Comparative elite sport development

This fully revised, extended and updated new edition examines sport policies and programmes in 20 developed and developing countries that have achieved international sporting success, helping the reader to understand the factors behind that success.

For each country, it sets out the historical and political context in which elite sports has developed, before explaining the country-specific structures of elite sport and the investment that each country has made in elite sport development.

The book also considers how countries have used the hosting of mega-events as sport policy tools, and how factors such as geo-politics, states’ governance and political ideology, and levels of economic development, all have influence on national sport policy.