Routledge Handbook of Sports Development

Barrie Houlihan, Mick Green, Barrie Houlihan, Mick Green

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781134019700
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Sports development has become a prominent concern within both the academic study of sport and within the organisation and administration of sport. Now available in paperback, the Routledge Handbook of Sports Development is the first book to comprehensively map the wide-ranging territory of sports development as an activity and as a policy field, and to offer a definitive survey of current academic knowledge and professional practice.

Spanning the whole spectrum of activity in sports development, from youth sport and mass participation to the development of elite athletes, the book identifies and defines the core functions of sports development, exploring the interface between sports development and cognate fields such as education, coaching, community welfare and policy. The book presents important new studies of sports development around the world, illustrating the breadth of practice within and between countries, and examines the most important issues facing practitioners within sports development today, from child protection to partnership working.

With unparalleled depth and breadth of coverage, the Routledge Handbook of Sports Development is the definitive guide to policy, practice and research in sports development. It is essential reading for all students, researchers and professionals with an interest in this important and rapidly evolving discipline.

Part 1
The influences on sports development
Introduction: The constraints of history

Barrie Houlihan

‘One would expect people to remember the past and to imagine the future. But in fact … they imagine the past and remember the future.’

Lewis Namier (1942)

Even with relatively recent areas of governmental interest such as sport it is not possible to ignore the significance of history. All policy development is, by equal measure, facilitated, mediated and constrained by the historical context within which it takes place. At one level this self-evident proposition is a simple reminder that in order to understand the type of sports development that emerges in a country one needs to look beyond the contemporary context of factors such as wealth, political party control of government and international relations. At a more significant level the admonition to ‘take account of history’ requires the policy analyst to address a series of complex questions regarding the study of history. Perhaps of greatest importance is the question ‘What or whose history?’ The four chapters in this Part examine the influence of some of the main institutions to shape the emergence of sports development not only in the United Kingdom and former British colonies, but also in many other developed and developing countries – the private education system, the military, religions and nationalism. Each of these institutions is an organisational representation of a set of values about what constitutes acceptable sport and also the purposes for which it should be supported and promoted. Furthermore, while these institutions shaped and, to varying degrees, continue to shape contemporary British sport policy, there are other influences that could also be profitably explored particularly in relation to other European and North American countries, including labour organisations/trade unions, political parties and commercial organisations such as sports equipment manufacturers and bars/public houses.

Yet the acknowledgement of the significance of the historical context of sports development is of only limited analytical value unless there is some method for determining which elements of history are significant. Assessing the significance of historical events and patterns requires the application of social science, especially sociological and political science analysis. As has been argued by Bergsgard et al. (2007: 39), who refer to the work of Benson (1982), Sabatier (1998) and Jenkins-Smith and Sabatier (1994) suggest that a framework for the analysis of the significance of historical institutional patterns and arrangements is through the use of the metaphor of levels of cultural embeddedness. Of particular importance is the identification of policy dispositions that are located in the deep structure of a society and would include attitudes towards private property, the role of the state, the relationship between the state and the individual, and the relationship between generations and genders and which are slow to change and continue to shape all aspects of public policy including sports development. Assertions of the transformative impact on public policy of post-modernity (or even modernity) can be greatly exaggerated due to a lack of appreciation of the power and resilience of deep structural values. Deep structural values or policy predispositions often manifest themselves as ‘storylines’ (Fischer 2003) where historical ‘facts’ become embroidered, as Lewis Namier, quoted at the beginning of this introduction, acknowledged, and take on an ideological (or mythological) status that engenders a strong commitment to particular policies irrespective of the strength of the evidence available.

An acknowledgement of the importance of historical context can lead researchers to a consideration of the relevance of the concept of path dependency when analysing sports development. Path dependency suggests that initial policy decisions can determine future policy choices: that ‘the trajectory of change up to a certain point constrains the trajectory after that point’ (Kay 2005: 553). As noted elsewhere (Houlihan and Green 2008: 17):

Path dependency is also connected to the broader policy analysis literature on the importance of institutions which, for Thelen and Steinmo, are seen as significant constraints and mediating factors in politics, which ‘leave their own imprint’ (1992: 8). Whether the emphasis is on institutions as organisations or as sets of values and beliefs (culture) there is a strong historical dimension which emphasises the ‘relative autonomy of political institutions from the society in which they exist; … and the unique patterns of historical development and the constraints they impose on future choices’ (Howlett and Ramesh 1995: 27).

In his analysis of welfare regimes in Europe Esping-Andersen (1990, 1999) provides strong support for a soft version of path dependency, arguing that in many countries distinctive types of welfare regime (liberal, conservative and social democratic) have emerged over time and generated a set of values and practices that not only influence the identification of issues as public problems, but also set the parameters of the policy response. Thus it may be argued that the extent to which current participation levels in sport are perceived as a problem for government will be influenced by the nature of the welfare regime, as will the response to the problem in terms of the extent of state involvement, the promotion of market solutions, the extent of public subsidy, etc. Cultural history, reflected in the attitudes of institutions such as religions, the military and the education system towards sport, creates policy predispositions that are likely to be reinforced and compounded by the slow accumulation of policy decisions. The processes and organisational structures through which organised sport emerged in a country’s history need to be seen as institutions in relation to current policy choices, with path dependency capturing the insight that ‘policy decisions accumulate over time; a process of accretion can occur in a policy area that restricts options for future policy-makers’ (Kay 2005: 558).

Acknowledging that ‘history matters’ is fairly uncontroversial; what is much more problematic is determining the extent to which history matters and what history matters. In relation to the countries included in this collection it is possible to point to deeply rooted values systems that have withstood wars, authoritarianism, economic collapse and invasion. Confucianism in China, Taiwan and Japan, Protestantism in Denmark and Sweden, and Islam in the Arab world are deeply entwined in the fabric of daily life of countries and have been for many hundreds of years and forcefully influence, even if mainly indirectly, perceptions of the importance of sport and the practice of sport. However, much more recent historical events have also left their mark on the context for sports development policy. The experience of Nazi occupation in Denmark and the Nazi domination of sport in Germany have led both countries to safeguard the autonomy of the sports system and made governments reluctant to become too directly involved in community-level sport. One consequence of an acknowledgement that the history of a country, both distant and recent, provides a significant constraint on policy innovation is that the opportunities for policy transfer between countries are more limited than might at first be assumed. For example, a country that aspires, as the United Kingdom currently does, to emulate the participation levels of Finland is assuming that policy can be transferred from a social democratic culture to one that has stronger roots in neo-liberalism.

The opening chapters in this Handbook are not intended to provide a comprehensive review of the history of the roots of sports development nor a thorough discussion of the significance of history for the emergence of sports development. Rather they have been selected to draw attention to the importance of taking account of the historical context within which policy is formulated, to examine four areas deemed to be of especial relevance to the shaping of sports development in many developed and developing countries and to act as a reminder that good social science analysis relies heavily on good historical research.

References

Benson, J.K. (1982) ‘Networks and policy sectors: A framework for extending inter-organisational analysis’, in: Rogers, D. and Whitton, D. (eds) Inter-organisational co-ordination, Iowa: Iowa State University.

Bergsgard, N.A., Houlihan, B., Mangset, H., Nødland, S.I. and Rommetvedt, H. (2007) Sport policy: A comparative analysis of stability and change, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Esping-Andersen, G. (1990) The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press.

——(1999) Social foundations of postindustrial economies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fischer, F. (2003) Reframing public policy: Discursive politics and deliberative practices, New York: Oxford University Press.

Houlihan, B. and Green, M. (2008) (eds) Comparative elite sport development: Systems, structures and public policy, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Howlett, R. and Ramesh, M. (1995) Studying public policy: Policy cycles and policy sub-systems, New York: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins-Smith, H. and Sabatier, P. (1994). ‘Evaluating the advocacy coalition framework’, Journal of Public Policy, 14, 3, 175–203.

Kay, A. (2005) ‘A critique of the use of path dependency in policy studies’, Public Administration, 83, 3, 553–71.

Namier, L. (1942) ‘Symmetry and repetition’, in: Namier, L. (ed.) Conflicts: Studies in contemporary history, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Sabatier, P. (1998) ‘The advocacy coalition framework: revisions and relevance to Europe’, Journal of European Public Policy, 5, 1, 98–130.

Thelen, K. and Steinmo, S. (1992). ‘Historical institutionalism in comparative politics’, in: Thelen, K., Steinmo, S. and Longstreth, F. (eds) Structuring politics: Historical institutionalism in comparative analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1
Sports development in the nineteenth-century British public schools

Martin Polley

Sports development is a key component of contemporary British sport. The sports development system, based around central government policy and local authorities’ application of it, influences every aspect of sport, from the hosting of the Olympic Games through to the provision of exercise classes for the elderly. The system is a channel through which governments target social, economic, and cultural problems. Sport has many features that make it attractive to the state for such ends. For example, it can help to promote social cohesion, particularly in multicultural communities. It can provide a place for the dispersal of excess energy, particularly amongst young males, that might otherwise be directed into anti-social or criminal activity. It can promote good health and thus help to reduce the costs that sickness causes to the economy. Sport can also help to generate economic activity, through hosting events, building infrastructure, and sports tourism. These and other classic functionalist readings of sport give it an appeal to governments, and sports development is central to governments’ attempts to reach these objectives. (See Jarvie 2006: 17–41 for an overview of key social theories.) Anyone with a professional or academic interest in contemporary British sport needs to look at sports development critically, and to appreciate its political and ideological nature (Hylton et al. 2001; Houlihan and White 2002; Green and Houlihan 2005).

The chapters in this book explore contemporary sports development in great detail and from a variety of positions. To help set the scene for these present-centred discussions, this chapter’s purpose is to promote debate about the historical roots of sports development. Contemporary sports development has its most obvious origins in the 1960s, when, as part of the work of a maturing welfare state, Conservative and Labour governments began to take an active interest in how sport was run. Since then, governments have managed sport to promote wider social policy objectives relating to health, education, social inclusion, multiculturalism, crime, and many other areas. We can trace the evolution of sports development through the history of the Sports Council and it successor bodies, and through the emergence of a funding and policy network involving central government, local government, quangos, sports’ governing bodies, and clubs (Coghlan with Webb 1990; Polley 1998: 12–34). An understanding of this recent history is essential if we wish to have a perspective on why contemporary sports development is like it is, what the main agencies are, and how they inter-relate. Exploring this contemporary history can take us into causation and context, into the ways in which political, social, and economic needs inspire policy, and into the ways in which people have used sport to respond to the problems of their times. Such historical enquiry can also help us to understand how different ideologies can influence sports development, as it can show up the links between political parties’ intellectual and philosophical bases and how they have acted towards sport.

However, historians of sports development are not simply interested in narratives of how the present system came about. Essential as this is, it is also instructive for us to cast our gaze beyond recent political history, and to go further back than the influential Wolfenden Report of 1960 (Wolfenden Committee on Sport 1960). By looking for longer-term precedents and influences, we can root contemporary sports development deeper in history. Moreover, by looking in a comparative way at earlier systems that appear to share some common features with contemporary sports development, we can ask historical questions to illuminate both past and present: questions about the links between ideology and action; about the inter-relationships between providers and participants; and about the ways in which sport has been promoted through both financial support and cultural approval. With this remit, the sporting culture of British public schools in the nineteenth century emerges as an obvious contender for consideration.

There was something both systematic and developmental about what happened in the schools during this period. What Honey said of the schools as a whole can also be applied to their sports: ‘the public schools … emerged or adapted themselves during the [nineteenth] century in such a way as to constitute a system, an articulated and coherent set of schools serving a common set of social functions’ (Honey 1977: xi, emphasis in original). It was a time in which schoolboy games changed rapidly from being relatively unstructured pastimes into being central to elite educational life. Sports attracted funding and facilities, the kind of features we associate with modern sports development. Moreover, these public school sports were closely tied to political objectives. Sports became associated with schoolmasters’ desire to control pupils’ spare time and to channel their excess physicality into acceptable activities, and with boys’ sense of political allegiance with their schools as communities. Sport also became underpinned by an ideology, with orthodox values relating to class, gender, religion, national and racial identity, and imperial duty all tied up with how boys played football, rugby, and cricket. These sports were later exported around the world by former public school boys working for British military, imperial, religious, and trading interests, helping to create a global culture of team games based in part on the value systems of the British public schools. It was in the public schools that games first became linked to the notion that sport could act as a panacea for any and every problem facing the individual and the community, a notion that remains embedded in contemporary sports development, despite its fallacy. With these challenging points of comparison, it is fitting to explore the sports culture of these schools as one of the ancestors of modern sports development.

There is a rich and diverse literature on this subject. Indeed, one of the pioneering works of academic sports history, Mangan’s Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School of 1981, was devoted to the subject, which has helped it to become a central theme in the historiography of British sport. Mangan combined archival work in selected schools with a contextual analysis of the meanings that sports took on (Mangan 1981). Mangan also wrote the key text on the links between these school sports and the development of sport throughout the British Empire (Mangan 1985). D...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1: The Influences On Sports Development: Introduction: The Constraints of History
• Part 2: The Contemporary Context of Sports Development: Introduction: Government and Civil Society Involvement In Sports Development
• Part 3: Sports Development and Young People: Introduction: Socialisation Through Sport
• Part 4: Sports Development and Adult Mass Participation: Introduction: The Neglect of Adult Participation
• Part 5: Sport and International Development: Introduction: The Unproven Remedy
• Part 6: Sports Development and Elite Athletes: Introduction: The Irresistible Priority
• Part 7: Issues In the Practice of Sports Development: Introduction: Managing Complexity and Fluidity
• Part 8: Assessing the Impact of Sports Development: Introduction: The Problems of Policy Evaluation