A new normative underpinning for sport policy research: Advancing the field through thinking with political philosophy theory

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate significant advances in sport policy research that derive from a paradigm shifting engagement with theories from the political philosophy discipline. Initially, the article establishes that there is an unaddressed gap between the normative orientation of sport policies themselves and the significant absence of attention to normative principles in theoretical and conceptual approaches that predominate in current sport policy research. In contrast, political philosophy theories do proceed from particular normative values to present comprehensive accounts of the forms that policies and governing institutions should take. To exemplify how such theories can benefit sport policy research, the article considers Joseph Raz’s (1986) liberal theorisation of the ‘Morality of Freedom’ and applies its connected components in interrogating a contemporary set of sport policy documents from the United Kingdom. This novel approach of ‘thinking with’ Raz’s normative account enables identification of how political philosophy theories can advance sport policy research by: (i) providing overarching normative principles by which different goals and means incorporated across sport policies may be commonly appraised; (ii) enabling fine-grained consideration of the coherence (or otherwise) of different aspects of sport policies; and (iii) offering new possibilities for considering the scope of governmental intervention and the distribution of resources associated with sport policies. Additionally, it is recognised that political philosophy theories also offer new approaches to consider global and international sport policies and provide a basis for rich argumentation as to how sport policies may be differently orientated into the future.