Dr Stuart Whigham

Over time, there have been various important contributions that have advanced the application of different conceptual and theoretical approaches to analysing policy processes across the field of sport. On the other hand, there remains a significant gap in relation to appraising different approaches that may be used in analysis of the particular content of sport policies. This article addresses this gap through considering four distinctive disciplinary and conceptual approaches to analysing sport policy content: (i) specific sport-orientated analytic frameworks, such as the Sport Policy Factors Leading to International Sport Success (SPLISS) and the Physical Activity Environment Policy Index (PA-EPI); (ii) discourse analysis approaches; (iii) political science frameworks for analysing policy design; and (iv) theories from political philosophy. Fundamental characteristics of each approach will be considered through the article, derived from a critical appraisal of their differing utilisations in sport policy research to date and the potential contributions that each may make to future analyses of sport policy content. As a result, the article offers concluding recommendations for sport policy research which encompass expanding usage of different approaches where suited to analysis of specific types of sport policies and combining approaches where their synergies would enable more substantive analysis to be undertaken.

Policy learning from other international contexts is an important strategy during the sport policy making process for the government of Taiwan, and recent research has examined the potential parallels between Taiwan and Scotland with regards to sports policy.  Although the status of Taiwan and Scotland is not the same, interesting comparisons can be made given their shared status as ‘contested nations’ that are often in the shadow of their closest neighbours with whom there is an uneasy political relationship – respectively, China and England. As a consequence, sport is regarded in both countries as an important vehicle for establishing and promoting a distinctive identity, albeit with contrasting political and policy considerations. Drawing upon 15 semi-structured interviews with sports policymakers and politicians from both the Taiwanese and Scottish contexts, this paper critically examines the similarities and contrasts with regards to the political considerations which shape and constrain the nature of sport policy in each context. This analysis will focus on the role of central government, local government, sport policy organisations, and sporting National Governing Bodies in both Taiwan and Scotland, with particular emphasis on the positioning of sport within the broader policy, political, ideological and constitutional considerations for policymakers in each context.

The aim of this paper is to consider the relationship between sport and identity formation by examining testimonies of 24 British women who attended The Solheim Cup golf tournament in 2019 to support a transnational team made up of professional European women players. Relatively little is known about the effects of transnational sports teams on identity formation, not least because such teams are themselves rare. The Solheim Cup, contested by teams of female professional golfers representing the United States and Europe, is one such example. The data set consists of interviews with women who attended the competition which took place in a period of political uncertainty between the UK electorate voting to leave the European Union and Brexit actually taking place. The paper analyses the women’s views in relation to national identity, European identity, and cosmopolitanism. Although it emerges that most of the women felt more European in the context of a competition involving a team representing Europe and were opposed to the UK leaving the European Union, they could also be described as cosmopolitan as a result of their educational level, social class and experience of living in or regularly visiting foreign countries.

Introduction: Sport policies in developed countries have been a focal point of policy research and analysis in Taiwan. In previous analyses of sport policies, the focus has mainly been on "England" when discussing relevant research on the United Kingdom. However, within the context of UK sport policies, Scotland has a unique and comprehensive development in sport policies due to its political and economic status. Specifically, it emphasises the importance of cultivating a sporting culture, improving public health, and enhancing social well-being. This research aims to comprehensively analyse Scotland's sport and physical activity policy environment, with a particular focus on strategies and initiatives to promote sport participation and development in the country. The study explores the various dimensions of sport and physical activity policies, including their objectives, implementation methods, and outcomes, to gain insights into their effectiveness and impact. Methods: The study employs a case study approach with qualitative content analysis and in-depth interviews. Interviews were conducted with policy-making agencies, school sport representatives, participants in nationwide sport initiatives, performance sport policy stakeholders, and scholars. Using a governance theory framework, the researcher will explore the roles and tasks played by different organisational units in the formulation and implementation processes of Scotland's sport and physical activity policies under the competition and contention for power. The current policy implementation, predetermined goals, and other aspects are analysed in light of the competition's outcomes. Results: This study reveals the various dimensions encompassed by Scotland's sport policies. The researchers found that Scotland's initial sport policies primarily focused on enhancing active level and driving the development of performance sport. The policy objectives aimed to transform Scotland into a nation where its citizens can fully engage in sport and become a country capable of nurturing athletes and gaining international recognition. The approach of utilising large-scale sporting events helped to complete the sport policies, ultimately positioning Scotland as a nation capable of achieving world-class sporting performance. Additionally, Scotland is establishing its dedicated sport development system by integrating with the National Performance Framework. Policy learning, knowledge exchange, and cross-national collaborations are distinctive features of Scotland's sport policies. These policies emphasise evidence-based decision-making, learning from past policy experiences, and adapting strategies to address the unique challenges and opportunities present in Scotland's context. Conclusion: Scotland's sport strategy primarily prioritises health and well-being as its main development direction for sport. The strategy explicitly outlines Scotland's future policy goals. Scottish sport policies were jointly formulated by official, semi-official, and non-official organisations to adapt to the rapidly changing society, establishing complementary development strategies that can adjust along with people's changing exercise habits. In addition to fostering comprehensive organisational cooperation, the Scottish government utilises external resources acquired through hosting sporting events to renovate various venues and sport facilities, creating a more refined sport environment that provides enhanced opportunities for sport participation and enjoyment of sport convenience. With the continued development of sport policies, Scotland's world-class sport system for its people gradually takes shape. = 緒論：蘇格蘭因其政治與經濟的地位，其運動政策有特殊且完整的發展，特別是強調在培養運動文化、改善公共健康和增強社會福祉方面的重要性。本研究旨在對蘇格蘭的運動與身體活動政策環境進行回顧，重點關注在促進該國運動與身體活動參與和發展的策略和倡議，並分析運動與身體活動政策的各個發展軌跡與面向。方法：採用個案研究方法，透過質性內容分析與深度訪談政策制定單位、學校體育、全民運動、競技運動政策涉入者及專家學者。以治理理論框架分析蘇格蘭運動政策的制定與實施過程中，單位組織在兢爭與合作所扮演的角色與執行的任務，乃至於政策實施、預設目標等現況分析。結果：本研究揭示蘇格蘭不同時期的政策內涵。蘇格蘭的運動政策初期以提升運動參與率為主，政策目標方向期待成為一個國民能盡情運動的國家，爾後利用大型賽會促進運動政策完整化，最終成為世界運動表現國家。此外，利用與政府國家表現框架的結合，蘇格蘭建立專屬的運動發展系統。結論：政策學習、知識交流和跨國合作是蘇格蘭運動政策的特色，其強調基於證據的決策、借鑒過去的政策經驗，並適應蘇格蘭獨特的挑戰和機遇，以應對當前情境的重要性。以健康與福祉為主要發展方向的運動策略，因應快速變化的社會，結合官方、半官方及非官方組織共同擬定輔助發展策略，使蘇格蘭的運動政策能隨著人們運動習慣的改變而改變。蘇格蘭政府更利用舉辦賽會所獲得的外部資源，建立完善的運動環境，使人們能夠提升運動機會，享受運動的便利性，最終運動策略的基礎越發完整，屬於蘇格蘭人的世界級運動系統亦逐漸成形。

This article critically reflects upon the symbolic role of sport in relation to nationalism and national identity within contemporary Scottish society. Drawing upon an ethnosymbolist theoretical approach, the article discusses: a) the mythology associated with Scottish ‘national sports’; b) the existence of independent Scottish teams; and c) the evocation of ancient Scottish history and warfare within the symbolism of Scottish sport. It underlines the import of sporting issues to ongoing theoretical debates regarding nationalism and national identity in contemporary Scottish society, concluding that ethnosymbolism remains an effective theoretical explanation of the nature of contemporary Scottish nationalism.

While a growing body of evidence exists around women fans of men’s sport, less is known about women fans’ perspectives and identities in relation to women’s sport, and what is known tends to focus on homogenous representations of sports fans, rather than a diversity of fan types and follower styles (Pope 2017). Building on the authors’ previous appraisals of the Solheim Cup – the biggest event in women’s golf – this paper examines fan performances of women at the 2019 event in Scotland. Twenty-five white women from the UK/Europe were recruited via social media before, during and after the Solheim Cup, with online interviews taking place in the following days. Using performative sports fandom as a framework the authors seek to examine women fan performances at a major women’s sporting event. The analysis of the interviews resulted in three themes around (1) friendship, care, and connection, (2) negotiated fan performances and (3) distinctive fan performances. While it must be acknowledged that this is a homogenous group of fans, it is hoped that this research will add to the understanding of the diversity and complexity of fan identities.

In 2019, Scotland played host to the Solheim Cup, a competition contested by leading women professional golfers representing Europe and the United States. The event was given further political significance by the fact that it took place in the same year as the United Kingdom left the European Union against the wishes of the majority of Scots who had voted in the 2016 referendum on EU membership.  This paper examines the significance of the 2019 Solheim Cup with specific reference to the quasi-mythical status of golf in Scotland and the use of sports events by the Scottish Government and the organisation responsible for Scotland’s tourism strategy, VisitScotland, to enhance the country’s image and attract visitors, particularly from overseas.  Initially, discussion focuses on the historical roots of golf in Scotland, and its quasi-mythical claim to be the ‘Home of Golf’, a key motif in the nation’s sports tourism strategy.  Attention then turns to a critical examination of contemporary sport tourism policy in Scotland, focusing upon the nation’s use of international sporting events as part of this broader strategy.  To this end, we scrutinise the discursive strategies used by Scottish politicians and policymakers in relation to the 2019 Solheim Cup, exploring the extent to which the event effectively tackled the explicit goals of: a) promoting Scottish values; b) demonstrating the nation’s capabilities for hosting sporting events; c) cementing Scotland’s reputation as the home of golf; and, d) tackling socio-economic and gendered inequalities with regards to golf participation in Scotland.

The world of inter-national sport, defined as sport that involves athletes competing for ‘their’ country against athletes from another country (Gleaves and Llewellyn, 2014), is often imbued with notions of national identity and war, although some sports lend themselves more obviously than others to these concepts. For Liston and Kitching (2019, p. 6) however, the sport of golf is unaccustomed to the displays of nationalism that are more commonplace in more combative team sports. This is due to the lack of both direct competition formats and nation versus nation contests in golf, as well as the absence of the physical confrontation that characterises other sports. Golf is generally devoid of flags and nationalistic tendencies and is thus often considered relatively insignificant in inculcating national sentiments, with Steen (2015, p. 349) noting that golf is ‘lacking the passions, physical confrontation and tribal loyalties that underpin mass appeal’. Harris et al (2017) subsequently highlighted how, perhaps unsurprisingly, little research has considered the place of the
nation in relation to golf, with professional golfers playing on global tours defined as ‘borderless athletes’ who transcend national, racial and ethnic borders, de facto sports citizens of the world (Chiba, Ebihara and Morino, 2001). Despite this, Bairner (2003) notes that the sport does have links to identity politics, and there have been instances where professional golfers have taken on cultural significance and become viewed as embodiments of the nation (Kitching and Bowes, 2020; Liston and Kitching, 2019). This paper aims to investigate the print media’s role in connecting golf, this case, women’s, to national identity. More specifically, the paper examines the relationship between golf and national identity, using the 2019 Solheim Cup as a case study and drawing upon the notion of athletes as proxy warriors for their nation. 

Electoral politics is strongly influenced by unfolding events, some of them leading to major shifts in alignment. There has been renewed interest in the ‘floating voter’ in contemporary Europe, not least because of increased electoral support for right-wing political parties. In Scotland, however, the clearest example of realignment is to be found not so much in support for specific political parties, although that should not be ignored, but rather in a shift of sections of the population from UK unionism towards support for Scottish independence, despite the result of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. We explore past contentions from certain authors that the ethno-religious, socioeconomic and political stratification of supporters of the two largest football clubs in Scotland, Celtic and Rangers, may be linked to their personal voting dispositions with regards to the issue of Scottish independence. These past findings are discussed in light of our interviews with fans of Scottish football teams which explore their perceptions of the interconnection between football club support, nationalism, unionism, and political voting in contemporary Scotland.  Our interviewees suggest that the shifting dynamics of contemporary Scottish politics in an era of constitutional evolution has been reflected in shifting political and social affiliations of Scottish football clubs: although the traditional political allegiances of Celtic and Rangers were argued to persist to a degree, consensus emerged that these traditional allegiances have been destabilised by broader political, socioeconomic and ideological developments.  

This article considers the implications for athletes who hold a position as a ‘political symbol’ in the context of the United Kingdom (UK), and specifically Scotland, particularly those who publicly stated their personal political opinions during the periods of the London 2012 Olympic Games and the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. These two major international sporting events were hosted during a period of political upheaval within the UK, evidenced in the return of Conservative-led Westminster governments in 2010, the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014 and the referendum on European Union membership in 2016. English media coverage of the 2012 London Olympic Games revealed a propensity to critically frame ‘Scottish’ athletes, competing in ‘Team GB’, as potential resistors to overt expressions of British nationalism. This centred on Scottish athletes who failed to sing the British national anthem. During the campaign for Scottish independence in 2014, the establishment of the pro-independence ‘Sport for Yes’ group sought to harness sporting issues and personalities in favour of Scottish independence.  In contrast, the pro-union ‘Better Together’ campaign promoted athletes discussing the potential negative impact of Scottish independence on the funding and organisation of Scottish sport. Accordingly, by critically considering the discursive framing of athletes who publicly announce their political positions, this article provides a review of the political significance of such pronouncements amidst a politically fraught UK.

In contemporary British society, discussions of social class have become relatively marginalised in comparison to their historically eminent position within the domains of politics, social policy and, the specific focus of the forthcoming discussion, education.  However, within the specific field of PE and sport, contemporary academic analyses have continued to highlight various class-based inequalities and evidence of social stratification in relation to these areas of education and society (Evans, 2014; Evans & Bairner, 2013; Evans & Davies, 2008, 2014; Horne et al., 2011).  In light of this, this study seeks to explore the extent to which social class and socio-economic status are evident within the provision of PE within 288 English state secondary education schools (11-18 years of age), drawing upon the findings of a large-scale survey of the activities and qualifications offered within the PE curriculum at each sample school.  Using publicly available data on the comparative provision levels of ‘free school meals’ (henceforth FSM) for pupils as an approximate indicator of the relative levels of socio-economic demographics for each sample school, this study seeks to explore how English state schools with contrasting levels of socio-economic deprivation cater for their students within their PE curriculum.  The emergent results revealed some trends in the relative provision levels of certain activities across schools in different FSM quartiles, with activities such as rugby union, rugby league, Gaelic football, tennis, and field hockey demonstrating stratified provision, as was the case for the provision of accredited academic and vocational qualifications in PE and sport.  These complex and nuanced findings are then critiqued by drawing upon a Bourdieusian theoretical conceptualisation of social class, utilising a number of theoretical concepts derived from Bourdieu’s past analyses of education and sport to critically reflect upon the validity of his theoretical claims when applied to this specific data set.

Given the contemporary growth of ‘populist’ political parties and movements in a number of highly-developed democratic states in Europe and North America, there has been a resurgence in academic interest around the various causes for the groundswell of support for political populism. Given this broader political context, this paper explores the interconnection between sport and populist politics in Hungary, with a particular emphasis on the appropriation of sport by ‘right-wing’ populist political actors. In particular, this paper will examine the politics – sport interconnection by discussing Victor Orbán’s, Hungary’s Prime Minister, use of football, and sport more broadly, and the ways in which the Hungarian government have attempted to reinvent a strong nation and national identity through sport and related political populism. These attempts have been influenced by the interaction between forces of Westernisation and the country’s continuing post-communist transition, with the view to (re)inventing the Hungarian nation.

In this essay, we trace the symbolic conundrums of belonging, and of the reconciliation of identities, in the context of Catalan and Scottish sport and politics. Our discussion will commence with a necessarily concise consideration of past academic contentions regarding the national ‘psyches’ which have been argued to shape contemporary notions of identity and politics in Catalonia and Scotland, before turning our attention to the specific role of sport vis-à-vis these ‘psyches’ and the growing clamour for greater political autonomy for each of these stateless nations. Based on evidence drawn from the interaction between sport and politics in the two nations, we argue that secessionism is a liminal field of transformation as it includes what is seen as mutually exclusive sets of relationships (Catalans vs. Spaniards; Scottish vs. British, secessionists vs. unionists/centralists), which at the same time allows subjects to pass from one state to another and occupy them non-exclusively.

This article critically examines the predominant narratives which emanated from party political discourse in relation to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.  Utilising a methodological approach centring on political discourse analysis (Fairclough and Fairclough 2012), this paper analyses party manifestos and constitutional policy documents produced by the three largest political parties represented in the Scottish Parliament, namely the pro-independence Scottish National Party and two pro-union parties, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party.  The emergent discourse of each party is interrogated by drawing upon pertinent theoretical concepts from previous academic analyses of Scottish nationalism, with particular attention given to those which have deployed modernist and ethnosymbolist theoretical approaches when analysing the Scottish context. This facilitates a critical reflection on the contrasting and nuanced narratives of the Scottish nation’s past and future espoused by each political party vis-à-vis modernist and ethnosymbolist theory, illustrating the ways in which contrasting theorisations of nationalism are empirically tangible within political discourse, and are thus not simply theoretical abstractions.

This article focuses upon two contexts which have arguably received the most academic and media attention with regards to the interconnection between sport and secessionist nationalism, Scotland and Catalonia, given that both ‘submerged nations’ have held public referenda on the topic of independence / secession from the states of the United Kingdom and Spain, respectively. The analysis endeavours to draw parallels between the two contexts in order to critically examine the extent to which similarities and differences are evident in terms of the growth of political nationalism. Finally, the central discussion outlines the extent to which sport contributed to broader political developments in the recent campaigns for the establishment of independent Scottish and Catalan states, focusing upon the actions of prominent sporting personalities and organisations.