Participation in sport: international policy perspectives

Abstract

Nicholson, M., Hoye, R. & Houlihan B. (Eds.). (2011). Participation in Sport. International Policy Perspectives. London: Routledge.Sport participation has become one of the key determinants in describing, explaining and understanding the characteristics of contemporary leisure - and sometimes even more broadly, postmodern global societies in general. The benefits of sport participation are widely recognised in most parts of the world. Involvement in physical activity is believed to function as one of the major preventers of global health problems. Sport participation is also seen as a valuable source of social capital that contributes to the community spirit and equality among members of contemporary societies. Moreover, sport participation is interconnected with recreational physical culture and the leisure industry by creating various forms of business activities and hence promoting economic growth and wellbeing.Participation in Sport. International policy Perspectives addresses these issues by providing an overview of sport participation from as many as sixteen countries around the world. The featured countries consist of seven European nations (England, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland) together with South Africa, four Asian countries (India, China, Singapore and Japan); Australia and New Zealand, and finally the North American perspectives from the United States and Canada. The ambitious aim of the book is that through observations of national structures of sport, national sporting cultures, participation levels in organised sport, the nature and extent of government interventions and implementation and the impact of government policies to describe and understand international differences in sport participation.It is not surprising that with so many countries in focus, one of the main conclusions is that there is great diversity in national sport structures around the world. What seems to be common to all countries, however is that sports delivery systems involve a trinity of public, private and volunteer sector arrangements. Depending on the political, economic and social systems, government involvement is either centralised (with the state more strictly in control of the sport participation agenda) or decentralised (as it is the case for example in the US where sport participation is largely built upon school sport). Diversity in sport structures also results from the varying role of National Olympic Committees' involvement in aligning sport policies, or as it is the case with company sport in Japan, of other models and national sport delivery arrangements.What seems to be evident, however is, that in most countries sport participation is delivered and consumed through a federalist community club system. With the influence of national subsidy and funding programmes volunteer-run sport clubs provide preconditions and activities for participation. In many featured countries this model has its roots in the historically strong amateur based sporting culture and a tradition of community based civic activities. However, the idea of sport participation being merely a third sector activity started to change, and more especially during the 1980 's and 1990's when a substantial growth in the number of commercial providers (such as gyms and fitness centres) occurred. In fact, in many of the developed countries, the number of participants in sport participation in private facilities has been equal or exceeded the number of participants in non-profit providers. What is a striking finding in the book, however, is that the type of sport structure does not seem to correlate with the frequency nor intensity of sport participation within each distinctive nations.As it is the case with the sport structures also national sporting cultures vary in the featured countries. In some parts of the world (for instance in North- Western Europe) sport participation and physical activity seem to have become normative forms of action and behaviour that self-regulate people's leisure orientations. …