Policy theories

This chapter is concerned with various public policy theories and frameworks that will underpin the analysis of various sport areas in Mainland and the two SARs of Hong Kong and Macau. Macro-level state theories including pluralism, elitism and Marxism are first introduced to provide a salient broad context to position sport within the nation’s fundamental political regime and system. All these theories, framework and notions revolve around endogenous and exogenous factors affecting policy making and implementation, and policy changes in the context of sport in China. The concept of power is a main theme threaded through policy analysis, and this chapter centres on the discussion of the power theory advanced by Steven Lukes, and the concept of soft power. Meso-level policy theories and frameworks take centre stage of this chapter, and the multiple streams framework and the policy community framework are identified as key theoretical underpinnings of this book. The globalisation theses and the concept of policy transfer frame the analysis of the impact of non-domestic factors on sport development in China. The final section of this chapter discusses policy implementation, with primacy given to the top-down and bottom-up approaches and conditions for ‘perfect implementation’.