ABSTRACT
The analysis of sport policy presented in this book makes it dif cult to deny that there have been significant developments in the fortunes of sport over the last 20 years or so. However, what the analysis in Chapters 2 to 7 has also highlighted is the unevenness in the extent and, more importantly, in the intensity or depth of change. The opening section of this chapter therefore examines in more detail the nature and extent of change in sport policy in general and more specifically in relation to elite, community and youth/school sport. This examination will enable a closer consideration of the questions raised in chapter one concerning the salience of sport to government, the allocation of resources, changes to the machinery of government and the distribution of power within the subsector. A number of these questions correspond closely to the analytic schema outlined by Hall (1986) in which he identified three ‘orders’ of change—‘third-order’ changes to policy objectives, ‘second-order’ changes to the range of policy instruments utilised and, finally, ‘first-order’ changes to the resources committed to existing instruments. This assessment in the nature, direction and scale of change in sport policy will be followed by a more specific review of the concepts and analytic frameworks outlined in Chapter 1 to indicate how they contributed to the overall analysis.
