Erosion of sports clubs across post-communist European nations: a focus on Poland

This article examines the deinstitutionalization of multi-section voluntary sports clubs in Poland during the post-socialist transformation of 1989-2004. Rather than treating club collapse as a straightforward consequence of financial scarcity, the article argues that organizational erosion resulted from the interaction of political withdrawal, functional disruption and changing social expectations, all of which destabilized inherited patterns of sport provision. The article further demonstrates that asset ownership and infra­structural burdens were not secondary contextual variables, but central mechanisms through which deinstitutionalization unfolded. Facilities, land and maintenance costs became sites of institutional conflict, strategic adaptation and, in some cases, organi­zational disintegration. Empirically, the study reconstructs the collapse and attempted reinstitutionalization of Polish multi-section clubs through national statistical data, documentary material and qualitative interviews with club actors and expert observers. Theoretically, it extends Oliver’s account by foregrounding the material and infrastructural dimensions of deinstitutionalization in sport organizations.