Barrie Houlihan

The Politics of Sports Development: Development of sport or development through sport?

1. The origins of sports development: the 1960s to the mid 1970s 2. The mid 1970s to the early 1990s: sports development comes of age 3. The early 1990s to 1997: welfare restructuring and Majors sporting glory 4. New Labour: the reinvigoration of sport development 5. Sports development in four local authorities 6. Sports development in four national governing bodies of sport 7. Development of sport and / or development through sport?

Public sector sport policy: developing a framework for analysis.

Despite the increasing involvement of governments in sport, and the high level of academic interest in sports-related public policy issues such as equity, doping, harassment and violence, there is remarkably little analysis of sport policy that utilizes the major models and frameworks for analysis widely adopted in other policy areas. Following the development of a set of criteria for assessing the adequacy of analytic frameworks, four major meso-level analytic frameworks are examined: the stages model, institutional analysis, multiple streams model, and the advocacy coalition framework. These are assessed for their internal coherence and applicability to the study of sport policy. None of the four frameworks reviewed is considered to be sufficiently persuasive and, consequently, a modified version of the advocacy coalition framework is developed and suggested as the most promising point of departure for the analysis of sport policy.

The changing status of school sport and physical education: explaining policy change

This paper examines the changing political salience of school sport and physical education (PE) over the last 15 years. A brief survey of the recent history of school sport and PE based on an analysis of a range of policy documents published by professional bodies and government departments and agencies is followed by a discussion of two theoretical frameworks for explaining policy change, namely the advocacy coalition framework and multiple streams. The empirical section of the paper uses a series of interviews conducted during the summer of 2004 with a range of senior policy actors and analysts to explore the significance of four possible sources of policy change: changing values, beliefs and ideas; interest group lobbying; changes in organizational infrastructure and patterns of resource dependency; the impact of key individuals. It is argued that while individuals are an important explanatory factor their influence needs to be seen in the context of the institutional weakness of interest groups and the generalized, but largely unfocused, sympathy among politicians towards school sport and PE. It is further suggested that multiple streams is a more illuminating analytical framework than the advocacy coalition framework for understanding policy change in school sport and PE.

Sporting Excellence, Schools and Sports Development: The Politics of Crowded Policy Spaces

The increased emphasis on the pursuit of elite international sporting achievement has inevitably meant that the role of the education system in England and Wales, and schools in particular, in contributing to elite success has been the subject of considerable debate and a focus for government intervention. Yet school sport remains a highly contested policy area subject to pressure from a range of, often competing, sectoral interests such as education, welfare and elite sports development. The focus of this paper is first to consider how the policymaking process for school sport might be theorized and second to illustrate the theorization through an examination f one recent policy initiative: specialist sports colleges. The discussion explores the degree to which the formulation of the specialist sports colleges initiative represented a compromise between competing sectoral interests and also the extent to which competing interests have affected policy during the early stages of implementation.

ADVOCACY COALITIONS AND ELITE SPORT POLICY CHANGE IN CANADA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM

This paper explores the process of elite sport policy change in two sports (swimming and track and field athletics1) and their respective national sport organizations (NSOs) in Canada and national governing bodies of sport (NGBs) in the United Kingdom (UK). The nature of policy change is a complex and multifaceted process and a primary aim is to identify and analyse key sources ofpolicy change through insights provided by the advocacy coalition framework (ACF). In Canada, it is evident that the preoccupation with high performance sport over the past 30 years, at federal government level, has perceptibly altered over the past two to three years. In contrast, in the UK, from the mid-1990s onwards, there has been a noticeable shift towards supporting elite sport objectives from both Conservative and Labour administrations. Most notably, the ACF throws into sharp relief the part played by the state in using its resource control to shape the context within which debates on beliefs and values within NSOs/NGBs takes place. While the ACF has proved useful in drawing attention to the notion of changing values and belief systems as a key source of policy change, as well as highlighting the need to take into account factors external to the policy subsystem under investigation, potential additions to the framework’s logic are suggested for future applications.

Mechanisms of international influence on domestic elite sport policy

In the analysis of sport policy the permeability of domestic policy processes and the significance of non-domestic policy influences is increasingly acknowledged. There is also a growing awareness of the role of domestic institutional arrangements in mediating influences external to the domestic policy system. Taking the interaction between non-domestic influences and domestic policy processes as its starting point the article evaluates, in relation to elite sport, the variety of mechanisms that have been identified as linking the domestic and non-domestic policy spheres. It is argued that the mechanisms vary in relation to the locus of initiative, the basis of engagement, the key relationships and the nature of power relationships. It is also argued that in many countries in relation to elite sport policy there is a dual process in operation of domestically initiated policy learning and non-domestically initiated policy harmonisation through policy regimes.

Civil Rights, Doping Control and the World Anti-doping Code

There cannot be many occupations where part of the contract requires workers to be observed by a complete stranger, possibly two or three times a year, urinating. Nor can there be many occupations where workers are obliged to notify employers of their location during their free time. For elite athletes, whether adults or minors, such indignities and intrusions are a normal part of their participation in high-performance sport whether they consider themselves to be employees (as would be the case for professional footballers) or club members (as would be the case for most swimmers or track athletes). As the concern to address the issue of doping in sport has intensified over the last four years, there has been a renewed debate regarding the roles, responsibilities and rights of athletes in relation to anti-doping policy and doping control procedures. The focus for this article is on a range of issues concerning the civil rights of athletes especially in relation to the World Anti-Doping Code. The article begins with a brief examination of the nature of civil rights and political power in sport and then proceeds to consider four overlapping aspects of the contemporary debate about anti-doping policy which have significant implications for the rights of athletes, namely, the World Anti-Doping Code, the operation of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, child athletes’ rights in relation to doping control, and genetic engineering. The renewed efforts to tackle the problem of drug abuse in sport were prompted in large part by the extent of doping uncovered during the 1998 Tour de France and the subsequent anti-doping conference convened by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in February 1999. The conference led to the establishment of two organizations which have had a substantial impact on debates about anti-doping policy and which have the potential to shape the anti-doping effort over the medium term. The first is the World AntiDoping Agency (WADA), established in November 1999, whose mission is ‘to promote and co-ordinate at international level the fight against doping in sport in all forms’. WADA is governed by a board which includes representatives from the major stakeholders in international sport, such as the IOC, the international federations (IFs) and governments. Not only has WADA funded a considerable increase in the annual number of unannounced,

Anti‐Doping Policy in Sport: The Politics of International Policy Co‐ordination

The characteristics and functioning of international policy processes are examined through the analysis of a case which explores the development of policy towards doping by athletes. Changes are traced in the dominant perception of the issue of doping in sport from a series of relatively self-contained problems which could be addressed by individual sports federations or competition organizers to one that requires extensive co-operation between federations and governments, and which has brought the issue of harmonization of policy to the forefront. The interests of the policy actors are identified and the role of two key organizations, the Council of Europe and the International Olympic Committee, in facilitating closer co-ordination, is examined. It is argued that the process is best understood by using the concept of a policy network as both a metaphor and as an analytical tool. The value of the concept of an epistemic community is also considered and it is suggested that not only are doctors and scientists marginal in shaping anti-doping policy, but that there are also limited conditions under which epistemic communities can fulfil an effective role in the policy process.

The Olympics and Elite Sport Policy: Where Will It All End?

The aim of the paper is to explore the consequences of the intensification of competition among the most successful countries at the Olympic Games – the sports powers – for participating countries, potential host countries and the International Olympic Committee. The paper begins by tracing briefly the emergence of increasingly sophisticated and expensive elite sports systems and then examines some of the characteristics of these systems paying particular attention to the extent to which selected major sports powers and medium powers have developed a competitive advantage in a relatively narrow range of sports. Data for the paper were collected through the analysis of a range of financial and sport performance data and the analysis of political indices of democracy. The main findings of the paper are as follows: (1) identifying sports in which a country has a relative competitive advantage remains crucial for the continuing success of major sports powers and is becoming increasingly important for medium sports powers; (2) the cost of maintaining a countrys relative position in the medals table is considerable and arguably locks countries on to a path from which it is difficult for them to deviate; (3) the increasing concern with providing security for the Games may have a deterrent effect on the willingness of more open democratic countries to bid to host the Games; (4) the International Olympic Committee faces a potential challenge in providing the majority of countries that attend the Games, but which do not win a medal, with a return on their investment in the Olympics.

Sport policy in Britain.

Since 1990, Britain has seen a period of unprecedented public investment in, and political commitment to, sport. In this book, Iain Lindsey and Barrie Houlihan examine and analyze sport policy since the appointment of John Major as leader of the Conservative Party in 1990. John Major’s period as Prime Minister was a watershed in British sport policy marking the beginning of a prolonged period of public and lottery investment and relatively high political salience. The text also locates Labour sport policy not only in relation to the previous government of John Major, but also in relation to the Labor government’s broader concerns and ambitions related to modernization of British institutions, its ambition to tackle the ‘wicked issues’ epitomized by its focus on achieving greater social inclusion, and its interest in facilitating greater stakeholder involvement in the policy process. Lindsey and Houlihan provide the first analysis that examines sport policy as a field of government and that discusses how the various sectors (e.g. youth/school sport, mass sport, etc.) have been affected by government policy and the competition for public resources.