ABSTRACT
In this chapter we take a more in-depth look at the debates that have provoked and circulated around the chapter question ‘Can sport Save the World? The primary goal is to weigh up the generic arguments for and against the capacity of sport per se to make the world in general a more humane, tolerant and peaceful place. In this debate we adopt a particularly critical stance towards commentators whom we and some others consider to be SDP (Sport, Development and Peace) evangelists: those preachers who with little or no evidence-based arguments or accompanying critical analysis proselytise in blind faith about ‘the power of sport to change the world’. We then briefly consider the more salient governmental characteristics of the SDP world, identifying the key organisational players and asking questions about the power relationships among them before concluding by considering the potentially ossifying processes of institutionalisation that are reshaping and perhaps constraining what had hitherto been an emergent and dynamic field. We speculate about what this might mean for the future of the SDP world.
