The power to shape policy: charting sport for development and peace policy discourses

Abstract

This paper discusses findings from a development policy discourse analysis that was conducted using six key sport for development and peace (SDP) policy documents. The research was guided by a theoretical framework combining postcolonial theory and actor-oriented sociology in order to critically analyse SDP policies. Based on this analysis, three theses are proposed: (1) SDP policies are unclear, circuitous and are underpinned by political rationalities; (2) coordinated and coherent SDP policy approaches between the One-Third World and Two-Thirds World suggest that ‘partnership’ is possibly akin to ‘developmental assimilation’; and (3) SDP policy models are wedded to the increasingly neoliberal character of international development interventions. Proposals for future research on SDP include an increase in the use of: (1) anthropological perspectives to uncover how those on the ‘receiving end’ of SDP policies are influenced and challenged by taking up the solutions and techniques prescribed for them; and (2) postcolonial perspectives that re-orient questions and concerns towards the Eurocentric standpoints couched in development policies, and asks scholars to uncover how power relations, authority and influence are embedded in the social processes of policy-making. The article concludes by arguing that SDP policies are messy, unpredictable, ambiguous and, at times, contradictory.