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Theory and methods in sport policy and politics research

Tijdschriftbijdrage - Tijdschriftartikel

The study of sport policy and politics is still dominated by academics working in disciplines other than political science, public administration, policy studies and International Relations (IR). In fact, there are only a handful of scholars contributing to sport policy and politics research who reside in the afore-mentioned traditional, disciplinary departments. The majority of work published in the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics is undertaken by sociologists, historians, management and tourism experts and those broadly termed ‘sports studies’ scholars. This is one of the reasons why Houlihan (2005, 163) suggested that ‘there is remarkably little analysis of sport policy that utilizes the major models and frameworks for analysis widely adopted in other policy areas’. Thirteen years on from this and it remains the case that there is still a lack of academic research ‘by the very people one would assume would be at the forefront of sport politics [and policy] analyses: political scientists and international relations scholars’ (Grix, 2016, 22).
It is rare, therefore, that work in the sub-field of sport policy and politics extensively or explicitly reflects on the value and use of particular mainstream theories and even rarer still for such research to contribute to the wider development of theories within policy and politics disciplines. This chimes with the first of the initial aims of the International Journal of Sport Policy (changed in 2011 to include ‘and Politics’ to broaden the journal’s appeal; IJSPP), which was outlined in an editorial 10 years ago in Volume 1, Issue 1 (Houlihan et. al., 2009). It is fair to say that this aim has only partially been realised and that only a few scholars working in the area of sport policy and politics have had an impact on key developments in mainstream disciplines. The second substantial aim of the IJSPP was to encourage the development of robust, evidence-based empirical research on the impact of sport policy and the last 10 Volumes of IJSPP has gone some way to achieve this.
Tijdschrift: International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics
ISSN: 1940-6940
Issue: 4
Volume: 10
Pagina's: 615-620
Jaar van publicatie:2018
Trefwoorden:sport policy, methods, theory, mixed methods research
Auteurs:International
Toegankelijkheid:Closed