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Published in the Journal of Sport Management in 1995, Laurence Chalip’s “Policy Analysis in Sport Management” persuasively argued that effective sport managers should equip themselves with a particular set of critical policy analysis tools. Since that time, the study of sport policy has gained a strong foothold in the academic literature, but sport policy analysis is not often linked to managerial practice. This paper offers a critique and synthesis of a number of policy analysis frameworks (including Chalip’s), and offers a refreshed set of robust and pragmatic analytical precepts that sport managers might employ to understand and influence policymaking. Following Chalip’s original approach, this paper relies on an empirical case involving the development of national sport policy (the United States’ Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and SafeSport Authorization Act) to illustrate and support its broader arguments.

The aim of this study is to investigate, through the application of stakeholder theory, the challenges faced by the Bergen 2017 Organizing Committee when hosting the 2017 Road World Championship in cycling. Data for the case study were collected through interviews with eight senior representatives from stakeholders such as the Organizing Committee Bergen 2017 and international and national federations, event observations, and from the analysis of selected documents. The study examined the development of stakeholder relationships through three phases in the development and delivery of the event (i. e., preevent, event time, and postevent). The Bergen 2017 organizing committee members were referred to as happy amateurs by the media but proved to be astute in managing their relationship with the international federation as a primary stakeholder and resourceful in coping with a shortage of professional staff due to the help by volunteers. The research illustrates the problematic nature of stakeholder management in temporary event organizations and how it is possible to host a major event with limited resources, in terms of skills, time, staff, finance, and support from important stakeholders. These results have significant implications for event organizers facing similar resource challenges and who have to manage a complex network of stakeholders. The results also have implications for stakeholder theory in relation to the distinctive challenges arising from the temporary nature of the organizing committee and their evolution through the different phases.

International sport is inherently political. Its governance structures are complex involving a multiplicity of actors. Its foundation is traditional, centred on ideas about self-governance and autonomy while simultaneously challenged by the contradictory requirements to promote and regulate sport. The politics of international sport can be seen in the authoritative allocation of values, the collective action necessary to determine who gets what, when and how, and ultimately being clear about who cares about what, where and why. It is in this setting where the concept of power and the ability of agents to exercise power is particularly insightful in garnering a more nuanced understanding of the systemic governance of international sport. To this end, this study examines power relations in international sport by applying Bergsgard’s analytical framework, which adapts Lukes’ three faces of power and Bourdieu’s ideas about symbolic power, to the Russian Doping Scandal. Documentary analysis is used as the primary method of exploration. Our analysis illustrates how the deep structures of the Russian state and the structural conditions of the international sport governance field permitted the case to evolve to scandalous proportions. The paper also reveals the power dynamics between various stakeholders involved in the scandal and how these power dynamics led to failings in the governance of international sport.

As a consequence of the growing awareness of the limitations of an over-reliance on the deployment of hard power, governments have shown an increasing willingness to add soft power strategies to th...

The profile gives an overview of the changing trends of sport policies adopted in Ghana and highlights how past political upheavals made it difficult to have stable sport development strategies. Cu...

This chapter traces the emergence of the major classes of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) used in sport such as stimulants and steroids and also techniques that have potential to enhance performance such as gene doping. Trends in use of PEDs are examined along with progress in adapting anti-doping regulations and developing methods to identify PEDs. The chapter also examines the relationship between PED consumption in elite sport and use by non-elite athletes, especially young athletes, and gym users.

The continuing challenge of achieving compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code had led WADA to place an increasing emphasis on strengthening anti-doping values. Education was given a much higher and clearer profile in the 2015 iteration of the Code and in 2017 WADA established a working group to prepare an International Standard to prioritise values-based education. The aims of this paper are to explore the utility of the ‘spirit of sport’ as a global moral reference point, to assess the significance of cultural values for successful Code compliance and to contribute to the development of values-based education programmes. The research is based on two large-scale surveys of public opinion in Japan and the United Kingdom. The analysis of the data indicated that the general public assess the nature of an action in terms of their own experience and in terms of what is normal in their daily lives rather than in a narrow sporting context. Differences were evident not only between the two countries, but also between genders and age groups within the countries. The challenge for WADA is to appreciate the need to take careful account of the variety of moral reference points found in societies. While the Code is a universal set of regulations the way in which it should be promoted needs to be aligned with the particularities of cultural contexts.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was established in 1999 in an atmosphere that combined frustration with the lack of leadership on anti-doping provided by the International Olympic Committee (IO...

The effectiveness of the World Anti-Doping Agency as an international non-governmental\ud organisation with a mission to regulate anti-doping policy has been challenged before by\ud doping scandals in sport. Historically, anti-doping policy development has been primarily\ud reactive, determined by the need for dominant organisations to maintain power rather than to\ud protect athletes. The purpose of this paper is to explore reactive anti-doping policy change\ud from a multi-level legitimacy perspective. Using multi-level legitimacy theory and the\ud concept of legitimacy challenges, it is argued that reactive policy change is motivated by a\ud need to manage perceived organisational legitimacy. The recent exposure of systematic\ud doping in Russia is used as an example to support this analysis. These findings are discussed\ud in the context of current criticisms of anti-doping policy.

This paper investigates the influences of change recipients’ supportive behaviors toward the national reform in the Chinese football sector. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews (n = 29), which were conducted with change recipients from national and local football associations and commercial football clubs. Drawing on an integrated conceptual framework, the findings suggest that the change-supportive behaviors demonstrated by the change recipients were influenced and incentivised by managerial factors (i.e., management competency, communication channels, participation in decision-making, leaders’ commitment to change, and principal support); and contextual factors (i.e., an amenable football environment and the perceived political pressure to change). Three manifestations of change-supportive behaviors were identified: a) showing understanding of the change but pessimistic about the outcome; b) supporting the change and being willing to take risks; and c) supporting the change and actively seeking alternative solutions.

This paper examines how Norwegian (n = 5) and Austrian (n = 12) cyclists experienced the interaction with different stakeholders when participating at the UCI Road World Championship. Athletes were interviewed during and after the event in their respective home countries. In addition, informal interviews with coaches and journalists were conducted. Findings reveal that the young athletes perceived the media to be a stressor when adding the 'home location' to the event; this was particularly true for the Norwegian men. The massive attention, extra-curricular activities added by sponsors and the expectation of excelling 'at home', placed pressure on them. In contrast to the Norwegians, Austrian athletes were less stressed as the local organisers were more focused on promoting cycling tourism than on Austrian success in the competition. The findings contribute to the literature by: 1) emphasising the significance of the media as a stressor; 2) identifying the factors that determine the level of stress on young athletes; 3) finally, analysing the significance of home location for young athletes in the context of major sports events.

Research question: Institutional work by actors (e.g., organisations or individuals) to create,\ud maintain or disrupt institutions requires redefining what is considered legitimate behaviour.\ud Furthermore, research indicates that field-configuring events (FCE), such as conferences,\ud which temporarily unite actors, are important junctures for institutional processes. Research\ud is yet to address how FCE intersect with the effectiveness of institutional work. The aim of\ud this paper is to explore how (i) the legitimacy of an actor at the time of an FCE, and (ii) the\ud co-location of actors at an FCE impact institutional work effectiveness.\ud Research methods: The 1999 Lausanne Conference is used as a case study because it led to\ud significant institutional disruption in the field of anti-doping through the creation of the\ud Lausanne Declaration. To analyse these institutional processes, a qualitative thematic analysis\ud of 624 newspaper articles and archival documents from the conference was conducted.\ud Results and Findings: Firstly, we demonstrate that institutional maintenance can fail if an\ud actor’s legitimacy is under challenge at the time of an FCE. Secondly, the co-location of\ud likeminded actors can create a consensus that acts as a cue to enable institutional disruption.\ud Implications: Based on the findings, suggestions are made to inform decision-making\ud processes about institutional work. Initial categorisation of FCE conditions are presented and\ud five propositions are made for future exploration.

Research question: This paper examined the impact of participation in YOG on Norwegian team members with a particular emphasis on differences between those who continued in elite sport and those that dropped out.Research methods: We used a retrospective survey design to collect quantitative and qualitative data from former Norwegian YOG participants (from 2010, 2012, and 2014), with 58 of the 64 athletes responding to the survey in December 2015.Results and findings: Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Roemer’s [(1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406] typology of constraints and their concept of deliberative practice provided the framework for the data analysis. Key findings include: (a) the dropout rate was lower than that reported for similar groups; (b) the main reasons for dropout were school pressures and poor relations with the coach; (c) there was little difference in the perceived level of support from schools, parent...

Research questions: Community sport policy is at the centre of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games legacy plans. Specifically, the policy goal is to achieve year-on-year growth in mass sports participation. The government has committed significant public funding to the policy (£950 million between 2008 and 2017), a specific delivery system has been developed, and a number of techniques have been employed to manage and oversee policy implementation. This paper utilises Marsh and Smith’s [(2000). Understanding policy networks: Towards a dialectical approach. Political studies, 48, 4–21. doi:10.1111/1467-9248.00247] dialectical network approach to examine the community sport policy process, drawing particular attention to the effect of contemporary technologies of governing policy implementation [Green, M. (2009). Podium or participation? Analysing policy priorities under changing modes of sport governance in the United Kingdom. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 1(2), 121–1...

The paper examines the talent identification and development process in three youth disability sports: wheelchair basketball, Boccia and disability tennis. The analysis is concerned to explore the extent of convergence in processes between disability sports and between disability and mainstream sports. The analytical framework adopted identifies seven dimensions along which convergence can be assessed and is used in conjunction with a typology of levels of policy change. The data for the analysis were collected through a series of semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The main findings included evidence of convergence between disability sports and between the three disability sports and mainstream sports especially in relation to: motives; agendas and aspirations; and contextualizing discourse/ideology/values. There was also evidence of policy change at all three levels identified by Hall.

The aim of this paper is to provide a context for the contributions which follow in this special issue. Attention is drawn to the range of possible motives for the increase in interest in youth sport evinced by a selection of major stakeholders including international sport federations, domestic federations and event organizers. The paper draws attention to the changing relationship between young people and sport where the former are seen increasingly as a resource to help meet the organizational objectives of the latter. The paper concludes with a summary of, and commentary on, the nine papers in the special issue.

Established in 1999, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was an ambitious project to harmonise anti-doping regulations globally. Since its creation, WADA has engaged in additional activities such as investigating doping allegations, managing whistleblowers and coordinating with national and international customs organisations. These activities demonstrate ‘mission creep’, a term denoting that WADA’s purpose has broadened from its original responsibilities. Lawrence (2008) argues that the relationship between an international non-governmental organisation’s legitimacy to regulate an issue and mission creep is related to its means (i.e., physical and non-physical resources) and effectiveness. This article explores how WADA’s mission creep has influenced its perceived legitimacy as the regulator of anti-doping, globally. Following analysis of 14 interviews with occupationally and globally diverse anti-doping professionals, three themes were identified: code implementation, representation, and conflicts of interest. It is argued that the legitimacy of WADA to regulate anti-doping has been weakened due to tensions created by responding to emerging challenges in order to maintain legitimacy, whilst trying to secure means. These tensions have diverted resources to new activities and, therefore, reduced WADA’s effectiveness in other activities; paradoxically undermining its legitimacy. Consequently, it is advised that WADA prioritises its responsibilities, looks for additional sources of means and addresses democratic deficiencies.

In March 2015, the Chinese government issued the Overall Plan for Chinese Football Reform and Development, which aimed to develop football in China from the grassroots level to the elite level. The salient element of the plan was to separate the Chinese Football Association (CFA) from direct government control. Considering the previous failed attempts to reform the CFA, this paper asks the question ‘why the reform occurred in 2015 and not earlier?’ and aims to: 1) identify the potential sources of the policy change through the lens of the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) and 2) examine the timing and conditions under which the Chinese government initiated the football reform. Public policy documents and media reports from 1993 to 2017 were collected and analysed; 17 interviews were conducted with key policy actors within the CFA and professional football clubs in varying tiers of Chinese football leagues. The findings suggest that the failure of previous policy attempts at improving Chinese football (policy stream), match-fixing scandals and the continuing under-performance of the national men’s team (problem stream), the increasingly critical national mood towards football and the turnover of Presidency (political stream) combined in the mid-2010s opened a ‘policy window’ which facilitated this significant change. This research is the first paper to apply the MSF theory to explain the Chinese football reform that occurred in 2015. It extends the application of MSF to a different political and cultural environment and has implications for the policy-making in China.

The aim of the paper is to analyse the increasingly prominent role of private sports schools in the development of elite athletes in Norway. The context for the analysis is the apparent paradox between the emergence of a network of sports schools, the most successful of which are private and require that parents pay a fee, and the social democratic values of Norway. Data were collected through a series of interviews with 35 respondents from nine stakeholder groups, including athletes, coaches, parents and sport school managers. The research describes an elite sport system that is successful in producing medal-winning athletes, but which is organisationally fragmented, uncoordinated and under-funded with regard to youth talent identification and development and susceptible to tensions between key actors. The primary analytical framework is Kingdon’s multiple streams framework augmented by path dependency theory. The findings include, a picture of an elite youth sport development system in which multiple and overlapping problems have received, at best, only partial policy solutions some of which, such as the growth of private sports schools, have emerged by default. When focusing attention on the relationship between structure and agency in the policy process it is argued that the government, through its inaction, has allowed sports schools the policy space to expand. The consequence is that the government has, whether deliberately or not, enabled the strengthening of a commercial elite youth sport development system, while still preserving its egalitarian and non-interventionist credentials.

© 2015 University of Kent. Central to this article is the use of sports mega-events as part of a state's “soft power” strategy. The article offers two things: first, a critique of the “soft power” concept and a clearer understanding of what it refers to by drawing on the political use of sports mega-events by states; second, the article seeks to understand how and why sports mega-events are attractive to states with different political systems and at different stages of economic development. To this end a case study of an advanced capitalist state (London Olympics, 2012) and a so-called “emerging” state (FIFA World Cup, 2014; Rio Olympics, 2016) will be undertaken in order to shed light on the role of sports events as part of soft power strategies across different categories of states.

The article analyses the concept of partnership and specifically explores the significance for the operation of partnerships, in the areas of youth and community sport, of the perspectives that partners bring to these relationships. The general context for the analysis is the increasing use of partnerships by government for the achievement of its sport policy objectives. The article examines the triangular relationship between School Sport Partnerships (SSPs), National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs), and County Sport Partnerships (CSPs). The specific context for the analysis is the decision by the Secretary of State for Education to remove funding from SSPs and the impact that this had on the triangular relationship. The study uses data from a number of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires with CSP and NGB representatives to explore their interpretations of this change. The findings present agents’ perspectives in three discrete areas: the value and effectiveness of SSPs, the broader implicatio...

The aim of the article is to evaluate the contribution of bilateralism to global anti-doping policy. The article begins with an assessment of contemporary challenges facing the World Anti-Doping Agency in attempting to strengthen compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code and notes the weaknesses in compliance. The analytical framework for the article is derived from regime theory, neo-institutionalism and the concept of isomorphism. This is followed by a discussion of the nature of the anti-doping global policy regime and the part that bilateralism might play in the various stages of regime development. The development of bilateral collaboration is traced, and the leading role played by Norway in its development is examined. The central section of the article utilises neo-institutionalist theory and the concept of isomorphism to explore the case of Norway’s bilateral links with China and identifies the outputs of the collaboration and also the motives of both partners. The article concludes with an analy...

Purpose – The paper aims to utilise Adam and Kriesi's network approach to policy analysis to examine the range of exogenous factors that affect interactions in the community sport policy process from a local authority perspective. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based upon two case studies. Each case study involved semi-structured interviews with three local authority middle/senior managers, three senior County Sport Partnership (CSP) representatives, and eight regional/county national governing bodies of sport (NGB) representatives. Findings – While the two cases exhibit distinctive socio-economic and structural profiles they provide valuable evidence regarding the operation of the network of partners involved in community sport and also illustrate the utility of Adam and Kriesi's analytical framework. In relation to Adam and Kriesi's power/interaction model both cases illustrate the fragmentation of power at the community level although interaction in one case exhibits a pattern best characterised as “competition” whereas interaction in the other is more closely associated with “horizontal cooperation”. Research limitations/implications – The paper highlights the need for improved theorisation of partnership arrangements in community sport, in particular: examining the relationship between issues such as resources, organisational capacity, and traditional involvement in sport development and attitudes toward the community sport policy process; linked to this, mapping the causal relationships in partnerships, i.e. what factors lead to what actions or behaviours; and investigating the utility of various strategies in developing a more cohesive and effective sub-regional policy system. Originality/value – Local authority perspectives of community sport policy is an under-researched topic. It is timely to study these perspectives due to the refreshed community sport policy for 2013-2017, the traditional status of local government as the major funder of community sport, and the public sector budget reductions and reported implications for non-statutory services, such as community sport

Footballer Jean Marc Bosman, due to a dispute over his transfer between clubs, took his case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the grounds that the decision, by Standard Liege, to block his transfer to the French team Dunkerque, was a restraint of trade. The Court found in his favour, a decision which radically changed the power relations between players and their clubs and led subsequently to UEFA being forced abandon its rules on the number of foreign players that a club could field. From the point of view of the ECJ, it was simply enforcing the articles of the Treaty of Rome, the founding treaty of the European Union, in relation to the free movement of labour. Professional sport was required to operate within the same legal framework as other European businesses (Antonioni and Cubbin 2000; Binder and Findley 2012). The racial segregation policy of apartheid in South Africa, which affected every aspect of life in the country, not only hampered the development of non-white sporting talent, but imbued major sports such as rugby union and cricket with intense political symbolism (Lapchick 1977; Nauright 1997). Finally, the decision by the People’s Republic of China to re-join the Olympic Movement was part of a much broader strategy aimed at achieving the diplomatic isolation of the Republic of China/Taiwan (Chan 1985; Lijun 2002).

The existence of a close relationship between sport, nations and nationalism was clearly illustrated before and during the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, revealing how sport was used to both promote and challenge Scotland’s status as a nation within the United Kingdom (UK) and its potential status as an independent nation-state. The involvement of sport in the 2014 Scottish Referendum campaign was essentially limited to four broad areas: (1) endorsements from sports people for both the yes and the no camps; (2) the production of a series of documents and in particular the Scottish Government’s White Paper on Scotland’s Future and the McLeish Report into sport in an independent Scotland; (3) the hosting of and participating in major sporting events in the belief that they would inuence the outcome of the Referendum; and nally (4) answers to an extremely limited number of survey questions about sport in Scotland.

This article traces the emergence of security at the Olympic Games as a key concern of host governments and of the Olympic movement and analyses the implications of this heightened concern for the delivery of the Games, the local host community and for national security policy. It is argued that the Olympic Games, as a high profile media event, provide an increasingly attractive political opportunity structure for a range of political actors—an attraction that is intensified when the Games are held in a world city such as London. Since the 9/11 attacks in New York there has been a sharp increase in security expenditure for the Olympic Games, arguably significantly out of proportion to the likely risk. The cost of security has risen from approximately $108 million in 1996 (Atlanta) to an estimated $1.99 billion in 2012 (London). It is argued that the period since 2001 has been characterized by hyper-insecurity and a culture of intense risk aversion based not on probability but on the possibility of attack. Among the consequences of this development is a desensitization of host nations to the increased securitization of their cities. It is also argued that the impact on the local UK host community of Newham will be significant not only as a result of the intense level of policing, but also owing to the redevelopment associated with the Games and the use of the surveillance infrastructure to create a virtual gated community in the post-Games athletes' village. The article concludes by discussing some of the longer-term implications of the increased securitization of the Olympic Games, including the normalization of intense surveillance, the further encroachment on civil liberties and the growing tension between the values espoused by the Olympic movement and the reality of a successful delivery of the Games.

The article examines the extent to which, and the manner in which, the Chinese government managed its relationship with the Olympic movement following its re-engagement with international elite sport competition in the mid 1970s. Locating the analysis in the literature on globalisation, the article notes the limited research exploring the role of the state in managing the relationship between domestic and global sport. Based on extensive document analysis and interviews, the article provides an analysis of the governmental strategy to increase Chinese influence in the Olympic movement, produce a strong national Olympic squad of athletes and ensure success at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. It is argued that the Chinese state was not only effective in organising and concentrating resources to support its policy objectives, but was also able to incorporate aspects of market capitalism into its elite development system and, so far at least, generally manage effectively the tensions that arose from an increasingly wealthy, mobile and individualistic cohort of elite athletes and coaches.

The growth in the comparative analysis of sport management processes and policy has led to an increased interest in the concept of convergence. However, the concept is too often treated as unproblematic in definition, measurement and operationalisation. It is argued in this paper that a more effective framework for examining claims of convergence is one that analyses the concept in terms of seven dimensions which can be explored through a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. It is also argued that a deeper understanding of the process of convergence can be gained by operationalising the concept in the context of a selected range of meso-level theories of the policy process or of specific aspects of the process. The proposed analytic framework provides not only a definition of convergence but also the basis for a more nuanced investigation of hypotheses of convergence.