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Abstract
Mandate and accountability theory state that governments should implement the policies that they promised voters. Accordingly, this study addresses a key lacuna by exploring the role of electoral politics in shaping public policy on sport. Attention centres on issue-salience and policy framing in party manifestos in post-war UK elections. In an era of multi-level governance, the analysis also explores the impact of devolution in the UK where, since 1998, sport policy is mandated in four electoral systems in place of earlier, single state-wide ballots. The findings reveal that there has been a sharp increase in issue-salience over recent decades – thereby confirming the party politicization of sport as part of the wider rise of ‘valence politics’. They also show how parties increasingly frame sport proposals to achieve non-sport aims such as promoting social welfare and boosting international standing. Notably, the data underline the territorialization of sport policy following the UK’s move to quasi-federalism – as policy framing is now contingent on ‘regional’ socio-historical factors and party politics, including nation – building by civic nationalist parties.
Acknowledgement
The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful and constructive comments of two anonymous referees when revising an earlier draft of this paper.
Notes
1. With the exception of 1945–1972 elections to the Northern Ireland Parliament.
2. This does not deny the nation status of Scotland and Wales. Regions’ may – or may not, be co-terminous with nation-states. Accordingly, this study follows existing practice by using the umbrella term ‘regional’ to denote sub-unitary state nations and provinces (cf. Danson and de Souza Citation2012).
3. Defined in terms of share of the popular vote.
4. Where necessary, hardcopy only versions of early manifestos were transcribed. The software used was NVivo 9.
5. For example, the statement ‘we will introduce further funding for community sporting facilities along with personal fitness trainers for those referred by their general practitioner’ – would be coded once under the ‘community benefits’ frame and once under the ‘health’ frame.
6. 15 incidences.
7. Derived from the Comparative Manifesto Project, https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/
8. Owing to a range of factors including changing policy competency in UK elections over time (i.e. shifting policy powers between EC/EU as well as devolved governments/legislatures); and the varying propensity of parties to use ‘mini’, dedicated manifestos to set out specific policies to targeted groups or on specific issues.
9. Underlining this striking rise in salience, the last general election in 2010 saw the two main state-wide parties issue standalone, dedicated publications – or ‘mini-manifestos’ on sport. These are excluded from the foregoing analysis in order to ensure data consistency and comparability over successive election cycles.
10. Correlation coefficient 0.945
11. Yates’ p = 0.0000011, χ² = 27.446, df = 2.
12. Yates’ p = 7e-8, χ² = 34.606, df = 2.
13. p = 0.00000416, χ² = 24.778, df = 2
14. p = 0.00004876, χ² = 19.857, df = 2
15. Not statistically significant (p = 0.06623806)
16. p = 0.011109, χ² = 9, df = 2
17. Not statistically significant (p = 0.11601915).
18. p = 0.04978707, χ² = 6, df = 2
19. All polity total of number of quasi-sentences in 1998/1999 = 109, compared with 1182 in 2011.
20. Caveat: it should be noted that this is an illustrative measure only. It is not a like-for-like comparison for state-wide election manifestos cover a broader range of policy areas that those at the meso-level (e.g. defence, international relations, etc.).
21. Yates’ χ² = 384.114, df = 2, p = 0.00011432
22. ANOVA: Single Factor, df = 2, F = 9.62, F Crit = 3.354, p = 0.000697612
23. χ² = 6.481, df = 2, p = 0.03914432