Governmentality, Modernization, and the Disciplining of National Sporting Organizations: Athletics in Australia and the United Kingdom

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1 Sociology of Sport Journal, 2006, 23, Human Kinetics, Inc. Governmentality, Modernization, and the Disciplining of National Sporting Organizations: Athletics in Australia and the United Kingdom Mick Green and Barrie Houlihan Loughborough University This article investigates the nature of, and policy outcomes from, the relationship between federal/central government departments and agencies and the national sporting organizations (NSOs) for athletics in Australia and the United Kingdom. We draw on neo-foucauldian writings on governmentality to problematize governmental activities directed at shaping, channeling, and guiding the conduct of NSOs. We conclude that, although effective responsibilization of NSOs remains a clear ambition, governments in both countries have shown themselves to be very willing to apply disciplinary forms of practice in order to ensure compliance with prevailing government rationalities. Cet article porte sur les politiques résultantes et sur la nature des relations entre, dʼune part, les départements et agences des gouvernements fédéraux et, dʼautre part, les organisations sportives nationales (OSN) responsables de lʼathlétisme en Australie et au Royaume Uni. Nous empruntons aux écrits néo-foucauldiens sur la gouvernementalité afin de problématiser les activités gouvernementales qui visent à modeler et guider la conduite des OSN. Nous concluons que même si la responsabilisation des OSN demeure une ambition claire, les gouvernements des deux pays se sont montrés très en faveur de formes de pratique disciplinaires afin de sʼassurer de la conformité des OSN aux rationalités gouvernementales dominantes. Over the last 40 years or so, governments in many developed countries have taken an increasing interest in sport. Whether the motives for government interest have been instrumental (e.g., to improve health, reduce crime, or boost national prestige) or not, central to the successful implementation of public policy has been the relationship between government departments and agencies and national sporting organizations (NSOs). 1 The purpose of this article is to explore the nature of that relationship in the sport of athletics in Australia and the United Kingdom (UK) and, The authors are with Loughborough University, Institute of Sport and Leisure Policy, School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Loughborough, UK Green(47).indd 47 3/2/06 12:29:45 PM

2 48 Green and Houlihan particularly, to examine the changing repertoire of techniques adopted by the two governments through which they shape the behavior of NSOs. The starting point for our analysis is the work of a number of writers who, although not addressing the sport-policy area directly, have identified systems of governing, especially in wealthy democracies with neoliberal governments, and whose work has a clear applicability to the analysis of sport policy (see for example, Burchell, Gordon, & Miller, 1991; Dean, 1999; Dean & Hindess, 1998; Giddens, 1998; Kooiman, 1993; Marsh, 2005; Newman, 2001; Rose, 1996, 1999). According to Dean (1999), the UK and Australia have emerged as major centres (p. 4) for these analyses (with a growing body of research in North America), many of which draw insights from Michel Foucaultʼs writings on governmentality. Foucaultʼs complex discussion of governmentality prompted not simply a change in the substantive focus of academic investigation of the concept of power in the policy process but also, and more fundamentally, an epistemological change. The substantive change is away from a concentration on juridical and repressive forms of power to an acknowledgment of the use by governments of forms of shaping, guiding and directing of the conduct of others by using persuasive processes of signification and legitimation to work through their desires, aspirations, interests and beliefs (Scott, 2001, p. 94). Foucaultʼs epistemological position is antifoundational and postmodern. Penttinen (2000), for example, argues that Foucault refuses to look for foundations... to Foucault modern science, the valorised concept of truth... are effects of power (p. 206). Crucially, for both Foucault and those influenced by his work, power is seen as a technology that normalizes (Foucault, 1980). The political context for those analysts of public policy influenced by Foucault is the decline of the Left during almost two decades of Conservative administrations in the UK, 13 years of neoliberal-informed Labour government in Australia, and the Reagan and Bush neo-liberal governments in the U.S. (Frankel, 1997b). At the heart of analyses that draw on the literature about governmentality is a different way of conceptualizing and investigating political power that is not structured so strongly in terms of the hegemonic role of the state. These analyses coalesce around a recognition that modern systems of governing under advanced liberalism, 2 (cf. Rose, 1999) increasingly depend upon a complex set of relations between government and non- and/or quasi-government authorities that do not form part of the formal state machinery. Moreover, the argument that much of the [recent] work on governance tends to dissolve notions of power and agency (Newman, 2001, p. 20) points to the attractiveness of neo-foucauldian (poststructuralist) perspectives on power upon which governmentality analyses draw. Rather than debating whether the power of the state has been hollowed-out, or dispersed through a plurality of agencies (cf. Rhodes, 1997), attention is directed to the kinds of knowledge and power through which social activity is regulated and through which actors citizens, workers, institutions are constituted as self-disciplining subjects (Newman, 2001, p. 20). As Raco and Imrie (2000) comment, Increasingly, government seeks not to govern society per se, but to promote individual and institutional conduct that is consistent with government objectives (p. 2,191). This conceptualization of government power, however, has not gone unchallenged. Writers adopting governmentality approaches have been labeled as apologists for neo-liberalism even as they expose its technologies of rule 03Green(47).indd 48 3/2/06 12:29:48 PM

3 Governmentality, Modernization, and NSOs 49 (Frankel, 1997b, p. 92), and their analyses result in an elaborate rationalisation for the rejection of radical politics (p. 88). Moreover, Curtis (1995) argues that the programs and rationalities of government that so concern governmentality analyses are free-floating, not anchored in relations of domination and subordination, exploitation, or indeed any conditioning material relations (p. 586). Indeed, OʼMalley, Weir, and Shearing (1997) maintain that governmentality analyses do not engage with a critical exploration of possible resistance and contestation to prevailing neoliberal regimes. Whereas the validity of these critiques is recognized, we argue that the governmentality analysis provides a valuable broadening of the focus on the operation of government that does not, of necessity, imply or require an acceptance of the disconnection from relations of domination, subordination, and exploitation or from the broader analysis of the politics of interest. Indeed, we argue that the use of the literature on governmentality sharpens our understanding of the processes of domination by established interests and of the largely structuralist epistemologies from which they are derived. Our engagement with neo-foucauldian analyses of governmentality aims to draw attention to aspects of sport culture that, to date, have largely been ignored by the sociology of sport community. 3 Although, on the one hand, sports sociologists have focused their attention on macro-level analyses of the political economy of sport (cf. Beamish, 1988; Gruneau, 1983; Sage, 1998), on the other hand, mesolevel analyses of the role of the state and government in relationships with NSOs have received far less attention from sociology of sport scholars. To some extent the work of Macintosh and Whitson (1990) in Canada, Penney and Evans (1999) in the UK, and Sam and Jackson (2004) in New Zealand are important exceptions. Sam and Jacksonʼs recent research, for example, draws attention to concerns in respect of recommendations from the 2001 Ministerial Task Force on Sport, Fitness, and Leisure in New Zealand. Their key concern focuses on the rationalization and centralization of sport structures, which, it is argued, will result in reduced support for Persons either involved with minor sports or coming from regions with unique economic and political backgrounds (p. 219). In relation to this, Sam and Jackson highlight a conundrum (p. 216) that has parallels with this articleʼs findings. The conundrum is that the creation of a centralized coherent national sport policy (p. 216) will require communication down through the sports system in New Zealand without discord. But, they argue, it is the inherent necessity to empower the various organisational levels (be they national, regional or local) (p. 216) that makes centralization problematic. Thus, we argue that what follows in this article not only complements but also extends Sam and Jacksonʼs findings by providing a detailed analysis of the ways in which governments in two countries have implemented programs designed (ostensibly) to empower and autonomize NSOs on the one hand while imposing centralized targets, directives, and, indeed, sanctions on the other. Against this background, the central aim of this article is to investigate the ways in which insights based on a governmentality approach illuminate the nature of, and policy outcomes from, the federal/central governments (hereafter government) in Australia and the UK and their key sports agencies relationships with the NSOs for athletics. In so doing, our aim is to contribute to the modest but growing literature on the nature and significance of the relationship between NSOs and government in specific countries (cf. Green, 2004b; Green and Houlihan, 2004, 03Green(47).indd 49 3/2/06 12:29:48 PM

4 50 Green and Houlihan 2005; Houlihan, 1997). The focus on Australia and the UK rests on the following reasoning. First, over the past 20 years or so in both Australia and the UK, neoliberal regimes of government have dominated the political landscape (cf. Frankel, 1997a, 1997b; Marsh 2005; Newman 2001). Second, against this political background, we have witnessed the emergence of a body of work concerned with analyzing the prevailing shifts in governmental rationalities through neo-foucauldian governmentality approaches (cf. Dean & Hindess 1998; Rose, 1999). Third, in both countries, sport is at the heart of popular culture, in general, with success at the international elite sport level a particular national preoccupation. Fourth, governments in both countries have become increasingly influential in the sportpolicy domain, especially at the elite level. Finally, modernization programs as a political rationality of government have emerged as one of the ways in which governments have sought to shape and sculpt the management and administration of NSOs especially those identified as failing organizations. It is possible to argue that countries such as Canada, the U.S., and New Zealand meet, at least to some degree, the first four criteria above and, thus, also warrant attention. In respect of the final criterion, however, we argue that in none of these countries has there been the explicit use by government of a program of modernization that has a direct impact upon relationships with individual NSOs and upon failing NSOs in particular. The selection of the two NSOs for athletics as a focus for investigation is based on the following rationale: a) the prominence in both countries of athletics as a major Olympic sport that commands a high media profile and has the potential for many medal possibilities and a mass participation (grassroots) activity; b) although both NSOs receive income from a variety of sources, including trading activities and commercial sponsorship, and thus experience multiple accountabilities, they also both receive substantial government funding; 4 c) both NSOs have undergone recent policy or governance reviews that problematize their management and administrative capacities; and d) the findings can be located within a growing body of research in different countries that explores the linkages between government and NSOs (Green, 2004b; Green & Houlihan 2004, 2005; Houlihan, 1997). The exploration of the experiences of the two NSOs (in different countries but with broadly similar levels of government intervention) provides two exemplar case studies upon which further research into other NSOs and sporting organizations in countries with neoliberal governments can be based. The next section outlines our methods of enquiry, and the third section details the theoretical insights upon which the article draws. In the fourth section we chart, briefly, the changing relationship between government and NSOs in Australia and the UK in general over the past 50 years or so. This leads on to the fifth section, in which our investigation of the NSOs for athletics is informed by the literature on governmentality. Our conclusions explore the salience of governmentality theorizing in the sport domain. Methods The research is based upon a systematic review of academic, governmental, and NSO documents and a series of semistructured, in-depth interviews with senior staff in both NSOs and government sports agencies, as well as with sports 03Green(47).indd 50 3/2/06 12:29:49 PM

5 Governmentality, Modernization, and NSOs 51 analysts, over the period Key programs of public (elite) sport policy were identified inductively from an extensive review of the literature in respect of both countries. This inductive process was also informed by deductive insights from the theoretical propositions discussed in the next section. A further key aspect of the study was the importance placed on gathering data relating to actorsʼ subjective perceptions, beliefs, and experiences in relation to policy programs through semistructured interviews. Indeed, if individual agency is deemed important in aiding the understanding of policy making, then the assumptive worlds (Young, 1977, p. 3) of key actors need to be explored. Young uses this term to denote the intermingled beliefs, perceptions, evaluations, and intentions that comprise actorsʼ understanding of the policy milieu and, as McPherson and Raab (1988) note, secondary sources [tell] us nothing about this (p. 55). The interview schedules were derived from a similar set of themes to allow for triangulation (of response) among interviewees from the NSOs and government agencies and sports analysts. The key themes included: a) perceptions of change in government NSO relationships; b) key elements of change; c) sources of change; d) instruments and techniques designed to effect change; and e) trajectory of change. In short, interviews were used in order to gain an understanding of public sportpolicy programs from the perspective of key policy actors, to allow distinctions to be made between the rhetoric provided in policy documents and the reality of an agentʼs insights into her or his perspective on a particular policy development, and to attempt to discern the normative values and belief systems underlying the agentʼs singular perspective, as well as an assessment of the constraining/facilitating structural context within which she or he operates. There was broad agreement among the interviewees regarding the general direction of change in the relationship between government and the two NSOs, although there was less agreement concerning the desirability and pace of change. Those interviewees concerned with achieving elite sport success were generally more content with the direction and pace of change and with the mechanisms for realizing change than were the interviewees involved with sub-elite or grassroots level activities. Governmentality, Modernization, and Disciplinary Practices The Political Context The political terrain upon which governmentality analysts in Australia and the UK ground their investigations is the decline over the past two decades of left-wing Labour parties and the emergence of neoliberal programs of government (Dean and Hindess, 1998; Frankel, 1997a, 1997b; Marsh, 2005; Newman, 2001). An in-depth review of the localized Australian and UK inflections of neoliberalism is beyond the scope of this article. We can, however, note some key points of interest. Under a newly elected Labour government, implementation of a neoliberal economic agenda emerged in Australia in Major measures introduced included the floating of the exchange rate, capital market liberalization, business deregulation, reduced protection for the manufacturing industry, and the privatization of government assets. In addition, the principles of new public management were adopted with its emphasis on efficiency, economic 03Green(47).indd 51 3/2/06 12:29:49 PM

6 52 Green and Houlihan rationalism, and managerial authority (Frankel, 1997a; Marsh). The election of a Liberal government in 1996 consolidated and extended the neoliberal reforms begun by the Hawke and Keating Labour administrations. As Frankel (1997a) argues, there has been much dispute over whether the Hawke and Keating governments could be accused of betraying traditions and socialist objectives they did not hold in the first place (p. 4). In the UK, similar indictments have been leveled since 1997 at the Blair Labour administrations, which followed almost two decades of Conservative rule. Indeed, Newman (2001) suggests that Labour has continued some strands of Conservative reform, such as the emphasis on quality and efficiency and recourse to the tenets of new public management. A key aspect of Labourʼs 1997 electoral platform, however, was an attempt to soften the outright assault on public services (Newman, p. 52) that took place under successive Conservative administrations. Although the political rationalities of the Thatcher and Major Conservative Governments focused on the benefits of competition, Labour placed greater emphasis on collaborative arrangements both at the level of policy, in the rhetoric of joined-up government, and management, by building partnerships and strategic alliances across the public, private, and voluntary sectors. The link into the governmentality literature is provided by Frankel (1997b), who suggests that in both Australia and the UK neo-liberalism has given rise to the concept of self-regulated forms of ʻgovernmentalityʼ (p. 75), which have replaced centralized, statist-bureaucratic forms of government. Whether this argument is born out in the sport-policy domain in general, and for our two NSOs in particular, is the concern of sections four and five of this article. We can preface that analysis, however, by indicating the retention of centralized directive governmental preferences in both countries. In Australia the Australian Sports Commission (1999) notes that the Commission must set the policy direction and coordinate delivery mechanisms to ensure achievement of [government] outcomes (p. 13). In the UK, the governmentʼs latest sport-policy strategy (Game Plan) states that NSOs should have clear performance indicators, and be funded on the basis of delivery. Government investment should be used to drive modernisation and wider working with the voluntary and private sectors (Department for Culture, Media & Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002, p. 162). Modernization Programs The reference above to modernization is important, for not only is it a key program of the (New) Labour Government in the UK (Finlayson, 2003a, 2003b; Newman, 2001), but it is also a concept that has been drawn upon in the Australian context. Edwards (2001, 2002), for example, refers to the UK Labour Governmentʼs White Paper (Modernising Government) and its concern with joined-up policy making, the removal of unnecessary regulation, the wider use of information technology, inclusion of nongovernmental groups in decision making, and the delivery of high quality and efficient public services to provide insights into the ways in which the Australian federal governmentʼs relationships with the private and community sectors are changing. One of Edwardsʼ (2001) key conclusions is that the federal government is becoming a facilitator, moving from the role of ʻconductorʼ to a ʻparticipant,ʼ albeit an important one, in the orchestra (p. 85). As the statement 03Green(47).indd 52 3/2/06 12:29:49 PM

7 Governmentality, Modernization, and NSOs 53 (cited earlier) by the Australian Sports Commission suggests, however, the broad picture painted by Edwards does not necessarily equate to a lessening of government control over NSOsʼ managerial and administrative operations. Newmanʼs (2001) analysis of the UK, by contrast, places greater emphasis on the potentially punitive outcomes of the Labour Governmentʼs modernizing reform agenda, arguing, for example, that in order to deliver on its electoral pledges, the governmentʼs modernization program has resulted in an intensification of many neo-liberal reforms (p. 2). Targets and performance indicators are imposed from the center. Audit and inspection regimes now proliferate and are supported by sanctions imposed on those failing organizations that do not meet these centrally imposed targets. Moreover, efficiency savings and ʻvalue for moneyʼ reviews (p. 2) are now central to the experience of most public-sector organizations, and sporting bodies are certainly not exempt from such sanctions within this newly emerging political rationality. One recent example of such a value-for-money review is the National Audit Office (2005) report, which recommended that UK Sport should be prepared to take tough decisions based on performance about whether sports merit funding and on what scale (p. 6) if it was to maximise its return on investment in the future (p. 34). More broadly, Finlayson (2003b) argues that these techniques are nothing less than an attempt by the Labour Government to ʻmoderniseʼ the state and, by implication, its key partners, by bringing it in line with business best practice (p. 77). In other words, modern management is commercial management, and we can see the consequences of this for NSOs in UK Sportʼs Modernisation Programme and in the Australian Sports Commissionʼs Governance and Management Improvement Programme. The decentralist rhetoric that accompanies these modernization reforms whereby people are able to deploy themselves, or be deployed in a way that maximises their output (Finlayson, 2003b, p. 72) is, paradoxically, combined with the centralisation of control through the introduction of ever more rigorous targets and more complicated systems of performance measurement (p. 81). This paradox is amply reflected in the relationship between government and NSOs involved in elite or high-performance sport development (cf. Green & Houlihan, 2005; Stewart, Nicholson, Smith, & Westerbeek, 2004). Under these conditions, according to Finlayson, there will always be more reform to undertake because it becomes not only a mechanism for finding problems but of generating them and instituting new systems of control (p. 81). Understood in this way, then, any organization or institution that is not willing to modernize is out of touch and anti-modernization. It is clear that in recent years NSOs have been subject to such demands. In Australia, Hoye (2003), for example, notes that alongside increased government funding for NSOs there are increased expectations of accountability on behalf of government together with an expectation that NSOs will engage in efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the governance of their organisations (p. 209). In the UK, NSOs face similar pressures. For example, in a report titled, Investing in Change High Level Review of the Modernisation Programme for Governing Bodies of Sport, Deloitte and Touche (2003) state that some governing bodies lack the basic administrative and professional support which is essential for any organisation... change is clearly necessary (p. 1). Moreover, this report also argues that if NSOs are to play a full role in meeting the challenges of sport in the 21st century, many will need to reform themselves (p. 1). 03Green(47).indd 53 3/2/06 12:29:49 PM

8 54 Green and Houlihan Power, Discipline, and Self-Regulation We argue that new systems of control (Finlayson, 2003b, p. 81) are emerging in both countries based on the apparent ʻempowermentʼ of subjects to regulate themselves (Newman, 2001, p. 22). Newmanʼs emphasis on the apparent nature of empowerment provides a sharp contrast with the normative view of the ʻselfgoverning subjectʼ or the ʻself-regulating networkʼ as autonomous social agents (p. 22). The new systems of control incorporate disciplinary practices that seek to reshape the ways in which each individual, at some point, will conduct him- or herself in a space of regulated freedom (Rose, 1999, p. 22). More specifically, Rose argues that discipline is constitutively linked to the emergence of new ways of thinking about the tasks of political rule in terms of the government of the conduct of the population (p. 22). In this respect, poststructuralist perspectives on power direct attention to the kinds of knowledge and technologies through which social activity (such as sport) is regulated and through which actors in our case institutions, but also athletes, coaches, and sport scientists are constituted as self-disciplining subjects. The comment by Rose and Miller (1992) that Power is not so much a matter of imposing constraints upon citizens as of ʻmaking upʼ citizens capable of bearing a kind of regulated freedom (p. 174) applies equally to NSOs and provides a valuable perspective from which to make sense of neoliberal-informed and Third Way 5 thought that characterizes political discourse in Australia and the UK (cf. Edwards, 2001; Finlayson, 2003a). Indeed, in the UK context, Hall (1998) argues that Labourʼs neoliberal New Managerialism privileges in its moral discourse the values of self-sufficiency, competitiveness and entrepreneurial dynamism (p. 11). Rather than the reduction of government promised by such political thinking (for example, deregulation, privatization, individual autonomy, new public management) and by the literature on governance that points to self-organizing networks or participatory approaches, such changes can be understood as the dispersal of government power across new sites of action within civil society and the private sphere. Government power is enhanced through new strategies and techniques that seek to exert control within these domains without formally undermining their autonomy. Calculative Technologies Programs such as modernization depict or re-present spheres of activity in ways that are essentially self-validating. In this regard, Rose and Miller (1992) argue that they make the objects of government thinkable in such a way that their ills appear susceptible to diagnosis, prescription and cure by calculating and normalising intervention (p. 183). Programs are operationalized through the application of various technologies of government including audit, benchmarking, public service agreements, target-setting and performance reviews, and measurement. Audit, for example, is the process of producing auditable objects, a normative commitment that hardens into the routines of practice a new regulatory common sense (Power, 1997, p. 138). Integral to the application of many of these technologies is the role of experts, not only accountants and management consultants but also sport and business grandees, who are promoted and generally perceived as being disinterested yet authoritative. The net effect of the application of these 03Green(47).indd 54 3/2/06 12:29:50 PM

9 Governmentality, Modernization, and NSOs 55 technologies is to ensure that organizations are instrumental in their own selfgovernment and engaged in the reflexive monitoring of their actions such that they are able to account for what they do when asked to do so by others (Giddens, 1995, p. 35). Thus, power is exercised not only by the ability to demand accounts (Power, p. 146) but also in the deep sense of obligation to provide them. The reality of highly constrained choices of both strategy and practice is masked by the illusion of agency, producing what Rose (1999, p. 154; see also Burchell, 1993) refers to as a double movement of responsibilization and autonomization. The picture that emerges from the preceding sections is one in which the governance of modern states is often characterized by the increasing importance of complex partnership arrangements in both shaping and delivering public policy. Although governments in Australia and the UK have sought to institutionalize new forms of governance through partnerships and capacity building for NSOs, any significant loss of governmentʼs directive power is debatable. Rather, recent history of government involvement in sport, as in other areas of social policy, indicates the considerable adaptive capacity of governments operating within a dominant neoliberal political rationality. In the next section we provide a broad overview of the changing relationships between government and NSOs over the past 50 years or so by way of introducing our substantive focus on the NSOs for athletics in Australia and the UK. Changing Relationships Between Government and NSOs: From Relative Deference to Disciplining Before the 1970s, in both Australia and the UK, government provided intermittent if limited support for sport (Green & Houlihan, 2005). When support was provided, it was largely channeled through local government authorities. In Australia during the 1940s and 1950s, for example, Stewart et al. (2004) note that NSOs were left to fend for themselves. Sport ran its own affairs, found its own resources, and established its own values (pp ). Moreover, Booth and Tatz (2000) argue that sport at this time was viewed as a purely private affair (p. 163). A piecemeal and reactive approach also characterized the governmentʼs attitude to sport and recreation in the UK. The establishment of an Advisory Sports Council in 1965, however, was the first serious indication of a shift toward proactive and strategic government involvement in sport. For example, the receipt of grant aid now depended on the ability of the various organizations to comply with criteria formulated by the Council. As Coalter, Long, and Duffield (1988) note, via the use of economic power, the ASC [Advisory Sports Council] was directly involved in rationalising the elite [sport development] sector (p. 58). The extent of direction provided by the Council was constrained by a degree of deference toward voluntary sports organizations and the persistence of a view within a number of NSOs that they had an entitlement to public funding (Houlihan, 1991). Deference from a governmentsponsored agency toward NSOs can be set against a more general mood in Britain at this time that coalesced around numerous critiques of the habits of deference to authority, elitism and the secrecy in Whitehall (Finlayson, 2003a, p. 71). 03Green(47).indd 55 3/2/06 12:29:50 PM

10 56 Green and Houlihan Increasing Government Influence: Australia A decisive moment for Australian sport in general, and a precursor to the shift toward greater government intervention, was the failure of the countryʼs athletes to win any gold medals at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games and winning just five medals overall. The clearest manifestation of the governmentʼs increased interest in sport was the political and financial support that underpinned the creation of the elite-focused Australian Institute of Sport in 1981 and the subsequent establishment of the Australian Sports Commission in The decision in 1993 by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to award the 2000 Olympic Games to Sydney further tightened the relationship between the government and NSOs. Elite sport, especially Olympic sport, was becoming too important to be left solely in the hands of NSOs. The IOCʼs decision had a profound effect on the pace and direction of federal sport-policy administration and funding allocations; a decision, moreover, that further strengthened the elite-sport lobby in Australia. The award of the 2000 Olympic Games provided the catalyst for a 6-year (up to 2000) elite development program that included additional monies for elite athletes under the Olympic Athlete Programme. The Olympic Athlete Programme, as a funding stream, is a pertinent indication of the ways in which the government increasingly shaped the conditions within which NSOs operated during the 1990s. During this period, the unchallengeable principle of accountability (Australian Sports Commission, 1999, p. 17) emerged as a far more explicit underlying standard in the Sports Commissionʼs relationship with NSOs. As Stewart et al. (2004) argue, the government preference for economic rationalism and managerialism.... signal[ed] to sporting bodies that funding for elite athlete development was contingent upon improving management systems, and delivering medals and trophies (p. 74). A somewhat under-analyzed fault line running through this increasingly centralized relationship, however, was the relative failure to balance the Australian Sports Commissionʼs twin objectives of promoting mass participation and elite sport; a fault line perhaps best summarized by a Task Force review of government involvement in sport and recreation in Australia: There was a general consensus among sporting organisations and individuals with whom the Task Force met that the participation area has been a low priority of the ASC [Australian Sports Commission] and that this is reflected in the low levels of funding to achieve participation objectives. (Commonwealth of Australia, 1999, p. 88) This fault line is at the heart of divisions within the athletics community in Australia (cf. Elliot, 2004; Roe, 2002). Elliot, for example, argues that the sport... projects an image of elitism that undermines its ability to attract significant numbers of grassroots participants to its ranks (p.7) and, therefore, there are concerns about a lack of inclusiveness within the sport (p. 7). Part of our analysis, then, in the following section problematizes the ways in which the overarching elite objectives sought by the government over many years might have resulted in this lack of inclusiveness in the sport. Speaking more generally, but with a particular resonance for our analysis of the two NSOs, Rose (2000) notes how government has undertaken rationalised and calculated interventions that have attempted to 03Green(47).indd 56 3/2/06 12:29:50 PM

11 Governmentality, Modernization, and NSOs 57 govern the existence and experience of contemporary human beings, and to act upon human conduct to direct it to certain ends (p. 322). Of particular relevance, then, to our analysis of Athletics Australia in section five are the ways in which the language of rationality and technocracy emerged increasingly to frame the construction of the sport policy discourse in Australia. Increasing Government Influence: The UK In respect of the UK, it is only since the mid-1990s that government involvement in sport has strengthened to the extent seen in Australia. Government intervention was limited until the establishment of the executive Sports Councils in the early 1970s, a decision that signaled an emerging interest in improving the organizational and administrative structure of sport and recreation, primarily through the building of facilities and the adoption of a Sport for All program. Throughout the 1980s government involvement increased, largely through programs delivered by its armʼs-length agencies, the Sports Councils (Green & Houlihan, 2005). It was the publication of Sport: Raising the Game (Department of National Heritage, 1995), a Conservative Government sport-policy statement that signaled a sharp increase in the salience of sport at the central government level. Sport: Raising the Game focused primarily on the reinvigoration of school sport and physical education, support for elite performers and an elite sport academy/institute, the development of the role of higher education institutions in the fostering of elite athletes, and the funding allocations to governing bodies, which would now be conditional on the explicit support for government objectives (cf. Houlihan, 1997). Arguably, for the first time in its relatively short history, sport was considered a discrete domain for government intervention, with a particular emphasis on supporting an organizational, administrative, and funding framework at the elite level. The introduction of a National Lottery 6 in 1994 also had a profound effect on sports development in general, with over 1.4 billion of lottery money awarded to over 3,900 community sports projects in England since The five Sports Councils in the UK receive grant-in-aid funding from government and are the distributing bodies for the Lottery Sports Fund (Department for Culture, Media & Sport, 2005). The National Lottery also funds the NSOsʼ World Class Performance programs and the development of the UK Sports Institute a UK-wide network of specialist facilities and services for elite performers. Against this background, the Labour Government (elected in 1997) published its own strategy for sport, A Sporting Future for All (Department for Culture, Media & Sport, 2000). Although the Labour strategy and Sport: Raising the Game are from different sides of the political spectrum, they demonstrated a striking note of unity on the twin emphases of school (youth) sport and elite development. Although sport in general has clearly benefited from political and financial support over the past 5 to 10 years, such support has not emerged without a requirement for NSOs to adhere much more closely to government objectives. For example, in respect of the development of elite athletes, A Sporting Future for All emphasized the importance of target-setting and warned, The success or failure in achieving milestone targets in performance plans will be an important factor in deciding future levels of funding (Department for Culture Media & Sport, 2000, p. 44). 03Green(47).indd 57 3/2/06 12:29:51 PM

12 58 Green and Houlihan Government interest in sport was further entrenched in 2002 with the publication of Game Plan, a report described by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport as a comprehensive blueprint for the structure of sport (quoted in Department for Culture, Media & Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002, p. 11). It is indicative of the increasing salience of sport to government that the Strategy Unit (which reports directly to the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister) was asked to report on, and set priorities for, a wide range of aspects of sporting activity including participation rates, elite sport development, the hosting of major events, and, notably, the overly bureaucratic nature of sports administration in the UK. Since the publication of Game Plan, the sport of athletics (and thus its NSO) has clearly been singled out as one that is not meeting governmentʼs policy objectives. In 2004 a UK Sport and Sport England commissioned report into the need for change in athletics in the UK found that athletics manifested destructive hostility between individuals and organizations, backbiting, prejudice and blindness to the facts, resistance to change [and] self interest (Foster, 2004, p. 11). Part of the explanation for such divisiveness, as in the Australian context, is the apparent inability of UK Athletics to balance the needs of its elite performers with club members, volunteers, and officials at the grassroots level of the sport (British Athletic Federation, 1995). From a governmentality perspective, this raises questions in respect of the ways in which government programmes, strategies and techniques for the conduct of conduct (Rose, 2000, p. 322) of NSOs have set prescriptive limits on the autonomy of UK Athletics and thus its capacity to balance these seemingly irreconcilable demands from its various stakeholders. In the next section, our focus is narrowed to an exploration of the NSOs for athletics in an attempt to discern the extent to which, and the means by which, government retains the capacity to significantly shape and direct policy. Athletics in Australia and the UK The experiences of the NSOs for athletics in Australia and the UK provide us with a particularly rich vein of material to investigate the relationship between government and NSOs (cf. Green & Houlihan, 2005). Athletics Australia and UK Athletics have remits for a number of athletics disciplines, as well as being the lead coordinating bodies for other vested interests in the sport. Their administrative and organizational responsibilities are therefore both complex and diverse. Despite both NSOs being in receipt of large amounts of public funding (cf. Australian Sports Commission, 2004; UK Sport, 2005), the two NSOs have also suffered from financial problems, failed to raise participation rates at grassroots levels in line with government targets, presided over crumbling club structures, failed to perform consistently well at the elite level, and therefore might be considered to have generally failed to manage their sports with the degree of efficiency and effectiveness expected by government (Commonwealth of Australia, 1999; Department for Culture, Media & Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002). Thus both NSOs have been subject to performance reviews instigated by government and their key sports agencies. The nature of, and conditions within which, such government intervention has occurred is our primary interest here. 03Green(47).indd 58 3/2/06 12:29:51 PM

13 Governmentality, Modernization, and NSOs 59 Athletics Australia Athletics Australia is the national body for the athletics disciplines of track and field, cross-country, road running, and race walking. All states and territories are linked to the national body as Member Associations, and the NSO is part of the Australian Athletics Federation, an umbrella group that brings together seven key athletics authorities in the country, including the Australian Track and Field Coaches Association. One of the defining characteristics then of Athletics Australiaʼs remit is its organizational complexity, which has led to expressions of concern, particularly by government, regarding the capacity of the NSO to govern the sport effectively. Indeed, in March 2004, it was announced by the government that athletics was to be subject to a wide-ranging investigation by the Australian Sports Commission because the present criticism being levelled at the sport indicated the need for a more comprehensive review as to the best way to take the sport forward (Department of Communications, Information Technology, and the Arts, 2004). The review was chaired by one of the countryʼs former top athletes, Herb Elliot, and the subsequent highly critical report, published in July 2004, made 128 recommendations for improvement (Elliot, 2004, p. 8) after its damning assessment of the NSOʼs organizational and managerial capacities. Concerns for the organization and administration of the sport were not new, however. Indeed, Elliot (2004) noted that in the past 20 years there have been at least five reviews into athletics in Australia (p. 7); the sport thus appears to have suffered a spiral of decline from its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s (cf. Phillips, 2000). Three enduring themes emerge from these reviews, all of which have a bearing on the contemporary condition of the sport in Australia: a) jurisdictional divisions, especially between federal and NSO and State and Territory organizations; b) the strength of emphasis on the elite levels of the sport; and c) the organizational capacity of Athletics Australia to manage the many and various sectoral interests involved in the sport, most notably Little Athletics, the body responsible for younger people up to 16 or 17 years of age (for more detail, see Green & Houlihan, 2005). The broader political backdrop to the current condition of athletics reveals that the government is more than willing to intervene into the workings of NSOs, in general, and those that were/are deemed as failing, in particular (cf. Australian Sports Commission, 1999; Commonwealth of Australia, 1999). Athletics Australia evidently falls into the last category (Australian Sports Commission, 2002; Hoye, 2003). Therefore, what is very clear in the Australian context is that despite claims by the Hawke/Keating governments of the 1980s and 1990s that the economy in general had to be de-regulated and privatised to make it internationally competitive, they effectively did the opposite with sport (Stewart et al., 2004, pp ). Moreover, as Stewart et al. observe, The ASC [Australian Sports Commission] in effect became a planning and regulatory agency for sport by setting performance guidelines and operational parameters in return for ongoing funding and support for NSOs (p. 70). The Task Force review of Commonwealth Government involvement in sport and recreation argued that NSOs face a range of management issues in seeking to achieve increased participation levels, including a declining financial base, fewer volunteers, and declining membership at senior 03Green(47).indd 59 3/2/06 12:29:51 PM

14 60 Green and Houlihan competition level (Commonwealth of Australia, 1999, p. 86). At the elite level, the Task Force review stated that NSOs participate in an intricate global environment against sophisticated rivals who often have greater resources and lower costs (p. 105). Importantly, then, as Hoye (2003) observes, The rationale for government in seeking to improve the management and governance of NSOs therefore lies in improving their ability to deliver the outcomes expected of them in return for receiving government funding (pp ). It appears, then, that the large hand of government circumscribes the activities of Australian NSOs despite the Task Force review recognizing that it should be sport, not government, that runs sport (Commonwealth of Australia, 1999, p. 104). Hoye (2003) highlights two important reasons why power will remain largely concentrated at the center: continued public funding of NSOs is dependent upon the latter demonstrating that government funding is well utilised (p. 213), and the government needs to ensure that NSOs are well placed in order to support its sport policy initiatives in the areas of elite and mass participation sport (p. 213). It is clear that the political rationalities and programs of the federal government have focused on the former to the detriment of the latter. Indeed, a senior official at the Australian Sports Commission stated that government and the Sports Commission have only recently acknowledged the need to redress the imbalance between high performance and grassroots sport (Interview, 5 June 2003). At the NSO level, a senior Athletics Australia official conceded that the organizationʼs almost total focus on elite sport has been a fundamental weakness within the organisation, and one that has yet to be fully addressed (Interview, 4 June 2003). From a governmentality perspective, the governmentʼs discourse of control (Raco & Imrie, 2000, p. 2197) has clearly shaped the conduct of NSOs toward a bureaucratic, technical, and rational control system for elite sport. Under these conditions, the Australian sport environment has been created not by athletes but by administrators and, as such, becomes subject to controlling managerial interests (Hoye, 2003, p. 216). The shift toward a managerialist and technocratic culture, in particular the process of formalizing, institutionalizing, and professionalizing the governance of NSOs, has been driven by the government and administered through the Australian Sports Commissionʼs Governance and Management Improvement Programme (cf. Australian Sports Commission, 2005; Hoye, 2003). The aim of this program is to provide resources for NSOs to address their specifi c [italics added] governance issues (Hoye, p. 215). Thus, the individualized ethos of neoliberal politics, in particular the notion of responsible autonomy (Dean, 1999, p. 210), underscores the programʼs rationale. From a governmentality perspective, then, it is also clear that on the one hand this program is encouraging empowerment. On the other hand, however, it can be seen as operationalizing the self-governing capacities of the governed in the pursuit of governmental objectives (Dean, 1999, p. 67). What is conspicuous about the case of Athletics Australia is that, despite all NSOs being under increased performance scrutiny, particularly in achieving the outcomes from government funding (Ryan, 2002, p. 1), the sport has failed to increase its relatively low participation base... [and] Australian athletes struggle to attain and sustain international excellence (Stewart et al., 2004, p. 102). In particular, the NSO has not delivered on the governmentʼs overriding policy objective, namely the achievement of medals at the sportʼs blue-ribbon event the Olympic Games. 03Green(47).indd 60 3/2/06 12:29:52 PM

15 Governmentality, Modernization, and NSOs 61 Over the past five Olympic Games ( ), Australian athletes have won just two gold medals. The Australian Sports Commission (2002) cites the significant structural change (p. 1) undertaken by Athletics Australia in the late 1990s as a case study of good practice and as one element of its advice under the Governance and Management Improvement Programme for other NSOs facing problems similar to those of the sport of athletics. The Australian Sports Commission articulated those problems as a lack of consistency and solidarity within the existing structure, particularly from the State/Territory Member Associations towards the national body ; the lack of money for the sport and the organization; and that the NSO had not been realising its potential for years (Ryan, 2002, p. 1). Athletics Australiaʼs response to these problems is indicative of the shift to a managerialist and technocratic culture, namely, the appointment of a corporate board based on relevant business skills replacing the old model that was representative of the organizational membership. The language of the corporate world now pervades the rhetoric of the organizationʼs CEO: We apply basic business principles to everything that we do... and exploit all opportunities open to us (quoted in Ryan, p. 1). Somewhat paradoxically, the problem with this approach is captured within the Australian Sports Commissionʼs (2002) case study of Athletics Australia, which states: The two boards are observed to have been starkly different, and operating on different ends of the spectrum of board responsibilities: the old board had strong athletic skills, but shortcomings in commercial matters, the new board has strong commercial skills, but is seen as not adequately empathising with its athletic stakeholders. (p. 4) Even more remarkably, given the noted long-standing problems regarding (the lack of) inclusiveness within the sport, the Australian Sports Commission (2002) concludes that Athletics Australia now needs to give consideration to how it can forge improved linkages with the sportʼs grass roots (p. 4). Part of the explanation for the lack of managerial and administrative efficiency and effectiveness in Australian athletics resonates with Roseʼs (1999) elaboration of disciplinary practices in which government can act indirectly upon autonomous entities (here NSOs) by focusing upon results: setting targets, promulgating standards, monitoring outputs, allocating budgets [and] undertaking audits (p. 146). Such practices have palpably failed on all counts in this case, with neither the government realizing a return on its funding investment across a range of sport policy objectives most noticeably at the elite level nor Athletics Australia managing to engender a culture of inclusiveness because communication and interaction with grassroots members and volunteers has been manifestly inadequate (cf. Elliot, 2004). UK Athletics UK Athletics is the NSO for the six athletics disciplines of track and field, cross-country, fell and hill running, race walking, road running, and tug-of-war. Thus the breadth of UK Athleticsʼ remit shapes the conditions of action within which the organization and administration of athletics in the UK has developed. In this respect, Ward (2002b) argues that There is no more diverse sport than athletics, 03Green(47).indd 61 3/2/06 12:29:52 PM