State Sport Policy and Voluntary Sport Clubs: the Case of the Norwegian Sports City Program as Social Policy

Abstract

This article scrutinizes the relationship between state policy and voluntary sport clubs. While the latter development is to consider sport as social policy, the case of the Norwegian Sports City Program (SCP) was initiated by the state and implemented by voluntary and competitively orientated sport organizations. The research question concerns whether the logic of integration in social policy is compatible with the logic of competition in sport. With new institutionalism as the theoretical framework, and based on a case study of multiple methods, the analysis reveals how processes of isomorphism and translation take place in sport clubs. While the general picture shows that sport clubs resemble the competitive script which seems perceived as immanent in sport, the representatives of the SCP clubs respond to requirements in their local communities and—at the same time—translate the incentives of the state. In so doing, the state policy fits the philosophy of SCP clubs' social work and these clubs get subsidies for implementing sporting activities with a social profile, but the motive for the work of sport clubs representatives is anchored in the local community and is limited only to a degree influenced by state policy.