ABSTRACT
Sport in the Netherlands has never been a hierarchically governed sector with national authorities acting as an overpowering agency. Rather, sport developed from the late nineteenth century from below through private initiatives of citizens who organized their sport in voluntary organizations (in Dutch: sportverenigingen), with local governments facilitating and stimulating this activity. National sport organizations were founded to coordinate the regulation and organization of sport competitions, and for decades they did so without government interference at a national level. It was only after the Second World War that the central government developed ambitions for and through sport.
