Sport for development and policy advocacy: Mapping the field

Abstract

Introduction and Purpose

Sport for development (SFD) has emerged as an increasingly prominent field in Europe and beyond. Defined as the intentional use of sport to support social development, the SFD movement focuses on a broad range of goals such as social cohesion, peacebuilding, gender equality and more. To support these goals, organisations within SFD usually focus on bringing diverse individuals together and exploiting sport’s interactive nature to foster experiential learning (Moustakas, 2024). This approach has however often been criticized as it tends to focus too strongly on the individual level, and therefore fails to account for or challenge socio-political realities that influence participant outcomes. In turn this means that SFD programmes risk generating limited, unsustainable outcomes as they seek to achieve broad gauge outcomes through limited focus programmes (Coalter, 2010). To address this, a growing number of scholars have suggested that SFD organisations must become involved in policy advocacy (Sanders, 2016). Understood as support of a particular policy or class of policies, policy advocacy allows SFD organisations to advocate for issues of relevance to participants and communities. Through this, programmes can influence the broader socio-political environment, or at least foster alignment between programme goals and this environment, which in turn can help support the sustainable, long-term impact of their programmes. Against this background, this study seeks to map out current practice, challenges and needs related to policy advocacy in the SFD sector.

Method

A survey was developed the consortium associated with the Erasmus+ project Policy Advocacy for Sport and Society (PASS). The goal of this survey was to understand how SFD organisations engage in policy advocacy, how they view relationships with policymakers, and what kind of resources they would like to support future policy advocacy activities. The survey was collaboratively designed by the consortium, and questions mapping policy advocacy activities were based on the conceptual framework from Gen and Wright (2013). The survey was distributed via a purposive sampling approach, whereby SFD organisations associated with professional networks in the field were targeted via e-mail and social media. Afterwards, given the primarily mapping function of the survey, results were descriptively analysed and graphically portrayed.

Results

Preliminary analysis shows that most SFD organisations engage with policymakers, especially at the municipal level (ca. 65%) or within national sport organisations (ca. 60%). Awareness raising activities or campaigns are the most common advocacy activities (ca. 70%), along with networking with policymakers (ca. 40%). However, relationships remain strained, with around 10-35% of organisations reporting difficult relationships with different policy stakeholders. Lack of resources (ca. 70%) and expertise (ca. 55%) are seen as the main obstacles to further advocacy, and organisations report that they would benefit from examples, templates, strategies, and learning offers.

Discussion and Conclusion

These results show reasonably widespread policy advocacy activities in the field, but activities remain limited to various forms of awareness raising or campaigning. Likewise, relationships with decision-makers often remain strained. This suggests that further work could unearth the complexities of these relationships, while applied projects could support by developing tools and learning materials.

References

Coalter, F. (2010). The politics of sport-for-development: Limited focus programmes and broad gauge problems? International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 45(3), 295–314. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690210366791

Gen, S., & Wright, A. C. (2013). Policy advocacy organizations: A framework linking theory and practice. Journal of Policy Practice, 12(3), 163–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/15588742.2013.795477

Moustakas, L. (2024). Sport for social cohesion: A conceptual framework linking common practices and theory. Sport in Society, 27(10), 1549–1567. https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2024.2304231

Sanders, B. (2016). An own goal in sport for development: Time to change the playing field. Journal of Sport for Development, 4(6), 1-5.