From political sports to sports politics: on political mobilization of sports issues

Abstract

How and why do sports issues turn into politics? The aim of this paper is to explore how politicization of sports might happen, to show how social movement theory might contribute to such understandings and to contribute to a theoretical understanding of the political mobilization of sports issues. To achieve this aim, we outline a three-dimensional theoretical framework based on social movement theory. Thereafter we present six cases of more-or-less contested sports issues: gender, sexuality, doping, extreme wages, boxing/violence and failed talent development. Finally, we discuss the main features of our theoretical framework in light of these cases. How do political opportunity structures contribute to political mobilization of sports issues? How do cultural factors make a difference in political processes concerning sports? Which actors are involved when contested sports issues occur? The aim of this exploration is to discover how various societal factors addressed in our theoretical framework matter relative to how and why sports issues might turn into politics.

Sport Advocacy: The Art of Persuasion and Its By-Products

“…Although there are many aspects to advocacy, this study focused on the framing that established sport organizations engage in as they conduct advocacy in the formal political system (RQ1) and the transformative effects that may arise from this framing (RQ2). As such, the study provides a theoretically and empirically fine-grained analysis of the meaning making and conveying that underpin the politicization of sport, as sought by Seippel et al (2016Seippel et al ( , 2018. Table 2 displays the architecture that the sport advocates under study believe is a necessary underpinning of advocacy claims (RQ1).…”

“…The claims so carefully constructed by the sport advocates under study, therefore, have the propensity to become institutionalized over time, rendering them hard to retract or replace without losing credibility. This potentially "irreversible" nature of claims suggests that advocacy not only facilitates sport's entrance into formal political processes (c.f., Seippel et al, 2016Seippel et al, , 2018, but also may create a path dependency that sustains the architecture of claims by which sport is politicized. Over the long term, this inertia may ultimately make it difficult for advocates to return to claims that, for example, highlight sport's autonomy and the value of "sport for sport's sake.…”

“…and Seippel, Dalen, Sandvik, and Solstad (2018) (see also Harvey, Horne, Safai, Darnell, & Courchesne-O'Neill, 2013) recently asked how sport is transformed into a contentious issue that eventually enters formal political processes. Based on a social movement perspective (Benford & Snow, 2000), they showed that one prerequisite for sport's politicization is actors be willing to engage in politics more overtly, that is, to "move from the balcony to the barricades" (Benford & Snow, 2000, p. 615).…”

“…Athletics. Although these organizations speak on sport's behalf (c.f., Seippel et al, 2016Seippel et al, , 2018, their advocacy rarely moves toward "the barricades." Their advocacy activities-defined as attempts to influence political decisions and public policy on behalf of a collective interest (Jenkins, 2006) -lack "revolutionary potential" (Wilson, 2007, p. 457) and are often far from confrontational.…”

“…Advocacy is fundamentally about politicizing an issue to induce actions. This is perhaps why many studies of sport-related collective action (e.g., Sage, 1999;Scherer, 2016;Seippel et al 2016Seippel et al , 2018) draw on framing theory (Benford & Snow, 2000). Following Benford and Snow (2000), framing denotes intentional and strategic meaning making.…”