Beyond sports autonomy: a case for collaborative sport governance approaches

Abstract

This article critically reviews the concept of sports autonomy. It argues that sports autonomy is of limited use for analysing and explaining the relationships between sports organisations and public authorities in diverse political and cultural contexts. Hence, the article proposes an alternative, advocating the use of collaborative governance theory as a conceptual framework to analyse the relationship between sports organisations and public authorities. We argue that comparative research on collaborative sport governance should employ the method of structured, focused comparisons tracing specific collaborations between public authorities and sports organisations.

The “autonomy” of developing countries in the Olympic Movement: Assessing the fate of sports governance transplants in the Global South

“…In response to this, the IOC ( 43 ) decided to suspend Guatemala considering that the interventions of both the government and the country's Constitutional Court were a breach of the fundamental principle of autonomy. Membership suspension is the IOC's measure of last resort to protect the autonomy of sport, and it is often used to protect NOCs from political intervention of governments [( 34 ); see also ( 9 )]. In a way, these latest developments could question some of the conclusions from our research in relation to the strong autonomy of the GNOC, and how the institutional framework of the country empowers the GNOC in the Guatemala sport system.…”

“…They were also used to inform the design of the interview guides. Since the main objective of this research was to analyse the collaboration (or lack of) between NOCs and national governments, the design of the interview guides built on the methodological recommendations of the academic literature on collaborative governance ( 34 , 35 ) to allow for structured focused comparison ( 31 ). This body of literature recommends that when comparing cases of collaborative governance, focus should be threefold: (1) The socio-political and institutional context, (2) the drivers and dynamics of the collaborative process, and (3) the process outcomes.…”

Gendering strategic action fields in sports governance

“…Governance scholars within sports studies have debated how to conceptualize the structure of sports governance and the role of international sports governing bodies therein (Geeraert and Bruyninckx, 2014; Geeraert et al, 2015; Meier and Garcia, 2021). Such work has challenged the traditional view of sport as an autonomous domain of governance, within which international governing bodies are autonomous entities that wield considerable top-down influence within a vertical chain of command (Croci and Forster, 2004; Geeraert and Bruyninckx, 2014).…”

“…Influenced by theories of networked governance, contemporary scholars instead understand sports governance as “a web of relations between international sports governing bodies, state, business, and civil society actors,” in which international governing entities like IFs “lose their ability to hierarchically govern their respective sports” (Geeraert et al, 2015: 483). Whereas such work has often focused on how entities external to sport impress upon the policymaking efforts of sports governing bodies (Croci and Forster, 2004; Geeraert et al, 2015; Meier and Garcia 2021), we attend to how the interdependent relations amongst adjacent actors within the institution of sport are significant to how a single organization, such as an IF, can govern (Chappelet, 2016).…”

Collaborative Governance of Public Health: A Cultural and Ethical Perspective on Predicting Citizens' Trust in Public Health Services During Medical Emergencies

“…Previously several studies have asserted the significance of collaborative governance in the joint production of solutions and reserves via consensus-seeking multilateral deliberative orientations toward joint productions (Meier & García, 2021;Mukhlis & Perdana, 2022;Sullivan et al, 2019). However, the integration of collaborative governance in the healthcare system has been given scant attention (Criado & Guevara-Gómez, 2021).…”