The process of implementing a multi-level and multi-sectoral national sport policy: cautionary lessons from the inside

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper was to (1) present and critically reflect upon a national sport policy’s implementation and monitoring process in a multi-level, multi-sectoral context from an insider’s perspective and (2) provide recommendations for future research and policymakers regarding sport policy implementation and monitoring. Based on hundreds of documents (e.g. formal and personal meeting notes, formative and summative evaluation reports) gathered over the policy’s lifespan, the paper critically reflects on the second Canadian Sport Policy’s (CSP) implementation process between 2012 and 2022, which comprised grassroots, high performance, and sport for development goals, using the multiple governance framework. The reflection highlights key challenges for implementing a soft (national sport) policy in a complex, multi-level, multi-sectoral governance context, such as the normative soft policy seeing a ‘policy for all’ becoming a ‘policy for no one’, no stakeholder accountability per se, nor power for the policy intermediary to enforce implementation. This resulted in the CSP 2012’s ceremonial attribution of success because any action could be seen as fitting within policy goals. The paper highlights the importance of (1) aligning policy development, implementation, and evaluation between macro and micro levels; (2) a more holistic policy implementation process analysis using in situ methods; (3) understanding the personal experiences, struggles, and tensions found within policy implementation to explain potential outcomes; (4) policy ambiguity and equifinality limiting policy implementation evaluation; (5) resources/dedicated funding as a policy implementation success driver; and (6) potential tools (e.g. use of outside experts, conceptual maps) for soft policy implementers/monitors and researchers.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy implementation
• top-down model
• bottom-up model
• longitudinal
• developmental evaluation
• soft policy

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Joanne Kay, Senior Research and Policy Analyst at Sport Canada. She is the Chair of the Policy Implementation Monitoring Working Group (PIM) and was a member of the CSP renewal work group and writing team. The authors would also like to thank Professor Emeritus Barrie Houlihan for helping conceptually frame the paper and review our thoughts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Given this paper’s authors are PIM members, we continue in the first person.

2. The research falls within quality assurance and program evaluation; thus, ethics requirements were waived by the first author’s university ethics board.

3. For more, see Downward et al. (2009), Green (2007), Houlihan and Green (2011), Thibault and Harvey (2013)