ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we focus on the strategic relations at play in two sports policy systems in politically 'turbulent' periods and, in particular, on the phenomenon of clientelism in sporting politics. The first example is that of Greece where our concern is specifically with the funding of national governing bodies of sport (NGBs) during the period 1980-93 in which the political control of central government shifted between the two major political parties in the Greek system. The second example is that of Taiwan also during a period of political change (1995-2002) in which the government had to deal with the development and aftermath of a major corruption scandal concerning gambling and the fixing of matches in the country's major sporting obsession, baseball. The core aim of this chapter is to examine the forms that clientelism takes in these contrasting sporting systems and to identify the conditions under which clientelistic relations come to the fore.
