EU-Centric Governance in Sport? The Slovenian Experience with the White Paper Process

Abstract

A synthesis of existing academic, expert and everyday practical political literature demonstrates that we can trace many different approaches to the phenomena of governance. Based on the political sciences, particularly policy literature, the governance concept is most frequently connected with an analysis of the relations between actors or institutions of the state and society at different political levels. Use of the governance concept is also becoming increasingly popular when discussing sports issues, especially when the multi-level or global sport perspective is in question. This article aims to confront the national perspectives and understandings of, as well as attempts at, sports governance, in relation to multi-level ones. This refers specifically the EU, because over the last few years, not only have states expanded their traditional concerns with health and social security to encompass leisure and cultural life, including sport, but the EU has also implemented different activities concerning sport issues. This particularly emphasises the extent and importance of the relations that key national policy actors have established with themselves and especially towards supra-national (EU) actors in the processes of creating common EU sports policy directions as part of preparing the White Paper on Sport (2007). It does this by analysing the available official documents, records and statistics relating to the issue, as well as interviews conducted in spring 2007 with representatives of the state and sports-governing bodies in Slovenia. The conclusions of the analysis indicate a predominantly EU-centric type of multi-level governance approach and make some observations about the EU’s future development and how this could impact the development of (sub)national sports policy.