Sport policy in Norway

Abstract

Norwegian sport policy and organization leans on a historically developed model of the division of labour between public authorities and voluntary sport organizations. State policy for sport is administered by the Department of Sport Policy in the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. The state funds sport facilities and supports voluntary sport organizations. It articulates various justifications for supporting sport, which relate to health, education and culture. The voluntary sport sector consists of the umbrella organization – The Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports – and its network of national special sport organizations, district sport organizations, regional special sport organizations, local sport councils and over 12,000 sport clubs. The vast majority of the work in sport clubs is voluntarily conducted. The established form of organization and the autonomy of the sport clubs create challenges for the implementation of sport policies. The state lacks adequate policy tools to use to assist in the implementation of its various policy goals through the voluntary system. In that respect, it is suggested that future directions for sport policy should build on a better understanding of (1) the local sport clubs providing sport activities and (2) youth – often the target group for policy intervention.

Keywords:

• Norway
• sport policy
• sport organization
• policy tools
• challenges
• country-profile

Introduction

This article aims to provide an overview of the contemporary situation regarding sport policy and sport organization in Norway. In Norway, public sport and movement activities are governed by three different ministries: (1) The Ministry of Health and Care Services, whose primary concern, in sporting terms, relates to the supposedly negative physical health effects of increasing levels of physical inactivity in the population; (2) The Ministry of Education and Research, which is responsible for the development of physical education in school; and (3) The Ministry of Culture, which, through the Department of Sport Policy (DSP), is responsible for providing sporting opportunities for all. This article will focus on the latter, The Ministry of Culture, and thus on the interplay between the DSP, The Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF), the various constituent parts of the confederation, such as national/special sport federations (e.g. the Norwegian Football Association and the Norwegian Ski Association), and the voluntary-driven sport clubs which actually deliver the activities to children and youth.

Norway is a constitutional monarchy with a population of 4.8 million inhabitants. The nation belongs to the Scandinavian tradition of social democratic welfare states which comprises both a strong state and a relatively large civil sector compared to many other countries. The Norwegian civil sector has several societal responsibilities related, for example, to the provision of physical activity (Esping-Andersen 1990, Sivesind et al. 2002). Consequently, sport policy and organization is constituted in the relationship between state policymaking and civil implementation and provision of sport activity. The manifestation of this relationship will be explained by presenting a brief historical review before going on to describe the contemporary state policy and administration of sport. The main part of this article provides an outline of the voluntary sport system. This article ends with a discussion of new trends and challenges related to sport governance in Norway, based on the facts that state sport policy is dependent on the voluntary sector as an implementer and that the parliamentary discussion of sport is relatively limited.

Sport history, policy and administration

The roots of modern Norwegian sport are usually traced back to 1861 and the establishment of The Central Federation for the Promotion of Bodily Exercise and Weapon Use (Centralforeningen for Utbredelse af Legemsøvelser og Vaabenbrug), the first national umbrella organization for sport. Since 1863 the government has subsidized sport, initiating a cooperation which has lasted ever since. Since 1863, the state's view of the value and role of sport has varied, as indicated by the location of sport in the government (see Table 1). In 1924, The Workers' Sports Association (Arbeidernes Idrettsforbund) was established as a counterpart to the bourgeois profile of the National Sports Federation (Landsforeningen for Idræt), a successor of the federation of 1861 (Olstad 1987, Goksøyr 1992, 2008). In 1946, the two federations merged into the Norwegian Confederation of Sports. During the merger, the two different organizational traditions were retained. Thus, NIF's contemporary focus on general policymaking and cooperation with the public sector in order to provide sport for all stems from the mass-oriented worker organization, while the special sport federations' focus on competitive sport stems from the bourgeois organization.

Table 1. Assignment of sport policy in the Norwegian government (Goksøyr 1992, p. 83)

1863–1929	Ministry of Defence
1929–1948	Ministry of Social Affairs
1948–1949	Ministry of Municipal and Labour Affairs
1949–1981	Ministry of Church and School Affairs
1982–date	Ministry of Culture

After the Second World War sports became an important tool for rebuilding the state and for building a social democratic state of welfare. Supplementary activities based on the population's needs and desires were developed and during the 1970s, organized sport appeared as a recreational activity for everybody. From 1965 to 1985 the number of members almost quadrupled, from 430,000 to 1.6 million, first and foremost by recruiting youth and women. Sport historians have called this period ‘the sport revolution’ (Tønnesson 1986). Since then, NIF has been Norway's largest voluntary organization, and the vision – shared between public authorities and the voluntary sport organization – has been ‘sport for all’. Moreover, the ideology, understood as the dominant view of how best to organize sport in Norway, has been to unite all sport into one organization. In 1996, the Norwegian Confederation of Sports merged with the Norwegian Olympic Committee (NOC), and in 2008 the Paralympic Committee was integrated too. The name of the organization has, since 1 January 2008, been the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports. Its abbreviation in English should, according to the organization's statute, be NOC for Norwegian Olympic Committee or NPC for National Paralympic Committee, depending on which context it is used in (Olympic or Paralympic) (NIF 2008). We here use the Norwegian abbreviation NIF.

In addition to the merger of sport organizations, two other interdependent developments occurred in 1946. The merger of organizations took place under government pressure, aiming at establishing a one-to-one relationship (one sport organization for the state to negotiate with and subsidize, and one bureaucratic unit for the sport organization to relate to in the government). This process must in turn be seen in relation to the establishment of a State Sport Office in 1946, which was initiated by the voluntary sport organizations' temporary board. ¹ This was the start of a mutual dependency which paved the way for today's organization of sport at the political level. To finance government involvement in sport, the National Gambling Agency (Norsk Tipping AS) was established, run and managed by the state (Tønnesson 1986, Goksøyr et al. 1996). From then on, the public subsidies to sport increased heavily (Goksøyr 2008). According to Enjolras (2003), Norway belongs to the liberalist model of relations between the government and sport organizations (European Community 1999). A liberalist model implies that sport is an initiative of the free citizen and is considered to have its independent government. Others have called the state–sport relationship, corporatism (Goksøyr et al. 1996, Mangset and Rommetvedt 2002, see Houlihan 1997, for an international comparison). However best it is conceptualized, at the national level of sport policy the relationship between the voluntary sport organizations and the public sector is highly institutionalized and has retained its present form since 1946.

The division of labour is, in short, based on the principles of state financing on the one hand and sport organizations' activity provision on the other. Thus the government's involvement in sport is characterized by the provision of facilities and financial support to the voluntary sport organization. Since the Money Game Act and the establishment of the National Gambling Agency, gambling revenues have been allocated to sport. An important point here, in order to understand the policymaking of sport in Norway, is that the gambling revenues are not taken into account in parliamentary negotiations and not included in the national annual budget. Decisions regarding financial allocations to sport are made by the ministry.

From 1949 to 1982, sport policy was administrated by the Office for Youth and Sports under the Ministry of Education and Church Affairs. Traditionally, the Ministers of Cultural Affairs have primarily been concerned with other aspects of culture (typically theatre and art) and have shown little interest in sport policy. Consequently, the sport bureaucrats in the ministry, in collaboration with NIF, played a dominant role. In fact, it has been argued that some of the leading bureaucrats of the ministry department have functioned as virtual Ministers of Sports, partly due to the political leaders' lack of interest and knowledge and partly due to the strong personality of some of the leaders of the department (Tønnesson 1986).

In parliament, sport is subjected to the Standing Committee on Family, Cultural Affairs and Government Administration. But due to the allocation of state money for sport, parliamentary lobbying in relation to sport is relatively limited. Sport is subject to few legal restrictions and, on an everyday basis, the executives of the DSP are often considered more as sport politicians than members of the parliament. However, the parliament decides the distribution formula of gaming revenues and this is something which, on some occasions, has generated political tensions. The corporatist relationship (Goksøyr et al. 1996) between the state and NIF is valid also in relation to negotiations about altering the distribution formula. Quite recently (in 2002), NIF succeeded – through extensive parliamentary lobbying – in persuading parliament to increase the share of the gambling revenues allocated to sport. According to the NIF president, NIF representatives had 100 meetings with politicians in order to persuade them to raise the sport share of the revenues (Bergsgard and Rommetvedt 2006).

Up to 2002 nearly €2.5 billion had been allocated from gambling revenues to sport. In addition, public funding takes place on other levels of the Norwegian political system, namely at the county and municipal levels. While counties have a marginal role in sport policy, municipal authorities subsidize sport by about €186 million (€39 per inhabitant) through capital for facilities and through supporting expenses of sport clubs (Opedal and Rommetvedt 2007). In 2008, the government spent 1250 million Norwegian kroner (€140 million) on sport, all financed through the revenues of National Gambling Agency. This money goes directly to the DSP as the executive part of the Ministry of Culture and is not subject to any parliamentary negotiations like all other state grants. Out of €140 million, €81 million went to sport facilities, which are primarily used by NIF organized sports; €55 million went to the NIF system which included support for the administration of NIF, funding to elite sports and mass sports and targeted funding for local activity and social integration in sport clubs (KKD 2008). As a result of the lack of parliamentary discussion of how funding for sport and movement activities should be distributed, the NIF system, as the only umbrella organization for sports in Norway, has a monopoly on the delivery of sport and movement activities in Norway.

Regarding policy, sport has since the 1970s been included in the concept of culture, which can be interpreted as recognition of sport's intrinsic values (St. meld. nr. 8, 1973–1974, St. meld. nr. 23, 1981–1982, St. meld. nr. 27, 1983–1984, St. meld. nr. 52, 1973–1974). During the 1990s the government delivered two parliamentary reports exclusively devoted to sport (St. meld. nr. 14, 1999–2000, St. meld. nr. 41, 1991–1992) ² expressing a number of interests in sport. The values of sport, as seen from the state (St. meld. nr. 14, 1999–2000), are categorized into two main sets, namely the intrinsic values and the instrumental values. The intrinsic values refer to the enjoyment and perception of mastery that lies in participation itself. The extensive public subsidy for sport is based on a belief in a wider social role for sport (Coalter 2007) (cf. Table 1 of governmental assignment through history). Due to physical activities' positive impact on health, public health is an argument to support sport. Moreover, the idea that participation in voluntary organizations enables people to learn democratic processes and the idea that sport is an arena where different social groups meet and interact lead to the belief in sport as democratic and socially integrating. To what extent sport provides public health and social integration is hard to judge (Bergsgard and Norberg 2010). ³ In addition, the belief that elite sport generates national identity is an important reason for state support.

NIF's policy is stated in the sport political document which is ratified at the general assembly. NIF's policy overlaps with that of the state (NIF 2007) and has as its main vision to create and sustain an open and inclusive sports movement. More specifically, it seems that the NIF has adopted and reinforced the government belief – or the western discourse more generally – that sport can be utilized in order to solve the increasing health problems related to physical inactivity. At the general assembly in 2007 a resolution was made inviting ‘the authorities to cooperate for health promotion in the population’. Furthermore, it was suggested that ‘an amount should be allocated equivalent to one per cent of today's health budget to voluntary organizations working with health promotion’ (NIF 2007, p. 1). To sum up, there is a power balance between the state and NIF due to a mutual dependency. The central level of NIF needs the financial support of the state, while the state needs NIF system for the implementation of sport. The policies of the state and NIF are partly shared but at the same time ambivalent: both parties use arguments of cultural and instrumental values, on the one hand to support sport and on the other to legitimate the monopolistic position for support.

Sport organization

The NIF system comprises special sport organizations (SSOs) and district sport organizations (DSOs), and subunits of these (see Figure 1). Within this umbrella, it is conceived that all aspects of sports provision are catered for: mass and elite, centre and periphery (geographically), old and young, professional and amateurs, the able-bodied and those with disabilities. Furthermore, the various levels of the organizational structure of the voluntary sport system have relationships with the various levels of the public sector (see Figure 1). The general assembly of NIF meets every fourth year, with 75 delegates from special sport federation, 75 delegates from DSOs and the members of the board as delegates. The board comprises 11 elected members. The central administration of NIF comprises three departments. Two of these are related to what could be called general or mass sport issues: keeping contact and negotiating with the state (the DSP), working with the board in order to prepare the policy for the following years, redistributing the gambling revenues received from the DSP further down in the NIF system and following up sub-organizations.

Figure 1. The structure of Norwegian sport policy and organization. Note: DSP, Department of Sport Policy; DSO, district sport organization; SSO, special sport organization; LSC, local sport council; RSSO, regional special sport organization; SC, sport club.

There are 55 national SSOs, in principle one for each sport, but there are variations. For example, the Ski Association organizes six disciplines (cross country, jumping, Nordic combined, alpine, freestyle and telemark), while the Biathlon Associations comprise only one (biathlon itself). The SSOs are the governing bodies of the specific sport(s) in the country, especially regarding laws and education and the link to the international bodies of the focal sport. There are huge variations in terms of the sizes of the SSOs, concerning membership numbers, economy and power. The largest SSOs have over one hundred thousand members (see Table 2), while the smallest have only a few hundred members. For example, the two smallest SSOs are the Luge, Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association with 470 members and The Norwegian Softball and Baseball Federation with 393 members (NIF 2008). There are 19 DSOs, one for each county. DSOs are subunits of NIF with the responsibility for common sport issues in the district. The role of the DSOs is contested because they do not necessarily have any direct contact with the sport clubs where activity is provided. In contrast to the regional special sport organizations (RSSOs) and the national SSOs, the DSOs do not govern sport activity (Enjolras 2004).

Table 2. Memberships of all sport clubs and ‘the big four’ (NIF 2008), divided on age group (as it is defined by the confederation: children ≤12 years, adolescents 13–19 years, adults ≥14 years) and gender

Sport (number of clubs)	≤12 Females/males	13–19 Females/males	≥14 Females/males	Total
Football (1,755)	50,305/117,755	37,157/74,144	19,292/69,882	368,535
Ski (1,153)	34,217/43,108	8,415/14,306	23,245/38,474	161,765
Golf (193)	1,033/2,842	1,925/7,565	26,313/67,914	107,592
Handball (714)	33,424/15,640	23,708/8,228	11,925/7,675	100,600
All sports (12,199)	222,877/275,800	140,971/189,618	447,714/774,050	2,050,030

RSSOs are subunits of the national SSOs and are based geographically either on counties or on larger regions. The geographical impact areas and the organization of the RSSOs depend on how widespread the specific sport is. Thus, about one-third of all sports are organized in RSSOs, primarily the sports with most members (Enjolras and Waldahl 2009). The RSSOs have the responsibility for organizing regional leagues and other competitions and are an extension of the national special sport federation regarding governance of laws and with regard to education of local leaders, coaches and referees.

A local sport council (LSC) is established in every municipality with more than three sport clubs. There are LSCs in 366 of the 430 municipalities of Norway (NIF 2008). The primary role of the LSC is to represent all local sport clubs in relation to municipal authorities. At this level, the political issues are often related to the location of sport facilities, which have to be included in the development plans of the municipalities. There are huge variations regarding how the LSCs work and the extent to which they are dependent on voluntary effort and on public support. For example, some LSCs have full-time employees running sport projects for specific target groups such as immigrants, elderly people or unemployed people, while other LSCs have no economic support and meet once a year just to fulfil the minimum requirement for defining it as an organizational unit.

There are 12,199 local sport clubs distributed throughout the 430 municipalities in the 19 counties of the country. The sport clubs are characterized by youth participants and adult/parent volunteers. More specifically, sport is conventionally understood as a competitive activity taking place during leisure time where participation is on individual membership basis in sport clubs in which the provision of activity is based on voluntary work. Research shows that in 90% of the sport clubs, 90% of the work is voluntarily conducted. It is estimated that the value of the voluntary work in Norwegian sport clubs amounts to 7300 million NOK (€900 million) (Enjolras and Seippel 2001, Seippel 2003, Enjolras et al. 2005). In addition, this voluntary work generated marked incomes worth 1700 million NOK (€200 million). In other words, the economic value of the voluntary work in Norwegian sport clubs is about seven times the amount of state subsidies and grants (Enjolras and Seippel 2001, Seippel 2003, Enjolras et al. 2005).

There are just over 2 million memberships in the registered sport clubs (Table 2). This number requires an explanation in at least two ways. First, because of the relationship between sport organizations and structure of the umbrella organization, total memberships do not equal the number of members; it is possible and common – especially among young people – to participate in more than one sport and therefore to have several registered memberships. Survey data show that about 1.3 million people are members of sport clubs (Krange and Strandbu 2004). Second, being a member does not necessarily mean being active; about 700,000 of the population are physically active in sport clubs (Skille 2007). While about 80% of all people in Norway have been member of at least one sport club during their childhood, and about 50% of teenagers are active in sport clubs, the number decreases with age. By the time young people turn 20, only 25% are still members of sport clubs (Krange and Strandbu 2004). Nevertheless, the democratic legitimacy of the governance of the NIF system builds on representation from the level of sport clubs, through a number of links to the general assembly of the confederation. The basis for the democracy is the membership, which implies rights to vote at the sport club's annual meeting. However, as long as the members of Norwegian sport clubs first and foremost are children and youth, and the leaders are adults, it is a challenge to get true representativeness. Moreover, among the adult members, only a fraction is present at the annual meeting (Enjolras and Waldahl 2009, Skille 2009).

Challenges of sport policy implementation

While the traditional division of labour is that the government supports the physical and economic infrastructure for sport and the NIF system provides activities, three processes of change have occurred: politization (Enjolras and Waldahl 2007), governmentalization (Bergsgard and Rommetvedt 2006) and pluralization (Bergsgard and Norberg 2010) of sport. Politization refers to increased lobbying from NIF towards parliament and government, which took place under the last change of the distribution formula for the gambling revenues. Governmentalization refers to an increased goal steering of sport in order to fulfil state policy objectives (Bergsgard et al. 2007). For example, the Sports City Programme aims at governmentally defined objectives (social integration) and governmentally defined target groups (immigrants) and is supported by specific grants (Skille 2005). Regarding pluralism, one example is that since 2005, the Sami sport organization of Norway has received public funding allocated from the gambling revenues (Skille 2010). However, the sums spent on these new elements are rather small. Thus, there are no signs of major changes in the sport policy models in Norway where the absence of the parliament is significant, as in other Scandinavian countries (Bergsgard and Norberg 2010). In sum, the state has no policy tool to use in order to get its sport policy implemented through the voluntary system.

Salamon (2002) defines a policy tool as an ‘identifiable method through which collective action is structured to address a public problem’ (p. 19). Seippel (2005, 2006) identifies three policy tools within the Norwegian sport context: public information, grants and contracts. ‘Public information’ is designed to influence the thoughts and knowledge of people. ‘Policymakers inform an audience of target actors about a policy issue or pattern of behaviour to influence what people think, know, or believe when they engage in target behaviour’ (Weiss 2002, p. 218). Public information is found in, for example, the White Paper on Sport, which is rather ambiguous. On the one hand, visions, such as ‘sport for all’, are vague and difficult to measure. On the other hand, this tool is based on rational actor assumptions. It is believed that knowledge and information lead to the ‘right’ practice in the population. However, the theoretical assumption that all people will play sport or in other ways be physically active insofar as they know that they should, for health reasons or otherwise, does not correlate with reality. Empirical data show that many people in Norway are not active. Recent research revealed that only 20% of the adult population meets the requirement of being physically active for a minimum of 30 minutes a day (Anderssen 2009).

Acknowledging the limitation of public information as a governance tool, ‘grants’ may be used (Beam and Conlan 2002). Grants are ‘payments from a donor government to a recipient organization (typically public or non-profit) or an individual. More specifically, they are a gift that has the aim of either “stimulating” or “supporting” some sort of service or activity by the recipient’ (Beam and Conlan 2002, p. 341). However, it is difficult to measure what the government gets from the economic subsidies to sport (Enjolras 2004, 2005). Thus grants may ‘cloud the chain of accountability’ (Beam and Conlan 2002, p. 372). It is hard to identify the goals of the policy, and the transparency of the stream of money is low. The increased governmentalization of sport leads to more use of contracts (Kelman 2002): ‘Contracting, as a tool of government, is a business arrangement between a government agency and a private entity in which the private entity promises, in exchange for money, to deliver certain products or services to the government …’ (Kelman 2002, p. 282). The relationship between the donor and the recipient is dialectic; it is an implicit possibility for negotiations which paves the way for the implementing recipients to set their own goals before going into a reciprocal relationship with policymakers. Throughout history, use of targeted economic subsidies has varied in Norwegian sport (Goksøyr et al. 1996) and contemporary sport policy is ambiguous. There are less-targeted subsidies from the DSP to NIF compared with earlier periods; at the same time the state requires more monitoring on how the subsidies are spent than before (Enjolras 2004, 2005).

In comparison to other countries (Houlihan 1997, Enjolras 2003, Bergsgard et al. 2007), the Norwegian system being so spellbound in the state–sport relationship, the twin organization of NIF and the voluntary dependence, the public provision of sport and movement activities may appear as inefficient. Among others, two different points have been presented in order to achieve a more sufficient implementation of public sport and movement activities in Norway. Skille (2008) argues that there is a need to develop theories which take the sport club as the point of departure for analysis, in order to understand the implementation of sport policy in Norway. The grass-root implementer has no obligations to the decision-maker in the public policy system or to the administrators in the central staff of NIF (Skille 2009). Säfvenbom (2010) takes Skille's argumentation further and argues that the point of departure for policymaking regarding movement activities and sport among children and youth has to be in contemporary knowledge on how children and adolescents act and develop as modern individuals. Säfvenbom argues that one size does not fit all and that the quality of any public programme or offer must be measured in terms of the relationship between the individual and the specific activity context, and not in terms of effects such as health or sport performance.

The history of the last two decades shows that in spite of many attempts (from NIF) to stop dropout, the dropout rate from organized sport is stable. On the other hand, Säfvenbom argues that due to a multifunctional and comprehensive movement culture it is possible to involve more children and adolescents in different types of movement activities outside conventional sport in local sport clubs. Thus, alternative channels for communicating movement activities outside the regular sport system have to be developed, and resources have to be allocated in a way that secures equal opportunities for all. The explicit goals of the majority of local sport clubs are recognized in terms of ability, performance, competence and success. Imitation based on accuracy and inaccuracy dominates the interaction, while individual exploration of the aesthetics is seen as a by-product only (see Säfvenbom 2002). It is reasonable to ask whether or not success, mastery and competence enhancement should dominate youth sports in the way it does today or if an alternative approach should be developed focusing on the relationship between perceived freedom from constraining (Olympic) forces and perceived freedom to become involved on one's own terms.

As we are writing this article, The Ministry of Culture is planning a new White Paper on Sport which is due to be submitted to the parliament in 2011. In this report, the dropout rate from organized sport and the possible inequity regarding adolescents' access to activity contexts, enjoyment and health cannot be neglected. There seems to be a great need for empirical research that can describe, explain and understand the effects of the contemporary sport policy in Norway and how justice of sport and movement activities can be enhanced.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank to Professor Ken Green for constructive comments to the article.

Notes

1. This was a temporary board (Norwegian: NIFs interimstyre) of the sport organization (1939–1946) because the formal merger was delayed by the Second World War.

2. The latter, based on proposals in the reports on the state's relationship to voluntary organizations (St. meld. nr. 27, 1996–1997, St. meld. nr. 44, 1997–1998), initiated a new funding to local sport (Norwegian: lokale aktivitetsmidler, LAM). LAM and Sport City Program (SCP) may be seen as part of the same tendency. While the DSP in the case of the SCP steers the NOC, it does with LAM bypass the central level of NOC. See Berg and Opedal (2001, 2002), Bergsgard and Opedal (2002) and Opedal (2003).

3. The Ministry of Children and Family Affairs sees sport as a means of creating safe local communities (St. meld. nr. 39, 2001–2002); the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development sees sport as a means of integration (St. meld. nr. 17, 1996–1997); the Ministry of Environment relates to sport because of walking and skiing (St. meld. nr. 23, 2001–2002, St. meld. nr. 39, 2000–2001); and the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs treats sport as a means to health provision (St. meld. nr. 16, 2002–2003).