politics in sports research paper

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4 Sport, Policy, and Politics

Michael P. Sam is an associate professor in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Otago. His research comprises areas of policy, politics, and administration as they relate to the governance of sport. He has published widely in both sport studies and policy journals and has coedited three books: Sport in the City: Cultural Connections (2011), S port Policy in Small States (2016), and Case Studies in Sport and Diplomacy (2017). Sam currently serves as co-director of the New Zealand Centre for Sport Policy and Politics and is the president of the International Sociology of Sport Association.

• Published: 21 September 2022
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The subject of policy and politics occupies an important place in the study of sport and society. This chapter considers the domain’s key issues, including those surrounding distribution (e.g., state emphasis on mass or elite sport), regulation (e.g., doping, match-fixing), and governance (e.g., accountability, modernization). The field of sport policy and politics is characterized by a breadth of theoretical perspectives that fall broadly within pluralist, institutional, and ideational approaches. These approaches are discussed in light of their merits and potential contributions toward understanding policy processes, program implementation, and policy outcomes. The chapter concludes with a consideration of future scholarship priorities at the nexus of sport, politics, and policy.

The subject of policy and politics occupies an important place in the study of sport and society. One reason for this is that policies continually address the delicate balance of values within a society ( Lindblom, 1959 ). A policy, for example, to exempt elite athletes from compulsory military service illustrates an enduring dilemma between the need to “treat likes alike” and the need to recognize a diverse population with different needs. Likewise, a code of conduct policy for athletes can reveal the extent to which we value collective interests (to protect commercial/public property) versus individual rights (to protect free speech). Seen in this light, policies reflect the political struggles behind having to rank, balance, or otherwise allocate priority to what we value ( Doern & Phidd, 1992 ; Sam, 2003 ).

As an empirical research subject, policy is a tangible yet notoriously broad concept since it rarely reflects a singular activity. For example, while a policy may refer to a concrete rule and regulation (such as a policy against sexual harassment), it can also be a commitment to some future action, as when the government promises $X billion to support a major sport event bid. To complicate matters, specific programs or services (e.g., scholarships or athlete cash-award schemes) are also considered policies because they are brought in to induce particular behaviors (e.g., to encourage young athletes to either delay or pursue tertiary education). Generally, then, policies represent public commitments to an issue or problem and provide the impetus for subsequent changes to organizations, budgets, programs, and practices.

This commitment often requires the mobilization of a variety of organizations. A commitment to “active communities” for example, can encompass different areas of policy, including the improvement of recreational facilities, the availability of affordable housing, and access to a range of healthcare services. Likewise, a policy commitment to Olympic success or “talent identification” might necessarily involve the coordination of many agencies and organizations, including schools, businesses, regional/municipal governments, universities, and charities/foundations. Whether these organizations are all equally committed to these goals represents a persistent challenge for policymakers ( Sam, 2011 ). Yet importantly, public authorities often also commit to inaction (a policy decision in its own right). This is evident, for example, in relation to sport and the betting and alcohol industries, where policy links are likely to remain unchanged despite their contradictions.

This chapter begins with a review of the recurring themes and persistent issues in the field. The breadth of recent research testifies to the advances that have taken place since the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics was first devoted to the subject of sport policy and its political climates in 2009. Given the quantity of valuable research and analysis that has focused on this nexus, any review such as the one put forward here is necessarily selective and should not be seen as exhaustive of the issues at play.

With that disclaimer, I will focus on sport as comprising its own stand-alone state-sponsored sector. Following Houlihan (2005) , I focus on the roles of government and their effects rather than on the policy activities of international federations or the International Olympic Committee. Unfortunately, this provides limited opportunity to consider important policy issues related to sport, such as physical education policy, the public subsidy of sports stadia, or national broadcasting policies. However, these face many of the same issues in terms of distribution, regulation, and governance which are considered below. The key issues that follow are sufficiently broad in that many of their key elements can be applied in these related contexts.

Elite Sport versus Sport-for-All: The Politics of Priorities

Insofar as policy ascribes political and resource priorities (who gets what, when, and how), it is unsurprising that much of the literature on sport policy focuses on the cleavage between elite and grassroots sport (the latter generally taken to mean “sport-for-all” and/or community/mass participation). Here, the fundamental question surrounds the extent to which authorities (i.e., governments and their agencies, national sport organizations, etc.) prioritize or privilege some concerns over others. This question derives its importance from the ongoing nature of debates among stakeholders and the significant resource distribution decisions that result from them.

At the very broad country or national level, this distributional aspect to the formulation and implementation of sport policy is a useful starting point for analysis. The relative emphasis on elite versus grassroots has become one of the key dependent variables in comparing different sport systems and organizational structures ( Green, 2006 ; Houlihan, 1997 ; Nicholson, Hoye, & Houlihan, 2010 ). This kind of analysis points to a level of convergence in state systems and their tendency to devote increasing resources to elite sport ( Houlihan & Green, 2008 ). Yet, despite the apparent convergence in what sport systems look like, there remains considerable variability, with ongoing change and adjustment clearly evident. Even in Australia, one of the first Anglo-Saxon nations to truly commit to a state-sponsored centralized system of elite athlete development ( Stewart, Nicholson, Westerbeek, & Smith, 2004 ), there have been pronounced criticisms levied at the overemphasis on garnering medals ( Crawford & Independent Sport Panel, 2009 ). Whether changes to the balance in emphasis given to elite versus grassroots sports actually materialize (and how) has become important to investigate, not least because such changes can signal transformations in the distributions of authority and resources to various organizations, programs, and budgets (e.g., Houlihan & White 2002 ).

Distributional issues like this draw in a number of important features of public policy, most notably the power of organized interests , including politicians, the business elite, and the emerging (or entrenched) cadre of professional experts that include administrators and sport scientists. Despite being a very small part of any federal/state/provincial budget (compared to health and education), elite sport maintains a particular appeal for elected officials. Indeed, it has been dubbed an “irresistible priority” for states ( Houlihan, 2011 , p. 367), and the tendency clearly reflects the jingoistic desires for politicians to legitimize and gain support for their government and party ideologies ( Allison, 2005 ). However, in countries where sport has relative autonomy from the state (e.g., Sweden, Norway), such political influence is much more muted, with the sport system itself often operating as a kind of social movement that must wrestle with issues of elitism within its own ranks ( Andersen & Ronglan, 2012 ; Bergsgard, Houlihan, Mangset, Nodland, & Rommetvedt, 2007 ; Fahlén & Stenling, 2016 ). Further, in places where sport is developed through a (relatively autonomous) federated network of national, regional, and local organizations, the tension between elite and grassroots sport has given rise to an expanding community of quasi-advocacy organizations that variously attempt to connect both sets of interests (cf. Dowling & Washington, 2017 ; Sam & Schoenberg, 2020 ). For instance, both the Canadian Sport for Life (CS4L) group and the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) support high performance sport, as well as sport-for-all. For CS4L the connection is advanced by promoting physical literacy and lifelong participation, while for the CCES, elite and sport-for-all are linked by its anti-doping program and advocacy of “safe” sport for everyone.

However, within each of these systems and their priorities, other divisions along lines of race, (dis)ability, class, and gender ( Comeau, 2013 ) can readily become flashpoints in the course of framing public policy. That there are such diverse and competing interests at play draws attention to the inherently rhetorical and contested terrains of sport policy. Debates about the values of elite sport versus sport-for-all in fashioning priorities raise fundamental questions about the value of sport in advancing public health, national unity, economic growth, diversity, or community development. By and large, pronouncements about the importance of national unity tend to buttress high performance sport, while sport-for-all is supported for reasons of health promotion ( Grix & Carmichael, 2011 ). These legitimations ( Chalip, 1996 ), ideas ( Sam, 2003 ), or policy paradigms ( Sam & Jackson, 2004 ) are important to identify because they underscore a range of important research questions around the veracity of the claims ( Coalter, 2007 ) and their downstream effects. One claim often made in an attempt to tie grassroots with elite sport, for instance, is the idea of a “demonstration effect”—that watching elite athletes can inspire the public to take up participation ( Hogan & Norton, 2000 ). Yet, even though the evidence supporting this causal connection is weak, the idea that high performance sport leaves behind valuable “legacies” is a powerful rhetorical device often used to justify increased investment in the lead-up to major events ( Weed et al., 2015 ). Notably, criticisms of such causal connections most often fall into the domain of academics because all stakeholders in the elite-grassroots divide need these “convenient fictions” to be upheld (see Donnelly, 2010 , p. 85). For instance, Houlihan and White (2002 , p. 67) suggest that despite the dubiousness of the demonstration effect, stakeholders found it useful to foster a “strong link between the interests of the national governing bodies, schools and the local authorities” while maintaining the notion of a unified sports development policy.

Regulation: The Politics of Control

A second key area of sport policy focuses on the regulatory measures that are put in place to prevent unwanted elements in sport, such as doping, match-fixing, abuse, and corruption. Whereas the tensions between elite and grassroots sport speak to policy priorities and resourcing issues, the defining feature for regulatory policies is control ( Majone, 1994 ). While largely invoked to reduce unwanted individual behaviors, regulatory policies themselves are also increasingly aimed at the systems of organizations that render the behaviors more likely (see Hong, 2016 ; Hoye, Nicholson, & Houlihan, 2010 ; Waddington & Møller, 2019).

An important aspect of regulation thus concerns the nature of the “regimes,” that is, the collection of institutions and organizations that share responsibility for setting standards, monitoring, and doling out punishments for noncompliance ( Gray, 2019 ; Tak, Sam, & Jackson, 2018b ). Scholarly interest in regimes stems from the considerable diversity seen in national/local contexts, sports, and their associated norms. But focus on regimes also necessarily draws attention to the inability of global agencies such as the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to “go it alone” and tends to illuminate the increasing need for regulatory policies to be harmonized across state boundaries ( Houlihan & Preece, 2007 ).

Another distinguishing feature of regulatory policies concerns the particular tools/technologies that may be deployed to control behaviors. These “policy instruments” ( Bemelmans-Videc, Vedung, & Rist, 1998 ) can range from voluntary/noncoercive strategies (e.g., information campaigns, codes of conduct) to more obtrusive/coercive interventions (e.g., sanctions, “whereabouts” schemes for doping regulation). At the heart of these debates are normative questions around the power of the state (in partnership with nonstate actors like WADA) to influence the affairs of autonomous organizations and the extent of their authority in suspending individual freedom. With respect to the latter, an important political element in such regulatory measures concerns the consideration of individual rights and civil liberties ( Efverström, Ahmadi, Hoff, & Bäckström, 2016 ; Houlihan, 2004 ). “Whereabouts” policies, such as those that require athletes to report on their exact location throughout the year for the purposes of doping control, are controversial on the grounds of individual autonomy and rights to self-determination ( Hanstad & Loland, 2009 ). In today’s state of affairs, when sporting interests are under increasing scrutiny for a growing number of other integrity issues (e.g. bullying, harassment), the insistence that sport can (and should be left to) self-regulate has become an increasingly tenuous position (e.g., Fahlén, Eliasson, & Wickman, 2015 ). Although policy may be seen as a symbolic form of commitment, the contentious political issues behind regulation nearly always concern how much intervention is appropriate and/or legitimate ( Stone, 1997 ; Tak, 2018 ).

As one might expect, much of the research concerning regulatory policies in sport focuses on evaluation and the propensity (or failure) for interventions to shape behaviors (e.g., Houlihan, 2014 ; Møller & Dimeo, 2014 ; Tak, 2018 ; Waddington & Møller, 2019 ). However, within such assessments, it is also understood that regulatory measures can have effects beyond those that are intended. Over time, regulation can institutionalize the existing roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders and, by extension, affirm who is to blame for failures and which organization(s) should be responsible for fixing a problem ( Tak, Sam, & Jackson, 2018a ). This, in turn, raises the possibility that, when faced with a new problem (such as harassment or bullying), authorities might seek to reproduce aspects of an existing regulatory regime, with unanticipated results. Indeed recent proposals for an international surveillance system to prevent abuse and promote athlete welfare ( Kerr & Kerr, 2020 ) are perhaps likely to eventuate for this reason, though with unknown consequences.

Governance: The Politics of Modernization

If governance is the “purposive means of guiding and steering” a community ( Kooiman, 1993 ), it follows that the search for effective governance is a persistent policy concern. The pursuit of effectiveness stems largely from the fact that central authorities seldom operate hierarchically, that is, functioning through an evident and “tidy” command-and-control structure of organizations and activities across national, regional, municipal levels. Sport systems can be remarkably complex. Thus, within any arrangement there exists a range of policies that exist to coordinate activities and programs, to make them more coherent, more responsive, and more competently delivered. That there are such needs for benchmarking exercises, audits, publications of “shared principles,” and so on illustrates the embedded structural challenges in translating policy into action ( Sam & Schoenberg, 2020 ).

While the instruments in regulatory policies can be deemed “substantive,” the policy instruments in relation to governance can be called “procedural” for the simple reason that they circumscribe how things should be done and by whom ( Howlett, 2000 ; Keat & Sam, 2013 ). For many scholars, policies aiming to “guide and steer” are tantamount to processes of professionalization and modernization since they can serve to effectively change the (problematic or entrenched) conduct of partner organizations and their decision-making processes. ( Stenling & Sam, 2019 ; Tacon & Walters, 2016 ). In Canada, “quadrennial planning” (a government-initiated planning exercise intended to make national governing bodies more accountable) was a policy instrument much discussed beginning in the 1980s ( Macintosh & Whitson, 1990 ). More contemporary modernizing policy tools include setting the terms of contracts between state agencies and national sport organizations, performance-based funding, audits, certifications, and benchmarking ( Fahlén, 2017 ; Macintosh & Whitson, 1990 ; Sam & Macris, 2014 ).

There are two elements of interest here. The first and most obvious is that national policies, strategies, and white papers can be, in themselves, fundamental steering instruments (Österlind, 2016; Sam, 2005 ). Typical of the concerns embraced in such documents are prescriptions about the system’s organizational architecture and the degree to which it should be aligned, coordinated, or centralized ( Phillpots, Grix, & Quarmby, 2011 ; Sam & Jackson, 2004 ). Thus, an important subject for scholarly analysis concerns how these policies may (re)define stakeholder roles, responsibilities, and lines of authority, as well as how they advance particular practices or principles. The second core element concerns what is at the heart of the ideas underpinning these efforts. Here, a common theme in Anglo-Saxon states is one of embracing imperatives for accountability and pushing public and nonprofit sector organizations to be more “business-like.” In terms of the ideas and discourses (see below) that encourage such sensibilities, these dominant principles have been put forward to make stakeholders self-sufficient ( Berry & Manoli, 2018 ), efficient ( Sam, 2009 ), and equitable ( Safai, 2013 ). As with issues that arise around regulation, the overriding issues concern elements of legitimacy and autonomy. Ultimately, these are foundational questions about who has (or should have) authority in controlling sport. Indeed, a global trend that falls under this broad governance question concerns the mix of public and private organizations, the power relations that result, and how these contribute to the shaping of sport policy strategies (cf. Girginov, 2016 ; Hu & Henry, 2017 ).

Within these broad policy issues, I have touched upon three general analytical dimensions that focus on interests, ideas, and institutions. However, before proceeding, it is important to briefly acknowledge the most basic approach to explain policy development, which is to see it as the product of a rational decision-making process in which:

a problem or objective is recognized;

alternative solutions are identified and analyzed;

a remedy/response is chosen and implemented;

the remedy is evaluated to correct errors.

This “stage” model of policymaking is an important heuristic in large part because the principles of rational decision-making are highly valued in contemporary organizations. Despite its intuitiveness, the approach rarely (if ever) reflects what occurs. Policymakers will often come up with solutions at the same time as the problems (if not before) with “best practice” often a catch-cry for policy reforms.

Despite these criticisms (and many others), stage models are important because they describe the policy process as a cognitive activity. This in turn sensitizes researchers to important elements in policy, such as the standards of evidence against which decisions are made ( Lindsey & Bacon, 2016 ; Smith & Leech, 2010 ), as well as the often deliberate search for and design of remedies or solutions ( Bloyce & Smith, 2010 ; Vidar Hanstad & Houlihan, 2015 ). In more practical terms, the stage model enables researchers to delimit their studies to particular stages of a fluid process, such as policy formulation ( Sam, 2005 ), implementation ( Fahlén et al., 2015 ; Skille, 2008 ; Stenling, 2014b ), and evaluation ( Bloyce & Smith, 2010 ; Lindsey & Bacon, 2016 ; Stenling, 2014a ).

As a broad field, the study of public policy is interdisciplinary and fairly agnostic in its approaches. In sport, early attention to policy arose mainly within the sociology of sport, with Marxist approaches often used to explain the emerging elite sport systems of state agencies ( Macintosh & Whitson, 1990 ; McKay, 1991 ). Sociology has continued to be a foundational discipline, as evidenced in the school of scholars using figurational sociology to unpack UK sport policy ( Bloyce & Smith, 2010 ), and also with the increasing application of Foucauldian analyses to examine sport policy’s disciplining effects ( Green & Houlihan, 2006 ; Piggin, Jackson, & Lewis, 2009b ). The subject of policy is also found in sport management, reflecting an eclectic range of perspectives that span positivist and postpositivist outlooks ( Funahashi, De Bosscher, & Mano, 2015 ; Green, 2006 ). While space limitations preclude consideration of these theories and their nuances, all approaches acknowledge, to varying degrees, the importance of interests, institutions, and ideas. With this in mind, I briefly turn to outlining these as core approaches, along with considering their application and significance in the analysis of sport policy.

Understanding interest groups is fundamental to all policy analyses. Ontologically, it is an acknowledgment that power is at least as important as the rationality assumed in the stage model outlined above. The study of interests represents a view of the policy process in which groups or individuals mobilize around specific issues and compete or cooperate to influence decision-making. In this view, policymakers (i.e., governments and their agencies) are not unitary actors; the policies that emerge are the product of complex processes of competition, bargaining, and negotiation among/between groups ( Bergsgard et al., 2007 ; Henry & Nassis, 1999 ). These groups can variously include political parties, teachers’ unions, media consortia, Olympic committees, athlete advocacy groups, and think tanks, as well as diverse state agencies with a range of mandates.

The role of groups and organizations in the policy process is important to analyze for a number of reasons. First, the study of interests is significant because of the inherent concern in politics for democratic input, representation, deliberation, and consultation. While these elements of participatory politics can be cynically viewed, there is evidence in sport of a growing number of quasi-advocacy organizations with increasingly professional lobbying capacity (cf. Comeau & Church, 2010 ; Dowling & Washington, 2017 ; Sam, 2011 ). Thus, as sport matures as an area of public policy, it is possible that this emerging “active advocacy” may ultimately transform the sector in line with its (paid) professionals rather than its traditional volunteer base ( Stenling & Sam, 2019 ). Second, the focus on interests draws attention to the influence of powerful individuals, sometimes called “policy entrepreneurs” ( Houlihan, 2005 ; Houlihan & Lindsey, 2013 ; Kingdon, 1984), who can shape the agenda by bringing different groups together and/or by shaping the dominant discourses and narratives. While such actors may include politicians and cabinet ministers, this perspective sensitizes us to other actors (such as business elites and private consultants) that, while not having formal authority, exert influence nonetheless. If these interests alert us to the “powerful,” the approach is equally attuned to the relative weakness of other interests. For example, it is apparent that one explanation for the continued privileging of elite sport is the absence of “demand groups to represent the interests of the young and the community sports participant” ( Houlihan & White 2002 , p. 222).

In the end, a focus on interest groups helps to explain policy formation, change, and/or resistance to change. However, essential questions remain regarding the relative influence of agents and, indeed more fundamentally, what enables, incentivizes, or impedes their participation in the policy process. Answers about the underlying dynamics of power ultimately rest in scholars examining why interests have access and how they gain legitimacy at various stages of the policy cycle (cf. Henry & Nassis, 1999 ; Strittmatter, Stenling, Fahlén, & Skille, 2018 ). Finding meaningful answers to such complex dynamics necessarily means considering the interplay of institutions and ideas.

Institutions

Institutional approaches are concerned with the constellation of rules, organizational arrangements, conventions, roles, and routines that enable or constrain policymaking ( Lowndes & Roberts, 2013 ; Peters, 2005 ). The approach is important from the standpoint that while agents matter and may wield considerable influence in policymaking, structures also matter a great deal in shaping the contours of political activity. At the broadest level, institutions can include the basic constitutional design of a government system (e.g., presidential vs. parliamentary), its distribution of powers (e.g., between federal and provincial/state levels) or its governance “style” (e.g., welfarist, neoliberal, corporatist). While these are understood to bring order to politics and policymaking, other meso- and micro-level structures (such as organizational configurations, statutes, and bureaucratic procedures) may also be conceived as institutions.

The importance of the approach is that it pays particular attention to the contexts surrounding policy. Just as the responsibilities and relations between federal and provincial/territorial governments can have enduring effects on sport policy ( Comeau, 2013 ), so too do the ways in which sport is funded, be it via lotteries, taxation, or private sector sponsorship ( Bergsgard et al., 2007 ). Thus, understanding basic institutional arrangements is a key starting point to any analysis of policy. Institutional approaches are evident in studies that focus on particular system types (e.g., Bergsgard & Norberg, 2010 ), policy regimes ( Tak et al., 2018b ), and policy communities ( Houlihan, 1997 ). Such analyses point to key determinants of policy implementation, such as the degree to which authority is centralized or dispersed, as well as the possibilities for and hindrances to achieving sectoral coordination. Importantly, studies anchored in these kinds of variant contexts can provide baselines for making comparisons between states, ultimately with a view toward understanding “what works” (or does not work) and under what organizational circumstances. Further, a focus on such institutional arrangements may not only be useful for post hoc explanations of policy processes; they may also help to anticipate the shape and dynamics of future political exchanges ( Lowndes & Roberts, 2013 ).

Yet what institutional approaches have the most to offer analytically lies in what institutions do ( Lowndes & Roberts, 2013 ; Peters, 2005 ). First, since institutions structure relations, they are an important consideration in explaining interest group influence. For instance, a convention of “evidence-based” policymaking can privilege actors who have the resources to produce evidence, while disempowering those having fewer resources ( Piggin, Jackson, & Lewis, 2009a ). In such a case, bigger, more established organizations may even have special public relations or advocacy units to commission research studies supporting their policy positions. At the same time, the structure of these interactions can limit who is able to participate in the policy process in the first place. Thus, institutional arrangements have been shown to channel interest group pressures in nationwide consultations surrounding new policy directions ( Sam & Jackson, 2006 ; Stenling & Sam, 2017 ). In New Zealand, for example, a national task force delineated its consultation hearings according to particular, standardized roles in the sport sector: coaches, administrators, and health advocates. This grouping of (homogeneous) stakeholders resulted in few disagreements and thus shaped the task force’s portrayal of problems as technical issues (including organizational reforms) rather than issues of a political nature (such as the setting of priorities) ( Sam & Jackson, 2006 ).

Second, institutions shape political relations by providing “cognitive scripts” and “logics of appropriateness” for actors in the policy process ( March & Olsen, 2006 ). Indeed sport organizations are likely to engage in politics far differently if they are guided by a market (an institution characterized by a logic of competition) versus a network (characterized by a logic of cooperation) versus a federation (characterized by a logic of democratic representation). More concretely, Comeau and Church (2010) identified distinctly different political strategies for women’s sport advocacy groups, depending on whether their institutionally defined role was as a co-opted insider (as with the Canadian group) or an external lobbyist (as with the US association). In this view, institutions “influence behavior not simply by specifying what one should do but also by specifying what one can imagine doing in a given context” ( Hall & Taylor, 1996 , p. 948). Operating under performance-measurement schemes and medal targets, for instance, national sport organizations have been shown to “rationally” become less responsive to issues around equity, athlete welfare, and maltreatment ( Sam, 2015 ; Sam & Dawbin, 2022 ).

An overriding contribution of this institutional approach lies in its ability to reveal how rules, procedures, routines, and practices can structure policymaking. As one early institutional theorist famously observed, “organization is the mobilization of bias,” where “some issues are organized into politics while others are organized out” ( Schattschneider, 1961 , p. 71). The approach is thus important in showing both how interests are enabled/constrained in policy debates, as well as how institutions may reinforce particular ideas and logics over time (Österlind, 2016; Stenling, 2014a ). Taken together, the utility of this kind of institutional orientation lies in its assessment of how some policies are “ruled in” as appropriate, while others are “ruled out.”

If we accept that structures are important in politics, one of the most important elements of structure surrounds the ideas, ideologies, paradigms, and storylines associated with policies ( Hall, 1993 ; Rein & Schön, 1993 ; Stone, 1989 ). While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a disambiguation of the various concepts, the main theme that runs throughout this perspective is that ideas (expressed primarily through language) can play an influential role in the policy cycle.

With primacy given to the nature of rhetoric, arguments, and discourses (Kingdon, 1984; Majone, 1989 ), an ideational approach is implicitly interpretive and critical ( Piggin, 2010 ; Sam, 2003 ). It draws out alternate meanings to what on the surface may appear as accepted (or “received”) wisdom and common sense. Under this analytical lens, for example, are assessments of what has been called the “virtuous cycle,” the endless loop of seemingly logical forces posited to connect the benefits of elite sport with sport-for-all ( Grix & Carmichael, 2011 ). More broadly, the approach serves to demystify taken-for-granted postures undergirding policy logics; these can be revealed in critical interpretations of “social capital” that often reliably operate as a kind of metaphor or “policy slogan” ( Skille, 2014 , p. 341).

As with institutions, ideational dimensions provide essential context. Ideologies and values feature frequently as comparative constructs to describe deeply rooted beliefs as well as more “ephemeral ideas” that can impact sport policy ( Kristiansen, Parent, & Houlihan, 2016 ). Indeed this approach is fundamental because broad political ideas, such as efficiency ( Sam, 2003 ), transparency ( Piggin et al., 2009b ), and accountability ( Grix, 2009 ), take on special significance as they are translated into sport policy. The idea of “continuous improvement” (a feature of modernization agendas), for example, has very real consequences in terms of supporting “ratcheting” targets and the perverse “gaming” that actors sometimes undertake to conform to the idea ( Sam & Macris, 2014 ). Thus, to show participation growth and improvement, sport governing bodies inflate their participation numbers through the use of one-off “clinics” or by extending their seasons, effectively cannibalizing the participation numbers in other sports (see Keat & Sam, 2013 ).

Equally important to consider is how sport policy issues are framed ( Stenling & Sam, 2020 ), how policy problems are constructed ( Österlind, 2016 ), and how solutions are justified ( Sam & Ronglan, 2018 ). Thus focused, an ideational approach aims to uncover the discursive features underlying the claims that agents and their organizations make in policy debates. For example, in considering the timing, scope, and depth of policy intervention, there is a difference between views of athlete welfare/maltreatment as a “problem” or an “issue” and its representation as an “epidemic” or a “crisis.” Likewise, there is an important distinction between claims of doping, match-fixing, or abuse as a case of a few “bad apples” versus the assertion that these are systemic and structural problems that have their origins in previous policies. Invariably, the ideational approach brings to the fore that policy claims are strategic and support particularized interests ( Stone, 1997 ). And, in this way, the focus on frames in the ideational approach helps uncover embedded narratives, tropes, and cognitive shorthands that serve to bind together particular groups of experts, advocates, and/or practitioners.

Finally, whether the sport-specific dominant ideas surround notions of excellence ( Kidd, 1988 ), competitiveness ( Sam, 2003 ; Skille, 2011 ), or integrity ( Gardiner, Parry, & Robinson, 2017 ), the purpose of this kind of analysis is to challenge the basis of power behind policy discourses and, by doing so, question their legitimacy (e.g., in terms of their fairness, coherence, etc.). The approach thus demands critical attention to the “motherhood and apple pie” ideas often masquerading as straightforward problems and policy solutions.

In a recent special issue on “theory and methods in sport policy and politics research,” the editors of the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics remark that few scholars from political science disciplines engage with sport ( Grix, Lindsey, De Bosscher, & Bloyce, 2018 ). While not a criticism of the current field per se, the observation does highlight the tendency for scholars in this area to either echo received or limited logics or speak past one another. On the first count, Palmer (2013 , p. 82), for example, suggests that “sports policy has been restricted in the kinds of theory it adopts,” although this claim was based on only a very limited review of sport policy and politics research.

Since policy is what public authorities decide to do (or not do), we should not be surprised that it is analyzed through myriad theories and approaches. Indeed, the ontological and epistemological concerns surrounding sport policy have received considerable attention ( Dowling, Brown, Legg, & Beacom, 2018 ; Henry, Amara, & Al-Tauqi, 2005 ; Houlihan, 2005 ). It therefore seems fruitless to lament the insufficient political theory, lack of “social” theory, or even “globalization” theory as they have been applied to the area.

Presently, the field is certainly growing but has not yet become so vast that one cannot draw underlying lessons from the diverse theoretical traditions that have been embraced. For example, whether we call the agents in the process “policy entrepreneurs” or “brokers” or “influential stakeholders” is largely immaterial so long as we remain attuned to the fact that people (within their institutionally derived roles) matter. Likewise, in policy contexts, whether an idea like “sustainable development” is a goal, value, or paradigm is often indistinguishable and only empirically discoverable with respect to how the idea is articulated, by whom, and under what circumstances. Hence, the nuances between discourses, narratives, or frames are chiefly interesting insofar as they share a common concern for language, argument, and the construction of meaning (see Fischer & Forester, 1993 ).

For this reason, theories of policymaking generally show a broad acknowledgment of the interplay between ideas, interests, and institutions. In particular, Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith’s (1993) Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is highly regarded as a means of connecting the different orientations outlined above ( Green & Houlihan, 2004 ). Yet while useful as a comparative, empirical model, the ACF’s broad treatment of political context is also its weakness ( Hysing & Olsson, 2008 ), since the answer to the question “What happened?” seems invariably to be “Everything happened,” leaving little room for an assessment of what elements mattered most. Indeed, in a recent review of the ACF, the main criticism centers on the need for a more explicit use of its concepts ( Pierce, Peterson, & Hicks, 2020 ), an issue that will invariably require insights from other theoretical approaches ( Olsson, 2009 ).

In this lies one of the recurring challenges endemic to the study of sport policy and politics: whether one’s approach should be aimed toward particularity or comparability. The challenge largely plays out as a paradox in which context is highly valued, yet too little or too much of it can be cause for others to ignore the research’s relevance. Investigations, for example, establishing the uniqueness of the Scandinavian sports model can inadvertently suggest that findings in that context are inapplicable outside of it. For those studying small states ( Sam & Jackson, 2017 ), the need for comparison with other countries is usually a given (and often a condition for publication), while for researchers in larger countries, this is not always the case (e.g., Harris & Houlihan, 2016 ; Phillpots, Grix, & Quarmby, 2011 ). Perhaps the different affinities are a reflection of researchers wanting to draw parallels from another country, thereby treading carefully around the criticism that their work should be more comparative or, worse, that it is not sufficiently unique. Regardless, if we accept the prevailing logic that sport systems show at least moderate levels of convergence ( Bergsgard et al., 2007 ; Green & Houlihan, 2005 ), the predominant driver should be to adopt some comparative sensitivity to allow scholars to learn from each and every case. However, for the purposes of advancing the field, it may be unwise to over invest in metaframeworks like the ACF to achieve this lesson-drawing. Since policy is context-specific and takes place across public, private, and commercial boundaries, the continuation of a theoretical agnosticism might be better for identifying and more deeply understanding particularities, such as phenomena like modernization and governance, that cut across belief systems and coalitions.

To that end, some scholars have recently argued for a “decentered” approach to policy, such that the focal point is less on the “state” and its taken-for-granted authority and power ( Bevir, 2020 ). Instead, decentered theorists emphasize agency and “meaning-making” above all else and eschew the use of midlevel theories as explanations ( Bevir, 2020 ). For sport policy scholars, this is perhaps not so much a debate as it is an expansion of the scope of inquiry ( Goodwin & Grix, 2011 ). Indeed, much of this sentiment reflects what Henry and Ko (2014) advance as a critical realist approach in which the key questions are not only about “what works” but are also foundationally anchored in concerns about “for whom does a given policy work” and for whom does it not. Implicitly, this suggests that careful attention be paid to the variety of policies citizens create, how they amend and revise those policies, and how these policies perform ( Schlager, 2007 , p. 297).

In large part, this realist perspective seems to characterize the chief concerns adopted among scholars in the area. Importantly, it may also explain the sport policy field’s ongoing bricolage with the orientations described above (interests, ideas, and institutions), sans the promise of “completeness” offered by frameworks like the ACF. On this count, neo-institutionalists may combine rules with norms/beliefs as “conventions” ( Skille & Stenling, 2018 ) or “chains of legitimating acts” ( Strittmatter et al., 2018 ), while figurational sociologists and network theorists combine interests with institutions as “patterns of interaction” between actors ( Bloyce & Smith, 2010 ). Such theoretical diversity is welcome, not only for its own sake but ultimately because sport policies seem to share similar “politics.” Thus, findings from these diverse research strands can be viewed as “canaries in the coal mines,” alerting us to different “localized” policy possibilities as changes unfold elsewhere.

Since policy is multifaceted and encompasses elements of planning, strategizing, and debate, its analysis offers a particular vantage point. It is, on the one hand, pragmatic , in that it generally focuses on the temporary nature of solutions, the limits to rationality, and the imperfections of political bargaining. While this pragmatism and aim for relevance underlie the field, it also takes as given the place of values and political contestation. In this view, a sport policy can dictate what an athlete is allowed to ingest, just as it might establish a standard for who is considered “inactive” or “elite.” While the former says what we must do, the latter tells us who we are (fit or unfit) and to what we might be entitled (e.g., access to programs, grants, facilities, etc.). If politics is understood as “who gets what, when and how” ( Lasswell, 1958 ), it is clear why policymaking is a fundamental element underpinning virtually all public issues.

Importantly, changes in policy (or the introduction of new policies) invariably entail an attempt to alter the structure or balance of real power within/between organizations. Thus, authority and influence are not only the means to achieve desired outcomes; they are also valuable ends in themselves for those groups with a vested interest in the shape of future systems. That policy changes often appear as little more than organizational “tinkering” belies the fact that these can profoundly alter the institutional terrain and “rules of engagement” for future political contests. While “good governance” policies, for example, are undoubtedly a positive step toward reducing internal corruption, they are also political instruments that advance the creation of new “rulers” (in the form of auditors), while potentially altering conceptions of trust (see Power, 1997 ).

For these reasons, policies that address the issues of resource distribution, regulation, and governance are rarely static or complete, but are instead persistently analyzed, evaluated, and debated. Thus, to understand the inherent pragmatics and politics within these policy processes, this chapter has offered three broad, interconnected orientations that together require an understanding of

the interests that demand representation and/or coordination in policy matters (where interests may be drawn along multiple, overlapping lines such as advocates in health, education, parasport, tourism, women’s sport, etc.);

the institutions that circumscribe public policy processes, such as the basic machinery and mechanisms that steer government action and central sport authorities, as well as the policy instruments and procedural “rules of engagement” that guide behaviors;

the ideas , paradigms, and discourses that, explicitly or implicitly, underlie prevailing conceptions of public policy problems and how best to address them.

Policy research thus demands that we be aware of the inherent interplay between ideas, interests, and institutions. At a macro level, acknowledging these elements and their accordant perspectives helps to identify the various ways in which sport policies develop over time and across different contexts. At a more micro level, these orientations serve to remind us that, while sport policies can be problematic, the individuals in the process are rarely purposefully ignorant, oppressive, or short-sighted; rather, the ideas they adopt (or inherit) and the institutions in which they operate shape their assessment of what is considered “good” policy.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Sport and Politics

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• International Sporting Governing Bodies and Organizations
• Sport Governance and Policy
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Sport and Politics by Bryan Clift , Jacob J. Bustad LAST REVIEWED: 26 November 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 26 November 2019 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756223-0294

Since the early 1980s, the study of sport and politics has developed into a robust area of academic scholarship. Despite this growth, sport is often considered a phenomenon not associated with politics. Coupled with the popular perception that sport is too trivial or insignificant for serious research, sport and politics are not often connected or given significant consideration. One impetus for scholars of sport and politics is to demonstrate the important relationship between the two. As it has advanced, the study of the relationship between sport and politics has become an interdisciplinary endeavor. No one home of sport and politics exists. Decentralized, its study appears in a diversity of disciplines, notably within and in relation to cultural studies, economics, history, kinesiology, literature, geography, management, media and communications, political science, sociology, or urban studies. Political science alone is comprised of a range of fields and subfields (e.g., administration, policy, political theory, political economy, international relations, etc.). Acknowledging this diversity, both sport and politics come with definitional challenges. Sport is often associated with a structured organized activity that is goal-oriented, competitive, ludic, and physical. But commentators, critics, and everyday usage of the term often conflate it with exercise and physical activity, which are arguably less competitive and structured activities. Politics, too, can be taken in two common, and distinctive yet overlapping conceptual frames: The first involves the people, activities, processes, and decisions in the practices of governing a defined populace. The second takes a broader sense of the power relations and dynamics between people, which goes well beyond the strict understanding of institutions and government. Within the field, there is contention around whether or not the study of sport and politics should remain focused on practices of government alone, or if the latter conceptualization should be included. Regardless of where one sits on this issue, the study of sport and politics does indeed incorporate cross-cutting ideas of “sport” and “politics.” Early research on sport and politics focused on the more governmental side of politics, examining international relations, policy, diplomacy, or political ideology within specific countries, cities, or locales. This work has flourished since the early 1980s. Simultaneously, research foci pushed the boundaries of sport and politics by including broader understandings of power. Sporting organizations, teams, federations, international organizations, events, athletes, and celebrities, as well as exercise and physical activity practices, have been brought together with a range of politicized inquiry in relation to, for example, activism, conflict resolution, disability, environmental issues, ethnicity, health, human rights, gambling, gender, metal health, peace, pleasure, race, security, sexuality, social justice, social responsibility, urbanism, or violence. As the many works cited herein attest, the study of sport and politics is a diverse and growing focus of scholarship.

There are several texts that serve as primers for the field of sport and politics. These authors address general and specific topics relevant to the field including sport governance and policy, sport and political activism, sporting mega-events, and the relationship between sport and politics within particular local and global contexts. As more recent writings, they capture the historical development of the field stemming from the early 1980s with more recent scholarship. The handbook Bairner, et al. 2016 is a broad and comprehensive account of important topics within the field, and provides detailed scholarly background to various issues, including sport and the nation; sport and political ideologies; and sport, political activism, and issues related to race, gender, and sexuality. Grix 2015 examines the involvement of the state in regard to contemporary sport governance and policy, while Abrams 2013 provides a historical perspective for examining the relationship between sport and politics in the 20th century and the implications of these histories for contemporary sport. Allison 2005 focuses on the changing dynamics of sport and national and international politics, and Markovits and Rensmann 2010 examines the role and impact of professional sport organizations and athletes within global politics.

Abrams, R. I. Playing Tough: The World of Sport and Politics . Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2013.

This book serves as an introductory resource to the area of inquiry as it presents particular historical cases as examples of the relationship between sport and politics. Most useful for undergraduate and graduate students within the initial stages of study.

Allison, L., ed. The Global Politics of Sport . London: Routledge, 2005.

This edited volume serves as a second sequel to The Politics of Sport (1986), and provides an updated analysis of the critical issues related to sport and global politics. Includes chapters by leading authors in the field.

Bairner, A., J. Kelly, and J. Woo Lee, eds. Routledge Handbook of Sport and Politics . London: Routledge, 2016.

This handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of the field through over forty chapters focused on specific areas of research. Chapters are organized in sections related to ideologies, nation and statehood, corporate politics, political activism, social justice, and the politics of sports events. Most useful for scholars and researchers engaged in the field.

Grix, J. Sport Politics: An Introduction . London: Macmillan International Higher Education, 2015.

This book lays an introductory basis for understanding “sport” and “politics” individually and in relation to one another before moving on to the more recent development of sport and politics in regard to state involvement in governance and policy. Later chapters focus on sport and national identity, sport and the media, and sport and public diplomacy.

Markovits, A. S., and L. Rensmann. Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.

DOI: 10.1515/9781400834662

Gaming the World examines the cultural and political changes related to the global sport industry, specifically focusing on professional soccer, football, baseball, basketball, and hockey.

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Introduction

The collection of articles in this introductory unit is intended to open students to different approaches to understanding sports as an area of intellectual inquiry. Staying open, discovering questions at issue, considering multiple perspectives through research on those questions, and then developing written arguments to help an audience identify and unsettle assumptions are signature learning goals in WR 123. The articles in this unit provide examples of how sports can be a platform in which engaged writers and scholars investigate political and cultural values. Each article models a method of inquiry that reveals the oft unacknowledged complexities that undergird surface conflicts reported in sports coverage. In doing so, each article raises its own rich questions about how culture shapes sports and sports, in turn, shapes culture. Reading the articles in preparation to engage in ethical argumentation requires students to think about each article in its specific context as well as how, when read together, the articles point to a related series of questions that can be explored more in depth in individual research projects.

Mia Fisher, writing in a sociology-based journal, considers football as a site to investigate the nexus of political structure and masculinity in the familiar context of the NFL. Clifford Geertz’s classic ethnographic article uses the cockfight as an entry into investigating how gender and relationships are structured in an unfamiliar culture. Erica Rand and Claudia Rankine bring a critical social-justice focused lens to their respective investigations on gender and power in figure skating and tennis. Read as a cluster, identity, as a powerful social construct revealed by  individual’s experience in sports, emerges as a site of inquiry. Jere Longman and Taylor Barnes along with Malcolm Gladwell use investigative journalism to raise culture-related questions about soccer and football and address the connection between sports and violence. Longman and Barnes on its own offers students the opportunity to see how an extreme act of violence in a rural Brazil soccer game reveals as much about structural inequities and poverty as it does about the less surprising and more oft investigated connection between sports and violence. Gladwell’s discussion of repetitive brain trauma in football brings another kind of violence to the discussion.

Read as a unit, the articles offer a window into how power and economy are implicated in sports, which, in turn, makes the argument that sports is indeed political. With this new insight, students can engage in classroom discussion and use exploratory writing to begin to explore how those same themes might be at play in their own experiences with sports and current conflicts sports about which they might be aware. This exploration might begin by asking:

• Which academic disciplines are interested in sports and what methods do they use to explore sports?
• What assumptions do authors of sports-related articles make about their specific audience’s relationship to sports? How do these assumptions affect rhetorical choices?
• Do sports have the power to transform culture, or do they merely reflect it? How can sports impact our understanding of social justice issues?
• Where does responsibility lie to address conflict in sports? How are sports governed and who has the power to make changes?
• What cultural power do individual athletes have, and what role does identity play in the opportunities and privileges athletes have within their respective sports and cultures? What responsibilities do individual athletes have?

“Commemorating 9/11 NFL-Style.”

Fischer, Mia. “Commemorating 9/11 NFL-Style: Insights Into America’s Culture of Militarism.” J ournal of Sport and Social Issues , vol. 38, no. 3, June 2014, pp. 199–221 , doi: 10.1177/0193723513515889 .

“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.”

Geertz, Clifford. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” Daedalus, Vol. 134, No. 4 (Fall 2005), pp. 56-86.

Geertz visits Bali on an ethnographic mission and discovers the intense psychic bond Balinese men have with the birds they use in cockfighting. This thorough investigation into culture-bound traditions raises questions of how sports of all kinds stands in for our sense of communit y status.

Must be logged into UO library account to access article.

“Offensive Play.”

Gladwell, Malcolm. “Offensive Play.” The New Yorker . 11 Oct. 2009,

This essay by public intellectual Malcolm Gladwell was a watershed piece of journalism on the now infamous repetitive brain trauma debate in football. Gladwell elegantly positions research and player accounts in relation to his central question of whether violence is inher ent to the game, or something we can overcome.

“ A Yellow Card, then Unfathomable Violence, in Brazil.”

Longman, Jere and Taylor Barnes. “A Yellow Card, then Unfathomable Violence, in Brazil. New York Times , 13 Oct. 2013.

Longman and Barnes look at local soccer culture in rural Brazil and find the rampant effects of poverty in a community forgotten b y government and law enforcement. In this case, soccer played as catharsis tips into deadly violence.

“I Wanted Black Skates: Gender, Cash, Pleasure, and the Politics of Criticism.”

Rand, Erica. “I wanted black skates: gender, cash, pleasure, and the politics of criticism.” Criticism , vol. 50, no. 4, 2008, p. 555+.

In this academic article, Rand makes a broad argument about how pleasure ought to be studied, considered, and celebrated as a category itself, as well as how outside factors including r ace, class, gender, sexuality, economics, shame, and more affect our ability to grant ourselves pleasure. She uses her experience taking up figure skating as a lens through which to discuss these issues.

“The Meaning of Serena Williams: On Tennis and Black Excellence.”

Rankine, Claudia. “The Meaning of Serena Williams: On Tennis and Black Excellence.” New York Times , 25 Aug. 2015.

In this critical race theory-driven piece, acclaimed poet and public intellectual Cl audia Rankine examines the investment people of color have in Serena Williams’ greatness and how Serena shoulders the mantle of representing Black Americans. This essay questions the different standards of winning and good behavior that a black female cham pion is held to by various stakeholding communities.

The Politics of Sports Copyright © by University of Oregon Composition Program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Power and Politics in Sport Organizations

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This chapter considers the influence of power and politics within sport organizations. The overall concepts are first reviewed to provide a broad understanding of their theoretical frameworks. The sources of power are provided, which is not as simple as being named a boss or a supervisor. We then cover how resource acquisition is a valuable ability in terms of accumulating power. The chapter also contains content on organizational politics, which is a demonstration of how power is utilized and located within organizations. Lastly, the concept of political skill is introduced and described to provide students with a unique perspective of organizational politics and influence.

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Expert Commentary

The complicated relationship between sports and politics

A new study suggests serious sports fans are likely to show strong support for the military. The finding may help explain why some Americans react negatively to athletes kneeling during the national anthem.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource July 27, 2018

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/sports-fans-football-politics-military-research/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

A new study suggests serious sports fans are likely to show strong support for the U.S. military — a finding that could help explain why some Americans react negatively to athletes kneeling during the national anthem.

The study does not specifically address sports fans’ opinions about the national anthem or athletes kneeling during it as a form of political protest. However, for some fans, the military and “The Star-Spangled Banner” are closely linked, said one of the authors,  Michael Serazio , an assistant professor of communication who teaches a course on sports, media and culture at Boston College.

“In the minds of those fans, the anthem and the [American] flag and the military are possibly interlocking in a way that to protest in the presence of one is to protest all of those elements,” he told Journalist’s Resource .

Serazio teamed up with  Emily A. Thorson , an assistant professor of political science at Syracuse University, to investigate the relationship between sports fandom and certain political attitudes. They discovered they’re closely intertwined, “despite what some fans and commentators might wish to believe,” they write in the resulting research article, published in Public Opinion Quarterly .

They found that, generally speaking, Republicans are no more likely than Democrats to identify as sports fans. However, all sports fans in the United States are more likely to have right-leaning beliefs about the armed forces and economic mobility. Fans are more likely than non-fans to say they support the military and believe a person’s economic success is a direct result of his or her hard work.

“Ideological messaging is omnipresent in sports culture,” Thorson and Serazio write. “This study takes a first step toward unpacking the complicated relationship between sports and politics.”

The findings are based on the results of a survey conducted in November 2016, shortly after San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick shocked fans by sitting on his team’s bench during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police violence.

Kaepernick’s refusal to stand spurred a national debate about the appropriateness of big-name athletes protesting at sporting events. Other football players who followed his lead have been called “unpatriotic” for sitting or kneeling during the anthem at the start of games.

Serazio said the timing of the survey was a coincidence. However, a number of the people who participated mentioned Kaepernick’s protest and made comments such as “disrespecting the national anthem should be immediate cause for termination.”

The survey, which focused on a nationally representative sample of 1,051 adults, asked questions about sports fans’ identity, their political attitudes and their opinions about the politicization of sports.

Here are some of the other findings:

• American football is the most popular sport in the U.S., with 56 percent of adults identifying as fans. Thirty-eight percent are baseball fans and 26 percent said they are basketball fans. Meanwhile, 34.7 percent of women and 18.7 percent of men say they don’t follow any sport and don’t consider themselves sports fans.
• Basketball fans of all races are more likely to identify as Democratic and liberal than individuals who do not follow basketball. The researchers didn’t find similar links between political party and other types of sports.
• Political conservatives are much more likely to say they oppose the mixing of sports and politics.

Looking for more research on sports topics? Check out our write-ups on football concussions , the economic impact of Olympic games and gender equity in high school athletics. 

About The Author

Denise-Marie Ordway

Paper Proposal and Annotated Bibliography INSTRUCTIONS

As students transition from the first unit into independent research projects, usually around midterm, they submit a proposal and an annotated bibliography for instructor feedback before continuing on in drafting their major research paper for the course.

This assignment helps you to transition from the class unit to your own research. It asks you to present your essay preparation and research in advance of the first draft of your major research paper. Because our way of writing is based on inquiry in research and reading, and your arguments derive from your synthesis of the evidence you have found through your readings and research, this assignment prompts you to do that inquiry as you develop your plans for your paper. It allows me to check in about your topic and inquiry before you draft the research-based essay.

The purpose of this assignment is to help you practice the following skills that are essential to your success on the major research paper as well as in your academic career:

• Research, including research for different purposes (background information, critical framing, people’s opinions, specific facts, etc.)
• Synthesis of divergent views (when two sources argue differently about your topic)
• Synthesis of different fields (e.g., critical race theory as a way of looking at commercials with Serena Williams)
• Writing process, in this case starting from sources instead of necessarily starting from an already strongly held opinion

This assignment will also help you to become familiar with the following important content knowledge in this discipline:

• The conventions for annotated bibliographies
• The identification, summary, and evaluation of different kinds of sources
• Your ability to speak knowledgeably about, and write an argument based on, your chosen topic area

Tasks (Two Parts)

Paper proposal.

Your proposal, or what is basically an abstract, will be no more than 350 words. It is written based on your research and reading, so it attempts to concisely convey a lot of work you’ve already done. No words should be superfluous in this; it should be difficult to say it all briefly, if you have researched and read widely and critically.

It must do three things:

• Identify a central research question and that question’s stakes (why it’s so important, to whom);
• briefly describe the kinds of sources that your argument will engage, using the types of sources in the class unit as models for the type of sources you should be using;
• and describe concisely how your planned argument will advance and contribute to the discourse surrounding your topic.

Ideally, you will be tying together multiple threads through your writing in essay cycle 2 (see point 2 above, about types of sources). For instance, your paper might engage with questions of the value of sports for lower socioeconomic status children and the importance of dance education for a paper that seeks to argue for greater access to dance for children who can’t afford studio fees; or, more specifically about sources, you might mention your use of recent articles about the dissolution of the player’s coalition in conversation with critical or historical articles that explain the history of African American activism to show the historical and critical basis for this current issue alongside, maybe, your proposal for “solving” it. When you talk about those sources, you may point to the specific ones you’ve found and put in your annotated bibliography, but do not need to spend time going into much depth about each source, since the annotated bibliography does that. You may continue to use sources from the introductory unit, but it is not required; they will continue to serve as examples of the type of text to look for and the types of questions and conversations you will locate and with which you will engage.

The abstract will be formatted on its own page, separate from the annotated bibliography, should be double-spaced and formatted according to MLA Style guidelines (i.e., Times New Roman 12 pt. font, 1-inch margins, proper citations for any quotes you may use to engage critics).

Annotated Bibliography

You are required to annotate five sources relevant to your research topic. These sources need not be entirely scholarly, peer-reviewed articles, though you will want to include some such sources (at least one) as an indication that your research can function as part of a scholarly discourse. In general, even when a source is not scholarly, it should have a similar depth of approach–whatever its field–to the texts we read together as a class. You are invited to be creative about what kinds of sources you use. For example, blog posts, videos, tweets, news articles, documentaries, and films are as valid for the kind of cultural studies exploration we are doing as are the above mentioned scholarly works, as long as you can justify the critical import of the source. Your bibliography must, like the abstract, follow MLA guidelines for style and formatting.

Annotations are generally 150-200 words. For sources that are particularly important to your argument, you may need to say more, but no entry should exceed 300 words.

An effective annotated bibliography entry consists of five parts:

• Bibliographic line: a citation in MLA format (for our class).
• Structure line: an overview of what the source looks like, where and when it appeared, whether it’s long. Think of the source as a tool: what kind of tool is it and what does it contain? Tell us how to recognize it, noting things like if it is primarily opinion, if it has a lot of sub-sections, if it has charts. Possibly tell us a thing or two about where it was published or the author, if those details help your reader.
• Descriptive line: an overview of the content of the source, including the genre, its main idea, its purpose–a general summary of its topic and idea.
• Content line: a more detailed summary of what it says and how. Identify the main line(s) of reasoning, the kinds of evidence it uses, anything especially controversial or noteworthy in its argument (especially what you’ll engage with in your paper).
• Assessment line: particular areas of the source that are useful for your research, or how it interacts with your bigger question, or how it interacts with other sources, or who might find it useful. For this assignment, make this specific to how you’ll use the source in your planned paper.

Lines 2-5 are a paragraph following the citation. The citation is formatted in “hanging” paragraph format, with the first line flush with the margin and the following lines (if any) indented; the paragraph is formatted in standard paragraph format, with the first line indented and the subsequent lines flush with the margin. Entries are in alphabetical order.

Criteria for Success

To earn full points for this assignment, the evidence of thorough, inquisitive research must be obvious to me, your reader. The proposed paper must fit our final paper criteria (8-10 pages, attempting to engage with your synthesis of multiple sources, ideally multiple kinds of sources, answering a question that is at issue to our audience or a particular audience you’ve identified and justified, important to us/that audience in some way). The abstract and the annotated bibliography should obviously support the same project. You may acknowledge parts of your proposed paper that are not finalized, noting, for instance, that the way an opposing view can be countered sufficiently needs more work; however, the overall sense of the proposal should be that you have thought through your plans and are prepared to begin writing. Though we won’t do it this way, in theory you could sit down in-class on the due date and draft a paper or thorough outline based on all this work.

Following the instructions will satisfy half of the requirements of each part of the assignment as I grade; the depth and thoroughness of your thinking and the clear path toward your next essay make up the rest of the score.

Format and Submission

This is a formal writing assignment. It will be formatted as all formal work is in our course, with a heading, headers on subsequent pages, 1” margins on all sides, evidence of thorough editing, and so on. Both parts of the assignment will be in one document, paper proposal abstract first, with the annotations beginning at the top of a new page. You will submit the assignment by the deadline on Canvas as a .doc, .docx, or .pdf file.

The Politics of Sports Copyright © by University of Oregon Composition Program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Costs and Benefits of Clan Culture: Elite Control versus Cooperation in China

Kinship ties are a common institution that may facilitate in-group coordination and cooperation. Yet their benefits – or lack thereof – depend crucially on the broader institutional environment. We study how the prevalence of clan ties affect how communities confronted two well-studied historical episodes from the early years of the People's Republic of China, utilizing four distinct proxies for county clan strength: the presence of recognized ancestral halls; genealogical records; rice suitability; and geographic latitude. We show that the loss of livestock associated with 1955-56 collectivization (which mandated that farmers surrender livestock for little compensation) documented by Chen and Lan (2017) was much less pronounced in strong-clan areas. By contrast, we show that the 1959-61 Great Famine was associated with higher mortality in areas with stronger clan ties. We argue that reconciling these two conflicting patterns requires that we take a broader view of how kinship groups interact with other governance institutions, in particular the role of kinship as a means of elite control.

Chen would like to acknowledge the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71933002; 72121002), Zhuoyue Talent Project, Theoretical Economics Peak Program and Legendary Project on Humanities and Social Sciences (XM04221238) at Fudan University. Wang would like to thank National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant No. 72172090) for financial support. Qing Ye would like to thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant No. 72172060, 72132004) and the Major Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research Funds for Jiangsu University (grant No. 2020SJZDA068) for financial support. We thank Rui Rong for excellent RA work, all remaining errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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Poll: Biden and Trump supporters sharply divided by the media they consume

Supporters of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are sharply divided across all sorts of lines, including the sources they rely on to get their news, new data from the NBC News poll shows.

Biden is the clear choice of voters who consume newspapers and national network news, while Trump does best among voters who don’t follow political news at all. 

The stark differences help highlight the strategies both candidates are using as they seek another term in the White House — and shed some light on why the presidential race appears relatively stable.

The poll looked at various forms of traditional media (newspapers, national network news and cable news), as well as digital media (social media, digital websites and YouTube/Google). Among registered voters, 54% described themselves as primarily traditional news consumers, while 40% described themselves as primarily digital media consumers. 

Biden holds an 11-point lead among traditional news consumers in a head-to-head presidential ballot test, with 52% support among that group to Trump’s 41%. But it’s basically a jump ball among digital media consumers, with Trump at 47% and Biden at 44%. 

And Trump has a major lead among those who don’t follow political news — 53% back him, and 27% back Biden. 

“It’s almost comic. If you’re one of the remaining Americans who say you read a newspaper to get news, you are voting for Biden by 49 points,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the poll alongside Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt.

The trends also extend to other questions in the poll. There's a significant difference in how traditional news consumers view Biden, while digital news consumers are far more in line with registered voters overall.

More primarily traditional news consumers have positive views of Biden (48%) than negative ones (44%). Among primarily digital news consumers, 35% view Biden positively, and 54% view him negatively. Vice President Kamala Harris' positive ratings show a similar divide, while Trump is viewed similarly by news consumers of both stripes.

And although the sample size is small, those who don't follow political news feel more positively about Trump and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and more negatively about Biden.

Trump’s lead among those not following political news caught Horwitt’s eye amid Trump's trial on charges related to allegations he paid hush money to quash news of an alleged affair from coming out during the heat of his 2016 presidential campaign and as he faces legal jeopardy in other cases that consistently make news. 

“These are voters who have tuned out information, by and large, and they know who they are supporting, and they aren’t moving,” Horwitt said. 

“That’s why it’s hard to move this race based on actual news. They aren’t seeing it, and they don’t care,” he continued.

Third-party candidates also do well with this chunk of the electorate — a quarter of the 15% who say they don’t follow political news choose one of the other candidates in a five-way ballot test that includes Kennedy, Jill Stein and Cornel West. Third-party supporters also make up similar shares of those who say they get their news primarily from social media and from websites.

But voting behavior among those groups suggests that Biden's stronger showing with those traditional media consumers puts him ahead with a more reliable voting bloc.

Of those polled who could be matched to the voter file, 59% of those who voted in both 2020 and 2022 primarily consume traditional media, 40% primarily consume digital media, and just 9% don't follow political news. (The percentages add up to more than 100% because some people chose media platforms across multiple categories.)

Those who voted less frequently were more likely to say they don’t follow political news: 19% of those who voted in the last presidential election but not in 2022 and 27% who voted in neither of the last two elections say they don't follow political news.

The NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters nationwide — 891 contacted via cellphone — was conducted April 12-16, and it has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Ben Kamisar is a national political reporter for NBC News.

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Six Decades of Economic Research at the Bank of England

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Juan Acosta , Beatrice Cherrier , François Claveau , Clément Fontan , Aurélien Goutsmedt , Francesco Sergi; Six Decades of Economic Research at the Bank of England. History of Political Economy 1 February 2024; 56 (1): 1–40. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-10956544

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This paper discusses the transformation of the content, role, and status of economic research at the Bank of England in the past sixty years. We show how three factors (the policy functions and missions of the Bank, the attitude of its executives toward economics, and its organizational structure) shaped the evolution of in-house economic research at the Bank during three distinctive periods (1960–91; 1992–2007; 2007–14). Our account relies on a broad set of sources and methods (the Bank's publications, archives, interviews with current and former Bank economists, citation analysis, prosopography, and topic modeling).

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Three parties excluded from 2024 ballot, ConCourt rules

• File Image: Election officials count ballots.
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• 10 May 2024, 10:36 [SAST]

The Constitutional Court has ruled that three parties will be excluded from the ballot paper of the 2024 elections. They are the newly formed Labour Party, the Afrikan Alliance of Social Democrats and the African Congress for Transformation (ACT).

This comes after the three political parties appealed to the Constitutional Court to rule on whether the IEC’s online portal for the submission of political party candidate lists had malfunctioned and prevented the parties from complying with Section 27 of the Electoral Act.

The applicants were barred from contesting the upcoming elections after they had failed to comply with Section 27 of the Electoral Act by submitting their lists by the March deadline. The applicants blamed their failure to comply on the IEC’s online portal, which they allege, malfunctioned.

The Electoral Court, however, ruled in favour of the IEC, finding that evidence showed that the Online Candidate Nomination System functioned without issues at the relevant time.

The IEC opposed the three applications before the apex court and submitted that if the court grants the relief sought, the IEC will not be in a position to deliver free and fair elections on 29 May 2024.

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Local Library Is Alive and Well

Editor, News-Register:

For decades, many bibliographic pessimists have declared that “Libraries are dead” or more tongue-in-cheekily observed that libraries and librarians are experiencing “Death by a thousand paper cuts!”

However, in January of this year, Beth Prindle, the director of research and special collections at the Boston Public Library, emphatically stated, “All (those) who said books are dead or libraries are dead have not stepped foot in a public library in a very long time.”

Indeed, it’s easy to see by visiting our local Ohio County Public Library (OCPL) that libraries in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle are alive and well!

The OCPL is alive with children playing on the floor, listening attentively to story hours, concocting experiments in a Fun Lab, or creatively participating in play activities.

OCPL is alive with scores of local citizens weekly attending and participating in Lunch With Books programs featuring writers, performers, historians, animals, and even your next-door neighbor.

OCPL is alive in celebrating the arts by hosting exhibitions, installing murals and artworks, and offering programs that explore and celebrate all aspects of artistic endeavors.

OCPL is alive with folks exploring their genealogical roots, finding the history of their residences, delving into historical factfinding, and documenting the extraordinary narratives related to past and present residents.

OCPL is alive with assisting citizens with critical services such as finding a job, processing legal documents, becoming computer literate, and navigating nontraditional information sources.

OCPL is alive with the provision of resources and services to teachers and students in our school systems — assisting with the acquisition of information and knowledge.

OCPL is alive with providing online and specialized information, materials, and services outside its physical walls to a wide range of library users.

OCPL is alive in meeting critical societal and social needs of our community.

But it is our personal and civic responsibility and obligation to ensure that the necessary fiscal and related resources are available for the Library to continue to meet is mission, goals, and objectives. In recent years there have consistently been efforts to reduce (some would say defund) the Ohio County Public Library. Perhaps these efforts have been from those who “have not stepped foot” in the OCPL for a long time?

Regardless of the reason, it is time to stop these nefarious budget recisions, which are unnecessary and harmful to the Library’s continued success. As voters, we can assert our belief that the Ohio County Public Library is alive and well and needs to stay that way by restoring full and stable funding.

On May 14th, please vote FOR THE LEVIES (Board of Education and Ohio County Public Library levies). We need passage of both levies to flourish and prosper.

Charles A. Julian

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A wild orangutan used a medicinal plant to treat a wound, scientists say

Scientists say they’ve observed an orangutan named Rakus appearing to treat a wound with medicine from a tropical plant. It’s the latest example of how some animals attempt to soothe their own ills with remedies found in the wild.

This combination of photos provided by the Suaq foundation shows a facial wound on Rakus, a wild male Sumatran orangutan in Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia, on June 23, 2022, two days before he applied chewed leaves from a medicinal plant, left, and on Aug. 25, 2022, after his facial wound was barely visible. (Armas, Safruddin/Suaq foundation via AP)

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This photo provided by the Suaq foundation shows Rakus, a wild male Sumatran orangutan in Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia, on Aug. 25, 2022, after his facial wound was barely visible. Two months earlier, researchers observed him apply chewed leaves from a plant, used throughout Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation and to kill bacteria, to the wound. (Safruddin/Suaq foundation via AP)

This photo provided by the Suaq foundation shows a facial wound on Rakus, a wild male Sumatran orangutan in Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia, on June 23, 2022, two days before he applied chewed leaves from a plant, used throughout Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation and to kill bacteria, to the wound. (Armas/Suaq foundation via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — An orangutan appeared to treat a wound with medicine from a tropical plant— the latest example of how some animals attempt to soothe their own ills with remedies found in the wild, scientists reported Thursday.

Scientists observed Rakus pluck and chew up leaves of a medicinal plant used by people throughout Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation. The adult male orangutan then used his fingers to apply the plant juices to an injury on the right cheek. Afterward, he pressed the chewed plant to cover the open wound like a makeshift bandage, according to a new study in Scientific Reports .

Previous research has documented several species of great apes foraging for medicines in forests to heal themselves, but scientists hadn’t yet seen an animal treat itself in this way.

“This is the first time that we have observed a wild animal applying a quite potent medicinal plant directly to a wound,” said co-author Isabelle Laumer, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany.

The orangutan’s intriguing behavior was recorded in 2022 by Ulil Azhari, a co-author and field researcher at the Suaq Project in Medan, Indonesia. Photographs show the animal’s wound closed within a month without any problems.

Scientists have been observing orangutans in Indonesia’s Gunung Leuser National Park since 1994, but they hadn’t previously seen this behavior.

“It’s a single observation,” said Emory University biologist Jacobus de Roode, who was not involved in the study. “But often we learn about new behaviors by starting with a single observation.”

“Very likely it’s self-medication,” said de Roode, adding that the orangutan applied the plant only to the wound and no other body part.

It’s possible Rakus learned the technique from other orangutans living outside the park and away from scientists’ daily scrutiny, said co-author Caroline Schuppli at Max Planck.

Rakus was born and lived as a juvenile outside the study area. Researchers believe the orangutan got hurt in a fight with another animal. It’s not known whether Rakus earlier treated other injuries.

Scientists have previously recorded other primates using plants to treat themselves.

Bornean orangutans rubbed themselves with juices from a medicinal plant, possibly to reduce body pains or chase away parasites.

Chimpanzees in multiple locations have been observed chewing on the shoots of bitter-tasting plants to soothe their stomachs. Gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos swallow certain rough leaves whole to get rid of stomach parasites.

“If this behavior exists in some of our closest living relatives, what could that tell us about how medicine first evolved?” said Tara Stoinski, president and chief scientific officer of the nonprofit Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, who had no role in the study.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.