Examining ocean sports representation in the ocean policy agenda

This study examines how ocean sports are represented across international and European Union policy agendas governing the ocean, tourism, and sport, and the extent to which these representations are reflected at the national level in the Portuguese policy agenda. The empirical analysis focuses on the Olympic ocean sports of surfing and sailing. A qualitative comparative policy analysis was conducted using a structured binary coding protocol applied to a corpus of policy documents, institutional reports, and strategic publications. The findings reveal a pattern of vertical policy differentiation. At the international level, neither surfing nor sailing is assigned an explicit policy role. Within the EU policy corpus, only sailing is assigned an explicit policy role, while Portuguese policy instruments assign policy roles to both surfing and sailing. The absence of the collective term ‘oceansports’ does not indicate policy invisibility: surfing and sailing are recognized, but under tourism, nautical activities or maritime spatial planning rather than as a distinct policy category. The study interprets these findings through four complementary theoretical perspectives, used as interpretive frameworks rather than demonstrated causal mechanisms. David’s theory of path dependence offers an interpretive lens on the persistence of tourism as the dominant policy classification for surfing and sailing. Kingdon’s agenda-setting framework offers an interpretive lens on why ocean sports have not emerged as an autonomous policy agenda. North’s institutional theory is used to interpret how the exclusion of ocean sports institutions from the ocean governance architecture may constrain their institutional recognition, and how the allocation of responsibilities within the Olympic Movement may help account for the lack of representation of sport governance actors in international ocean governance. North and Weingast’s concept of credible commitment offers an interpretive lens for distinguishing the explicit policy roles identified within Portuguese instruments from the stronger institutional conditions required for durable commitment.