The Prevention of Ageing in the French Political Agenda: The Role of Sports and Physical Activities

Abstract

The first phase of a public policy consists in placing a public issue on the political “agenda”. To examine this policy, classical analyses of political agendas underline the operating factors in action when a question comes to be viewed as a public issue. Here we shall consider French policies related to the prevention of ageing through sports and physical activities (APS). More specifically, we shall analyse three factors which gave this issue such power as to raise questions to the public authorities. The first factor regards demographic, social and economic changes combined with new ways of apprehending the elderly and the body, but also changes related to the French health policy and its definite direction towards prevention. Indeed life expectancy is steadily getting longer which makes the financing of retirement pensions more complex – all the more so as health expenses increase with age. The second factor is the existence of a corpus of knowledge regarding physical and sports activities as well as ageing. This combination forms an “epistemic community” carried by the medical profession. As a matter of fact, the recommendations and expert-assessments related to the role of physical activities to support “ageing well” build their legitimacy on a set of multidisciplinary bodies of knowledge within the sphere of gerontology. The third major factor concerns actions undertaken by international institutions like the UNO or the WHO which gave the necessary incentive to indirectly lead the French government action. Since the 1970s, old age – or “the third age” as it is called in France – has progressively become a crucial element in international policies. In France, it is conveyed through the notion of well-aging which can be found at the heart of many action plans.