Abstract
Since the election in 1997 of a New Labour Government in the United Kingdom, a growing number of analyses have provided insights into, and critiques of, what has been termed the “social investment state”. To date, these analyses have interrogated particular developments and distinct issues in a number of key social welfare policy-related sectors, including education, citizenship, the family, and poverty/employment. Notable by its absence, however, is the contribution that policies for sport and physical activity are now playing in the realisation of New Labour’s social investment strategies. This article therefore interrogates and registers the growing salience of sport policy interventions for the construction of a social investment state within the broader political context of governing under “advanced liberal” rationalities. The “active citizen”, and children and young people, in particular, are valorised and appear centre-stage as the focus for these interventions. This child-centred focus is problematised, as is the argument that, under prevailing political rationalities of advanced liberalism, government “steers” rather than “rows” and “enables” rather than “commands”. Under these conditions, while children are deemed deserving of investment, there may be other groups who are deemed less deserving, for example, older people who, unlike children and young people have little currency in a future-oriented world.
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Notes
Giddens (1998a, b) suggests that there are six components of Third Way politics: (i) a renewal of public institutions; (ii) a search for a different relationship between government and civil society; (iii) the active involvement of government with economic life; (iv) the structural reform of the welfare state; (v) ecological issues to have a central role in politics; (vi) a strong recognition of the importance of transnational politics.
Dean (1999) outlines the key characteristics of advanced liberalism as the types of discourses and rationalities of government that have emerged in the UK, Australia and North America over the past 15–20 years. These include: the introduction of market-led reforms to former public sector services; indirect forms of calculative technologies of regulation such as auditing, inspection and accounting; the promotion of citizens as self-responsibilising; and, somewhat paradoxically, the growth of “paternalistic and coercive measures for those deemed not to display the capacities of responsible and prudential autonomy” (209).
Sport England is the brand name for the English Sports Council. It is categorised as a non-departmental public body (NDPB) that operates on the “arm’s length” principle in its relationship with the DCMS—the central government department responsible for sport. From 1st April 2006, Sport England’s remit changed from one that, in the past, covered a broad elite sport-mass sport range, to one with a much tighter focus on what is being termed “Community Sport”.
The UK Sports Council (UK Sport) was created in 1996–1997 and, like Sport England, is a NDPB under the auspices of the DCMS. It has a tight focus on: supporting elite athlete development; promoting the hosting of major sporting events; control of anti-doping procedures; and the use of sport for international development purposes.
The PESSCL strategy was launched in October 2002 and, for a 3 year period from April 2003, the government is investing over £1 billion on the delivery of eight programmes—Specialist Sports Colleges, School Sport Coordinators, the Gifted and Talented initiative, PE and School Sport Investigation (through the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority), Step into Sport, Professional Development, School/Club Links and Swimming—as well as improvements to school sport facilities across England (DfES/DCMS 2003, 1).
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Green, M. Governing under advanced liberalism: sport policy and the social investment state. Policy Sci 40, 55–71 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-007-9034-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-007-9034-y