State, sport and politics: sport policy in Republic of China/Taiwan 1973-2002, through a strategic relations approach

This study has sought to address the nature of the evolution of sports policy in ROC/Taiwan since 1973, within the context of a strategic relations approach to the analysis of policy. These aims have been addressed by the development of the analysis of the ROC/Taiwan's position in international relations and its implications for sports policy; of the internal structure and history of the state at national level and their implications for national level policy; and finally, analysis of the local government context. In each case explanation sought to identify both the structural context of policy development and the explanation provided by individual policy actors. The empirical analysis of policy draws on the evidence provided by key actors in the ROC/Taiwan state who have played a significant role in enabling sports policy output. In order to understand sports policy mechanisms since 1973, politicians' perceptions (evidenced in a review of parliamentary debates from 1984 to 2002) provide a useful empirical picture of sports policy. Other data sources employed included government reports, and press accounts as well as interviews with policy actors. The interviewees were drawn from the central government civil service, local government, the national governing bodies of sport and the business community (n--21). Qualitative data analysis software (QSR) was used to manage and organise the data in an inductive and deductive thematic analysis. The theoretical framework on which the study draws involves a recognition that the state is influenced by particular interest groups (characterised in the thesis as the neo-pluralist position), in which elites (the neo-elitist position) often, though not exclusively, drawn from business interests (the neo-Marxist position) are in evidence. The particular make-up of these groups will vary according to the issues concerned at the particular point of time in the history of the ROC/Taiwan state on which one focuses. In the early stages of the ROC/Taiwan state, the military elite was closely allied with the business elite'and with ethnic interest groups (Mainlander Chinese groups rather than native Taiwanese). Such political and ethnic divisions subsequently had an impact on party political affiliations and on the geographic location of facilities and services as the North and Souih of"the' island, and those cities under the Kuomintang and Democratic Progressive Party control, vied with one another to capture resources.