliberations on a new stadium should be politically or technocratically driven. The second concerns the extent to which local authorities favour independence or accountability in gathering information. Here we suggest that deference and delegation to an 'independent' body became tantamount to procrastinating - that is a case of holding the process up in order to progress it. Our analysis demonstrates that such dilemmas demand immediate responses that, while seemingly benign in the short term, alter the balance between a city's entrepreneurial outlook and its view towards citizen responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sport policies are underpinned by particular interpretive frameworks or paradigms. These paradigms shape: a) the construction of policy problems, b) the alternative approaches to resolving these problems and c) what is considered to be an acceptable government intervention. This article investigates how a policy paradigm shaped the findings and recommendations of New Zealand's Ministerial Taskforce on Sport, Fitness and Leisure. Using empirical data gathered from observations of the Taskforce's consultations, interviews with Taskforce members and a review of public submissions, it is argued that a paradigm (stressing rationalization and integration) served as the basis for recommendations to reduce the number of regional sports trusts, to centralize control over the sector and to coordinate the administration of sport. Two fundamental contradictions and paradoxes arising from this paradigm shift are discussed. The first notes the historical contingencies that gave rise to the problem of fragmented sport delivery structures, including govermnent's preference for contractual agreements and decentralized control. The second examines the appropriateness of centralizing powers given the inherent need for specialized (and autonomous) delivery mechanisms. This study's focus on paradigms helps to explain how policies can alter institutional relations and the lived world of actors with respect to their identities, opportunities and capacities to act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]