Using a Formal Legal Authority to Make Policy Decisions
The British Sports Council had a crucial role to play in influencing sport’s policy in the country in the decade of the 1960’s, the 1970’s and the 1980’s. In spite of playing a pivotal role in orchestrating and developing sports events of different varieties and categories in this three decade long period, the British Sports Council has not received as much attention from sports scholar’s and practitioners as it ought to. Sport is a passion for people living in the United Kingdom, and the country of Great Britain is no exception. A few well-known examples of the sports that are played by people in the United Kingdom at the national and international levels include cricket, football, hockey, basketball tennis and swimming. The United Kingdom has an international presence in sports such as cricket, tennis and football, having produced several greats and legends in all three sports over the years. The United Kingdom is also known to take part quite actively in Olympic events and has won several awards and laurels in the course of doing so. This report reviews and analyzes the sports policy that was followed in the United Kingdom between 1979 and 1990 by the British Sports Council, at a time when Margaret Thatcher was the premier of the country. The analysis is carried out using the advocacy coalition framework. The report concludes with the statement, that this sports policy did not follow all the caveats outlined in the advocacy coalition framework and was therefore not as effective as it could have been.
Understanding the Implementation of Sports Policy in the United Kingdom by the British Sports Council (1979 – 1990) using the Advocacy Coalition Framework
According to the advocacy coalition framework, people holding legal positions ought to be included as members of advocacy coalitions as they can serve as valuable resources for such coalitions and influence policy making and policy change in a considerable way (Weible et al. 2009). British sports policy as drawn up and implemented by the British Council from the later part of the 1970’s was governed and influenced primarily by 32 members who formed the membership of this council. Developing any settled sports policy proved to be quite difficult at this point of time and effective working relationships were primarily forged rather than actually established, as many members of the Council who were not of conservative political views found it difficult to express their voices and opinions under the autocratic leadership of Margaret Thatcher (Jefferys 2016). Notably, there was no member of the legislature who occupied an important position in the sports council. Most of the members belonged to the labor party rather than the conservative, and struggled quite a bit in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s to adjust to the conservative leadership of Margaret Thatcher. The council members struggled long and hard to adapt to the adversarial politics so prevalent at this point of time and there was no member of the legislature or the judiciary who formed a valuable addition to the British Sports Council (Gillett and Tennent 2018).
The advocacy coalition framework states that opinion polls which show support for the policy positions of a coalition normally constitute a major resource for those participating in the policy making process (Weible et al. 2009). Given that Margaret Thatcher was a person who followed an autocratic leadership style there was little or no scope for the members of the British Sports Council in the years between 1979 to 1980, to take public opinions and suggestions into account, at the time of implementing sports policies. The British Prime Minister herself had very little interest in sport as a whole, and it is important to note in this respect, that while two successive sports ministers were appointed in the last couple of years of the decade of the 1970’s, under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership of eleven years, only five sports ministers were appointed overall. All decisions concerning sporting events and sport policy were dominated by conservative politics in this era, and while the British Sports Council was itself struggling to adapt itself to the autocratic politics of the time, there was no question of including or paying heed to public opinion when drafting decisions and policies concerning sporting events in the country. It would be fair to say that sport policy in the United Kingdom was something that stagnated a great deal in this period (Green 2006). There was no scope for the council members to innovate or to come up with new ideas regarding sport policy, which would have been possible had public opinions and suggestions regarding sports policy been encouraged and incorporated. Public opinions were not considered important enough for influencing sport policy at all (Hargreaves 2014).
Role of Public Opinion in Governing Sports Policy
Information concerning the severity of problems as well as causes of problems along with the benefits and costs of policy alternatives forma an important resource for coalitions. The advocacy coalition framework is one that propounds the strategic use of information such as through the solidification of coalition membership, swaying public opinion, concerning the decision making sovereign authority of the proposals being made and arguing vehemently against opponents and rivals (Weible et al 2009). The British sport policy under the rule of Margaret Thatcher between 1979 to 1990 saw none of this happening. Her conservative governance and ignorance to sports in general ended up stifling British sport policy like never before. There was no question of making proposals for the sufficient advancement of sport and there was absolutely no ground or scope for voicing dissent against sport policies implemented by the British Sports Council during the Thatcher regime (Jefferys 2016). Controversial decisions like supporting the decision of Jimmy Carter to boycott the Soviet Union during the 1980 Olympics and giving an athlete from apartheid South Africa a British passport to take part in the 1986 Olympics, were decisions that were not opposed at all from within the British Sports Council or any of its stakeholders at the time, due to the iron rule of the iron lady in Britain at the time (Jefferys 2016).
According to the Advocacy Coalition Framework, money or financial resources can be used extensively for the promotion of policy. Money can for instance be used for the purchase of information and other resources needed to enlist media support and fund public campaigns that will promote and benefit policy making by assisting with the developments that need to take place to strengthen policy in the first place (Weible et al. 2009). In the early part of the year 1982, a number of skirmishes were seen to take place between the British Sports Council and the Prime Minister concerning the size as well as composition of the Council, and several disagreements were also voiced over policy matters. The expansionist agenda that was being followed by the Council at this point of time to better support sport policy was something that was in contravention to the politics of Margaret Thatcher which intended on keeping full and complete control over public expenditure. ”Sport in the Community – The Next Ten Years”, a detailed strategy document composed and prepared by the British Sports Council, was to be published in the summer of that year. The document was specifically authored by a man by the name of Mike Collins who was a prominent member of the Council. He argued in this document that British participation in outdoor sports had doubled in the decade of the 1960’s and that British participation in indoor sport had increased greatly in the decade of the 1970’s (Jefferys 2016). What the document proposed was that British participation in outdoor sports be further encouraged in the 1980’s by getting at least four million more people to take part in it while at least three more million people should be encouraged to participate in indoor sporting activities in or on behalf of Great Britain. Ambitious targets were also outlined in this document with regard to facilities. It was hoped that around 200 swimming pools in the country would be refurbished and that 50 new swimming pools would be constructed. Based on the success of past policies as well as requirements for advancing British sport in the years after 1980, what this new document called for was an additional investment amounting to as much as 40 million pound sterling on a yearly basis over a period of five years. At least three quarters of this amount of money would be focused on what the document termed as community recreation while the remaining amount would focus on promoting athletic excellence. It was the belief of the British Sports Council that the economic and social benefits associated with such a policy would outweigh all the investment that would go into implementing it in the first place (Jefferys 2016). Of course, the document was rejected by the Thatcher administration outright, as it had little or no interest in spending government money on the improvement of sport. The only time when Margaret Thatcher was seen to allocate funds for the improvement of sport was in the event of a crisis such as during the Hillsborough Crisis of May 1985 when several people died due to the outbreak of a fire at the Valley Parade Stadium in Bradford City.
Strategic Use of Information to Guide Sport Policy
The advocacy coalition framework states that skillful leadership needs to be deployed if the correct policies are to be conceived and executed (Weible et al. 2009). Effective new policies and change in policy making are both brought about only with the help of good and skilled leadership. During the era of Margaret Thatcher, that is in the years between 1979 and 1990, the British Sports Council did possess the kind of leadership that was needed to bring about effective changes and innovations in sport. The document, “Sport in the Community – The Next Ten Years” as drafted by important members of the British Sports Council, is a good example of this (Jefferys 2016). There were many people in the council who had the right ideas about how to take sport in the United Kingdom in forward direction and who know where to invest and how much, if sport in the country was to grow and advance. However, the autocratic leadership style that was exercised by Margaret Thatcher especially when it came to keeping tight control over funds for matters such as spending on recreational areas such as sport, prevented the effective and much desired implementation of good British sport policy (Green 2006). The conservative leadership that was ruling the United Kingdom at the time had its obvious impact on the leadership of the British Sports Council. Although the council members tried their level best to fight the autocratic and conservative attitude towards sport under the Thatcher regime, there was little that they could do to get their way and actually end up implementing the type of sport polices that they wanted to. All that the council members of the British Sports Council were entitled to do, was to recommend changes in British sport policy, most of which were disapproved of by the Thatcher government. Hence the lack of skilled leadership, not so much in the British Sports Council but in the Thatcher regime which had full control over the British Sport Council, resulted in the stagnation of British sport policy during the Thatcher years (Green 2007).
The advocacy coalition framework recommends the use of mobilizeable troops in order to bring about major changes in policy matters and to introduce the type of policies that are worth executing (Weible et al. 2009). Such troops include members of the attentive public who can make the recommendations and suggestions that are needed to draft polices that are progressive in nature. Under the Thatcher regime, in the years between 1979 and 1990, the members of the British Sports Council were not able to recruit members of the British attentive public to suggest ideas and plans that could have been put in place to make British sport policy more advanced than what it was at the moment (Green 2006). The public was not given any scope to say anything at all about how British sport could be improved upon or advanced in order to give it a wider amount of appeal and get more and more people in the country to take part in sporting activities (Guilianotti 2015). The British premier had little or no interest in sport herself and was not willing to allow people to tell her what to do and what not to do as far as bringing about changes in national sports was concerned. As a result, there was little or no change made to British sport policy in the period of Thatcher rule, as sport itself was not given any priority and the use of public opinion and public recommendations to make changes in any existing sport policy appeared to out of the question. The British Sport Council could have made significant advancements in introducing and implementing effective and progressive sport policy had it been allowed to engage the opinion and suggestions of attentive members of the public. It could have also brought about necessary changes in ongoing British sport policy had this been allowed.
Use of Financial Resources for the Implementation of Sport Policy
Conclusion
Thus what can be concluded upon using the advocacy coalition framework to analyze British sport policy as implemented and administered by the British Sport Council under the Thatcher regime, is that there was little or no progress made in the domain of sports. The kind of sport policies that could have allowed British sport to grow and expand and move in a forward direction could not be implemented due to the lack of funding made available by the Thatcher regime for this purpose. The Thatcher government was conservative and autocratic in its approach in all matters, and British sport was no exception. While members of the British Sport Council were willing and did indeed come up with the right ideas and suggestions to make British sport policy more progressive, expansive and inclusive than what it had been in the decade of the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, their suggestions and proposals fell on deaf ears. What made matters worse for the British Sport Council was that most of its members belonged to the labor party and many if not all of them found it increasingly difficult to adapt to the conservative and adversarial politics of the time.
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