Un análisis dela participatión deportiva en Italia desde el advocacy coalition framework

In the chapter, sport participation in Italy is analyzed in connection with and as the macro result of a series of factors influencing personal choices in terms of active/inactive lifestyle. These factors can be shortly introduced and described as follows: legislations and regulations, promoting experience of active lifestyle in the population (i.e. curriculum time of physical education in schools); the training and education system required to provide the workforce operating in the sport sector and sub-sectors right skills and appropriate competences; public policy, sport governance model and public funds, aimed to promote participation at all levels and eradicate barriers preventing the fully participation of socially disadvantaged groups; socio-cultural and economic factors (e.g. body cultures, including acknowledgement of how physical movement contributes to well-being in correlation with the population’s educational levels and wealth distribution) which influence personal attitudes; urban design, conceived for encouraging active lifestyle (with walkable accessibility to workplaces for instance). Consequently, the present chapter wants to analyze, following a socio-diachronic approach, the Italian sport governance model with the view to define a coherent interpretation of some of the main data concerning participation in Italy. To the aim, the categories and the model of analysis belonging to the model known as Advocacy Coalition Framework (henceforth, ACF) will be adopted. ACF (Sabatier, 1998), is an interface model through which it is possible to study the processes connected to the policies undertaken in any field of society, analyzing each as a homogeneous aggregation over a long period of time (ten or more years). The rationale behind ACF is that changes occurring in the period under examination are the outcome of two or more coalitions, i.e. of groups of interest that coalesce around shared values, regulations, attitudes, beliefs and whose dynamics take place within a subsystem (sports, schools, etc.) that acts as a common denominator, and whose action are not rational but rather the result of a free play of values, emotions, feelings, interaction among internal and external factor as well as a negotiation between competing powers. Political choices are similar to a mélange of intentions, values of reference, personal and group needs (Bessant, 2008) but also of the shackles imposed by the system as a whole, the influence exerted by the milieu and the relationship of power. Following the ACF approach, the Italian sport system and the strategies adopted in terms of participation are analyzed by developing the following line of investigation: - A study of the constituent characteristics of the system; - A socio-diachronic analysis of the sport system and the main factors that influence political choice with a specific focus on sport participation; - A study of the individual and collective actors and coalitions that operate in the sports system influencing policy and strategies related, more in particular, to sport participation; - An analysis of the processes around which the coalitions have formed and of the effect that they have on the processes leading to choices influencing participation.