posted on 2023-09-01, 15:06authored byMathew Dowling
The term “national sport system” is often used as a shorthand to denote an interconnected and interdependent group of individuals and organisations that work together (albeit to varying extents) and operate within a geo-political boundary to achieve particular outcomes. There is no widely agreed definition of what constitutes a national sport system nor how it may be possible to identify or make comparisons between them. Furthermore, the nature of the relationship between and the extent to which constitutive parts of a national sport system ‘work’ together to produce a desired outcome(s) is often debateable and context dependent. Despite this, many researchers and practitioners commonly use the notion of a national sport system as a unit of analysis for understanding how sport and physical activity is organised and delivered within their country. This entry explores the concept of the national sport system, along with how it has been employed by researchers and practitioners to date. In doing so, it identifies the key features and characteristics of national sport systems, elucidates the history of developing elite sport systems, and discusses the application of comparative methodology to better understand how to compare sporting nations.