Distinctive policy diffusion patterns, processes and actors: drawing implications from the case of sport in international development

ABSTRACT

This article examines the diffusion of “Sport for Development and Peace” (SDP) across sub-Saharan Africa following global policy impetus provided by international organizations, including the United Nations, since the start of the twenty-first century. In so doing, the article centres on a geographical region that has been unconsidered in the policy diffusion literature and, particularly, responds to calls for research into the effects of policy characteristics on diffusion mechanisms and patterns. This rationale beget methods that differed from the predominant use of quantitative, dichotomous indicators of policy diffusion, instead integrating data from global, international and national policy documents, from a review of SDP literature, and from stakeholder interviews in Ghana and Tanzania. Patterns of increasing governmental engagement with, but limited implementation of, SDP policies contrasted with the significant expansion of SDP provision by diverse NGOs. In turn, these patterns represented the varying influence of different diffusion mechanisms on state and non-state actors. Compared with the diffusion of other types of policies, these findings indicated the effects of an instrumental, malleable but complex global policy model for SDP diffusion. There is, therefore, significant value in further research that examines how policy diffusion may depend on the configuration of particular policy characteristics, mechanisms and actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport for development and peace (SDP)
• policy transfer
• sub-Saharan Africa
• non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
• sport

Acknowledgements

The contribution of partners (Dr Emmanuel Owusu-Ansah, Dr Bella Bello Bitugu, Dr Hamad Ndee, Dr ABT Zakariah and Dr Ruth Jeanes) in the wider research project "Sustainable Development and African Sport" were invaluable in supporting data collection and discussing ideas for this article. The authors would also wish to thank Davies Banda, Oliver Dudfield, Ben Sanders, Lyndsay Hayhurst, Martin Roderick, Benjamin Rigby, Linda McKie, Jonathan Bradshaw and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of the article. Any limitations are the authors' own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Iain Lindsey is an Associate Professor in Sport Policy and Development in the Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Durham University. Iain has extensively researched sport for development in a number of different African contexts, and his interests also include analysis of youth sport policies and practices in the UK.

Dr Bella Bello Bitugu is Director of Sport at the University of Ghana. Bella has previously worked for a Sport for Development and Peace NGO and taught sociology at the University of Innsbruck.

ORCID

Iain Lindsey http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3404-6616

Bella Bello Bitugu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2504-0626

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust [grant number IN-050].