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Item does not contain fulltext Sports clubs in the Netherlands have an important societal position. They play a role in the everyday life of many Dutch people, and they are increasingly asked to take up roles in public health promotion and societal integration. Given their characteristics, it is not surprising that sports clubs are ascribed these roles in policies. On average, Dutch sports clubs have a relative large organisational capacity, because they have relatively large numbers of members and volunteers and they often possess their own sports facilities. These traits make them interesting potential partners for national and local policy-makers from different policy domains. Sports clubs also ascribe this societal position and role as policy partner to themselves. However, this chapter also shows that Dutch sports clubs are still mainly focused on organising their core sports activities, which is challenging enough for many clubs. Policy initiatives aimed at strengthening sports clubs could help to enrich their societal functions. In addition, this chapter illustrates that clubs have difficulty to get their members active in democratic decision-making and volunteering. New ways of designing the volunteering positions are needed to maintain the clubs' strengths.

Item does not contain fulltext In this chapter, we will highlight the current state of affairs as well as the historical background of the way in which sport is governed in the Netherlands. In order to do so, we will focus on the role of the national government, the sports clubs and sport federations and the local governments. We will show that sport in the Netherlands very much forms a showcase for the Dutch political-economy tradition of coalitions and of responsibilities and initiatives that are shared between public and private organisations. We will argue that that system has been important in establishing a sound and cost-effective sporting infrastructure, perhaps favouring grassroots sport whilst not being blind to the significance of elite sports. We will also, however, go into the threats to the system, coming from the influx of commercial forces and the need to make difficult choices when it comes to elite sports.

Sport for All has been a major concern in sport policies in many European countries since the 1960s and 1970s. It continues to be on the agenda until today, even though the perspective has somewhat changed, as a growing emphasis on both health-enhancing physical activity and elite sport can be observed. In this chapter, we explore sport participation in Europe. We start off by discussing different representations of the organisation of sports in Europe. The so-called ‘church model’ is presented, which provides an alternative to the more traditional pyramid, but highly hierarchical representation of the ‘European sports model’. This first, conceptual section is followed by a presentation of empirical findings on sport participation in Europe. Analyses are based on the Eurobarometer, a large-scale repeated cross-sectional survey issued by the European Commission to inform policies, and conducted in all 28 member states of the European Union. The findings indicate that there are large differences in terms of sport participation throughout Europe. Both a geographical divide as well as a social divide can be observed. The chapter ends with a discussion of the findings that explores what brings about the identified differences. The large variety in terms of sport policy, organisation and provision within Europe, and the influence of societal values and cultural preferences outside the realm of sport are key explanatory factors. It is concluded that sport remains the outcome of processes of social differentiation and social inequality.

Originally, running was a sporting activity which was mainly, if not only, practised by competitive athletes in private track and field clubs or through extracurricular school and university programmes (Bale, 2004). Today, running has become an immensely popular pastime pursued in the public sphere by millions of recreational participants worldwide. Up to the 1960s, however, recreational jogging along the street, in a park or in a forest was considered a strange activity. In his analysis of public order, Goffman (1971) described patterned characters of everyday life and, among others, analysed pedestrian traffic systems. At that time, people huffing, puffing, hobbling, plodding and sweating while running in the streets was less evident than it is nowadays. Stokvis (2006) noted that in this context, leisure-time running was rather perceived as a disruption of social codes between pedestrians, and thus marring the existing public order. If people ran in public, this was mainly the case because they were in a hurry. Doing forms of physical exercise in public meant that one was ‘frivolous’, ‘idle’ or even ‘subversive’ (Florida, 2002; Paunonen, 2009). Running in public was seen as a waste of energy and, therefore, people practising leisure-time running activities risked being scoffed and jeered at (Van Bottenburg et al., 2010a). Thus, apart from the club- and school-organised version, recreational running used to be a rather unusual physical activity for the greater part of the twentieth century.

The model underlying the organisation of sport in Switzerland is based on two main principles: the independence of Switzerland’s Olympic Committee (Swiss Olympic) and national sport federations from the State and the “federalised implementation” of sports policies—a consequence of Switzerland’s federal structure. In terms of the VOCASPORT typology, Switzerland’s sport policy/organisation model can be categorised as an evolving missionary configuration, in which the sports movement has traditionally relied on volunteers and had substantial autonomy to make decisions, but which has recently seen a substantial increase in government regulation and financing (with the creation of a sort of federal ministry for sport in 1999 and a fourfold increase in government expenditure on sport between 1972, when Switzerland’s first federal sports act was passed, and 2011). The commercial sector is also an important part of Swiss sport, due to the size of the fitness industry.