Is it possible to conceive of sport in Europe as contributing to "national sports systems"? Can we compare these various national sports systems and identify different configurations within them? Our intention here is to test a new, systematic and quantifiable socio-economic theoretical model, to enable us to respond to these questions. Theoritical framework Socio-economics does not consider economics as a distinct and autonomous system to which all other social phenomena must submit (Polanyi, 1944). Our analysis combines two resources; the first, "Economic "regulation theory" (Boyer, 1990) which states as its object, "the study of the transformation of social relations, which creates new forms- both economic and non-economic- organized in structures and reproducing a determined global structure"and the second "constructivist structuralism" which "views each activity including economic ones as `total social facts` " (Bourdieu 2000). We consider sport as a sector (corresponding to group 93.1 of the NACE 2008 classification). Our basic premise is that the sector is made up of five components, which are all present in most E.U. countries. Each one of these offers specific sport services: professional sport, voluntary competitive sport, commercial sporting leisure, voluntary sporting leisure and public sport services. National sport systems are characterized by a particular combination of these components and by the type of intra- and inter-regulations which are in place. Methodology: The characteristics of each of these components can be identified and measured by key indicators. We have tried out our theoretical model against various empirical researches conducted within the E.U. (Vocasport, Eurobarometers, Study on the private and public financing of sport, etc…), along with other sources of information. By making use of social and economic data we have been able to characterize the situation of sport in E.U. countries. Results: On the basis of restricted number of key indicators, we have first of all clearly identified different types of national sports systems characterized by both the disparities in economic and social importance of their components and by the form of regulation existing between them. Following this first observation, we would propose a provisional typology of the national sports systems", settling upon four main "configurations" which we have called "entrepreneurial", "missionary", "bureaucratic" and "social".
© Copyright 2012 17th Annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science (ECSS), Bruges, 4. -7. July 2012. Veröffentlicht von Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.