The aim of this study is to identify the changing nature of sports policy in
Greece in the period 1980-93. Key themes addressed were the relationship
between policy goals and the political values of the principal political
actors; the impact of the changing nature of the economic and social
structure on policy goals and implementation; and the significance of
national, local and transnational influences and contexts for sports policy.
This study reflects a concern to develop knowledge in this field, in the
sense both that Greek sports policy as an object of study has received little
research attention, and that the framework of strategic relations theory,
which has informed this analysis, has not been employed to date in
investigations of sports policy systems in the literature.
Gathering of data in Greece, incorporated both secondary sources, which
provided aspects of the structural picture of sport, and primary data
derived from interviews, which principally focused on the relations
between actual policy outcomes, the goals of individuals and groups, and
the struggles occurring within the social and political structure. Interviews
were undertaken at various levels within the hierarchies of sports
organisation and of the state.
The principal elements of the concluding analysis in this study were: first,
a focus on political change, from the socialist to right wing government,
which resulted in changes in economic and social policy, which were
themselves reflected in the nature of sports policy; second, a focus on the
position of groups and individuals, and the strategic relations within the
structures which are subject to policy changes; and third, an analysis of
how local, national, and transnational influences have mediated the
context of sports policy in Greece from 1980 to 1993.
Having concluded the analysis of empirical data, a number of key themes
are developed. These include the significance of the political values of the
principal parties on the nature of policy goals at national level; the
evidence of clientelistic relations between central government and
national governing bodies of sport; patterns of corporatism in the relations
between local government and local sporting bodies; and the impact of
political partisanship in the relations between central and local
government and its implications for sports policy at local government
level. The study concludes by reviewing these phenomena within the
context of the conceptual framework implied by strategic relations theory