Governing under advanced liberalism: sport policy and the social investment state

Mick Green ()

Policy Sciences, 2007, vol. 40, issue 1, 55-71

Abstract: Since the election in 1997 of a New Labour Government in the United Kingdom, a growing number of analyses have provided insights into, and critiques of, what has been termed the “social investment stateâ€\x9D. To date, these analyses have interrogated particular developments and distinct issues in a number of key social welfare policy-related sectors, including education, citizenship, the family, and poverty/employment. Notable by its absence, however, is the contribution that policies for sport and physical activity are now playing in the realisation of New Labour’s social investment strategies. This article therefore interrogates and registers the growing salience of sport policy interventions for the construction of a social investment state within the broader political context of governing under “advanced liberalâ€\x9D rationalities. The “active citizenâ€\x9D, and children and young people, in particular, are valorised and appear centre-stage as the focus for these interventions. This child-centred focus is problematised, as is the argument that, under prevailing political rationalities of advanced liberalism, government “steersâ€\x9D rather than “rowsâ€\x9D and “enablesâ€\x9D rather than “commandsâ€\x9D. Under these conditions, while children are deemed deserving of investment, there may be other groups who are deemed less deserving, for example, older people who, unlike children and young people have little currency in a future-oriented world. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLP 2007

Keywords: Social investment state; Advanced liberalism; New Labour; Sport and physical activity policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11077-007-9034-y (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:policy:v:40:y:2007:i:1:p:55-71

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11077/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11077-007-9034-y

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Sciences is currently edited by Michael Howlett

More articles in Policy Sciences from Springer, Society of Policy Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().