Sport policy evaluation and governing participation in sport: governmental problematics of democracy and health

ABSTRACT

Sport and participation in sport has become an important welfare policy issue and is regarded as a solution to many of the ‘problems’ that face contemporary societies. Together with the ambition of using sport as a policy tool there has also been an intensification in the use of evaluation measures to judge whether sport delivers services in line with policy objectives. This study draws on the concept of governmentality to examine one such sport policy evaluation, a Swedish state-appointed Commission of Inquiry on sport. The purpose is to elucidate the Commission’s problematisation of the socio-political role and function of sport and participation in contemporary Sweden. The analysis showed that the Commission adopted two main ‘problematics’. The democratic problematic concerned a commitment to issues of democracy and equality of opportunities and specified a particular problem of sport; sport excludes rather than includes. The second, the health problematic concerned a commitment to issues of public health and physical activity and focused upon a particular problem of the population; people are physically inactive and unhealthy. The argument being proposed in this article is that these two problematics construct the ‘problem’ of sport and the sport (non)participant in specific ways, draw on particular forms of knowledges and discourses, with certain implications for the judgements made and the solutions proposed by the Commission.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport
• participation
• policy
• evaluation
• governmentality
• Sweden

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Internationally, the Commission’s report can be understood as a green paper, an official government document with propositions that should open for debate and discussion. The green paper is reformulated into a white paper if accepted by the Parliament and the government.

2. Appendix 2. Sports significance for public health, pp. 453–472 in SOU 2008:59.