The Diversity of National Sport Development Institutions

The general aim of this paper is to evaluate the consistency of sports policy regimes. The internal diversity of institutional settings in selected western countries (Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) is mapped. The second aim of the paper is to relate this mapping to existing typologies of state traditions and policy regimes to identify systematic institutional linkages or national governance cultures. Sport development has become part of government policies in western societies. Far from convergence, the institutional arrangements differ between countries and there are several typologies and analytical descriptions of these differences. Taking up a national policy regime approach previously introduced, the paper develops two problems arising in these typologies: On one hand, there are different logics of governance present within countries according to the subfield of sport politics (e.g. elite sport, sport for all, sport infrastructure, health-enhancing physical activity, and more recently sport for development). They tend to be designed and governed by different bodies with different networks, tools, and salience. On the other hand, the structure and the logic of sport development and governance do not necessarily yield the same typologies as present in the literature on state traditions and policy regimes.