THE NORMALITY OF EU SPORT POLICY STUDIES: DISCIPLINARY LOCUS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE, SPORT SCIENCE OR ELSEWHERE?

Mainstream European integration research has shown that research on the EU tends to follow the conjunctures of European integration itself. This realisation has led to some debate on which branch of political science – international relations or government – or indeed other academic disciplines is/are the most appropriate locus for such research. The paper takes these debates one step further by looking at the occurrence of ‘EU & sport’ studies within the wider field of EU studies. The main material used comes from the ECLAS database. Findings lead to a discussion of whether ‘EU & sport’ studies should rather be for EU specialists or for sport specialists and a plea for disciplinary normalisation whereby sport science would need to get more directly involved (without necessarily overwriting political science). Some ideas are added regarding the need for a mapping of Central & Eastern European scholarship.


INTRODUCTION
Picking up on Sanka's question from the sports comedy film Cool Runnings (an epic much concerned with the idiosyncratic nature of sports rules), if a bobsled is a push-cart with no wheels, so a push-cart may well as conceptualised as a bobsled is with wheels: but what does this mean for the study of EU sport policy-making -should such research be EU research informed by sport knowledge, or rather sport research informed by EU knowledge?What came first: the hen or the egg? (Kornbeck, 2012) Is it true that political scientists know too little about the Olympics, an 'under-explored phenomenon in the study of international politics,' in spite of the Games being 'one of the longest standing forums for global interaction that has evolved along with the international political environment' (Cottrell & Nelson, 2010, p. 745)?Or is it conversely the academic discipline of sport studies or 'sport science' which needs to know more about the methods and achievements of political science?
Whether the word 'science' should be taken at face value in a positivistic sense is another matter (yet the same applies to political science): the words will be used here in recognition of their widespread use in actual practice.The purpose is neither to verify nor to falsify whether 'sport science' (or political science) is 'a misnomer' and a symptom of the 'desperation of many of those working in this area to generate respect and credibility' (Ryall, 2011, p. 171),3 but rather to look for indications of where the most appropriate locus for research on the 'EU & sport' subject matter may be: in political science -and if so, in the branches of International Relations (IR) or Government -or in specialised (non-EU) disciplines, including (but not limited to) sport studies and 'sport science'?
Within mainstream European integration debates (which are not focussed on specific apsects of integration but look at integration itself), one strand of reflection has come to deal with the question whether the EC/EU should be conceptualised as an international (inter-state, intergovernmental) system, or whether it should indeed be seen as a domestic system in its own right: the transformation of national polities from 'nation-states to member states' (Bickerton, 2013) obscures the fact that traits of inter-governmentalism as well as of supra-nationalism can be observed simultaneously.Each of these theoretical positions has epistemological and methodological implications, as the study of European integration becomes a matter either for the IR branch of political science or the branch of Government.Of these options, the latter even leads to the question whether political science and EU law are best placed to inform such debates: or would it not rather be the usual academic disciplines, education for education matters, for instance?If the EU is 'a normal political system', then EU studies may perhaps not be for 'EU specialists per se' (Kreppel, 2012, p. 639)?

PURPOSE
The aim of this paper is to apply this line of reflection to the subsystem of EU sport policy making.The paper will show that EU sport policy research seems to follow the same conjunctures as European integration research in general.This will lead to a discussion of what the most appropriate disciplinary locus for studying this subject matter should be.

METHODS
Drawing on a more detailed working paper published in German (Kornbeck, 2012) this paper discusses the results from database searches using the online catalogue of the European Commission's Central Library.4Methodological issues -including addressing sources of bias -are discussed in the substantive under Results.The research aimed at revisiting results from mainstream European integration research (Keeler, 2005;Andrews, 2012;Kreppel, 2012) and identifying implications for the study of what may be called (tentatively) 'EU sport policy research'.

Findings from generic European integration research
The rhythm of mainstream integration research output has proved to follow the rhythm of European integration at the policy level, a finding now backed by a limited yet growing body of empirical scholarship drawing on the systematic examination of extensive database material (Keeler, 2005;Andrews, 2012;Kreppel, 2012).Interest in the correlation was sparked by Makin's (1998, p. 5) belief that by comparing research output with policy change, and by quantifying the findings, new connections and trends may be unearthed.
This inspired Keeler (2005) to undertake comprehensive database research which showed, for instance, that the frequency of US political science PhD theses written on EC/ EU topics increased and decreased, over time, in close correlation with key EC/EU policy developments.The French policy of the 'empty chair' (1960s), PAC and budget crises (1970s), passing of the Single European Act (1980s) and conclusion of the Single Market (1990s) were all followed by increases in the frequency of PhD theses; after these peaks followed inevitable flaws (Keeler, 2005, pp. 555-6).While these figures may appear slightly crude, the trend is confirmed by other types of evidence, such as the percentage of PhD theses on EC/EU topics compared with total US PhD theses (ibid., p. 556), papers published in 24 leading journals (ibid., p. 572) or the global development of citations (ibid., p. 556).Although peaks and flaws in scholarship typically follow a few years after the corresponding political peaks and flaws, the conclusion was clear: 'However important the impact of external funding might prove to be, it appears evident that the principle determinant of the status of EU studies will continue to be the development of the European Union itself.The data in this study demonstrate vividly the extent to which the ups and downs of the integration process affect the propensity of young scholars to commit to a career of research on the EU and the inclination of established academics to incorporate the EU into their projects.'(Keeler, 2005, p. 579) For empirical scholarship it ought not to be shocking news that researchers react to trends in the 'real world' rather than building their own ivory tower models and theories.
The findings directly inspired two more recent papers by other scholars (Andrews, 2012;Kreppel, 2012), in the field of mainstream integration research, as well as a working paper directly concerned with EU sports policy research (Kornbeck, 2012).
One crucial implication is the realisation that scholarly debates are less crucial than policy developments in sparking new research: '[…] US scholarly interest in European integration did not begin in the 1960s, with the competing paradigms of neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism; instead, there has been concerted attention since very shortly after the end of World War Two.Interest has periodically surged in response to important events on the ground, such as the announcement of the Marshall Plan in 1947 and the founding of the Organization for European Economic Co-operation in 1948, the Schuman Declaration in 1950 and the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, the treaty forming a European Defence Community in 1952 and the demise of the same in 1954.' (Andrews, 2012, p. 766) This research of Andrews (2012) and Kreppel (2012) has produced comprehensive empirical output with graphs much resembling those of Keeler (2005).Apart from many other implications, it has led to reflections on the proper disciplinary locus for European integration research: 'Different responses to the core question of "what is the EU?" result in very different approaches in the realm of EU studies, which in turn lead to distinct patterns of research productivity.This variation occurs in terms of who chooses to focus their research on the EU as well as what aspects of the EU get analysed and how the research is pursued methodologically.' (Kreppel, 2012, p. 635) If the EU is a 'normal' political system, surely it can be researched by those with expertise in the subject matter, and not just by generic EU specialists from the academic communities of political science and law.Indeed, database material suggested that political science scholars of the IR branch reacted less to EC/EU-level policy developments than did their colleagues from the Government branch; some peaks were not even reflected in IR journals (Kreppel, 2012, p. 637).If colleagues from the Government branch show a stronger awareness and expertise in this field, this could be seen as evidence favouring a more 'domestic' interpretation of EU policy files.For the study of EU sport policy matters, the implication could be, either that scholars from the political science branch of Government should take the lead; or that such should be the province of researchers from sport science, physical education, etc.; or any combination of these.If a 'science of sport' is to include a 'political science of sport', then this would certainly be a natural core activity for researchers belonging to this type of sub-discipline.

Findings from EU sport policy research
The main findings from generic integration research have been summarised above.One graph taken from Keeler (2005, p. 556) had been added for illustration (Figure 1).It will be seen that EU sport policy research shows trends which are fundamentally the same, except that the policy developments leading to 'ups and downs' in research output are sport-specific: in the 1990s, the Maastricht Treaty has been less instrumental in sparking research than the Bosman ruling.
Drawing inspiration from the three papers discussed above (Keeler, 2005;Andrews, 2012;Kreppel, 2012), database material was collected from the online catalogue of the European Commission's Central Library5 and analysed (Kornbeck, 2012).Despite the obvious methodological fallacies linked to relying solely on one (very specific) data source, no sport-specific literature database6 was seen to have a comparative European coverage.The option of compounding from individual journal databases was considered but eschewed on grounds of practicality.Again, no EU journal would seem to have sufficient sport coverage and no sport journal would have sufficient EU coverage, while newsletters with limited circulation7 were conceptually excluded from the exercise.
The bias built into this type of source (ECLAS records) seems to flow primarily from the selective purchasing behaviour of its librarians, being on the pay-roll of the European Commission, itself a political actor: whatever an extract from this database may show, it cannot be an objective 'radiography' of EU-related research.However, bias is diminished by the fact that the library, as a Commission sub-entity, is not itself entrusted with political roles (its staff may actually take decisions on the basis of what they believe to be most appropriate in relation to their own professional integrity of librarianship), while fluctuations over time are bound to be heuristically interesting in themselves.On the basis of extracts using the search concepts 'sport', 'doping', 'football' and 'Bosman,' graphs were produced (Kornbeck, 2012, tables 7-11) in analogy with those quoted above (Keeler, 2005;Andrews, 2012;Kreppel, 2012).The results from this exercise are presented synoptically in Figure 2.  1960-2001. Source: Keeler (2005, p. 556) Another source of bias has to do with the polysemic nature of certain concepts.The word 'sport' for instance may occur because a book or article is genuinely about the EU and sport, or it may occur within a longer title, including the relevant European Parliament Committee (even in a document dealing with another policy area within its portfolio).Nevertheless it was revealing to find papers in professional journals dealing with the taxation of professional athletes' income in an EC/EU perspective as early as the early 1990s (no doubt a result of the build-up to the magic date 1 January 1993 when the Single Market was completed).In the 1990s papers in professional and academic journals started dealing with the free movement of professional athletes (before the Court's 1995 Bosman ruling), and already around 1991 (the year before the Olympic Games of Barcelona and Albertville, where there was a visible EU presence) a number of publications specifically dealing with the relevance of EC/EU law to sporting activities were published.Nevertheless the year 1996 (just after the Bosman ruling) saw a particularly steep increase in the number of hits recorded, and subsequent peaks have tended to follow shortly after major developments in EU sport policy, such as the Declarations of Amsterdam (1997) and Nice (2000), the unsuccessful draft Constitution (2005-7) and finally the Lisbon Treaty (2009-10) which added sport to the EU's Treaty-based competencies (see Figure 2) (for more details, see Kornbeck, 2012).
Although some sources of bias make it plain that every single hit does not need to be taken at face value (see above), the curves shown in Figure 2 are nevertheless strikingly similar, by analogy, to those resulting from the US research of generic EC/EU issues discussed above (Keeler, 2005;Andrews, 2012;Kreppel, 2005).The hits for the word 'doping' follow the trends shown for the word 'sport', except that in this case, developments linked to other actors than the EC/EU can be recognised as having driven publication activities, such as the foundation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 1999.Nevertheless, the 'doping' curve does seem to reflect some EU-specific developments, such as the Court's Meca Medina ruling (the first to deal with doping) in 2006, the Lisbon Treaty or the EU's increasing relevance in connection with data protection since c. 2008.

DISCUSSION
The option of conceptualising 'EU sport policy studies' as 'normal' Running all four curves together synoptically provides the most stunning impression of a visible trend in publication activities, suggesting that publications dealing with the 'EU & sport' topic are not fundamentally different from generic EU research (Figure 2).This leads to the realisation that 'EU sport policy' research may not be so idiosyncratic after all.The questions raised in this paper touch upon issues which are fundamental to sport studies and a 'sport science', the existence of which may still be debatable, as well as to European integration research.For while sport research took a long time to take policy aspects on board (even today most academic departments in this area seem to be lacking in policy expertise, retaining a strong focus on training future PE teachers and possibly physiotherapists), European integration research started by analysing the integration process like a case of intergovernmental cooperation and only later turned towards 'the analysis of // policymaking within this new polity' (Woll & Jacquot, 2010, 111-112).
If the intergovernmentalist perspective is kept, the EU can (with some modifications) be studied along the same lines as the Council of Europe or the UN, but if the policy perspective is chosen, the scope becomes a supranational one: the EU polity then emerges as strikingly similar to a national polity, and the attribution of the subject matter to the IR branch of political science becomes much less evident.Yet this in turn raises the question of the (real, feigned or imagined) homogeneity of EU studies (Woll & Jacquot, 2010, p. 121). 8Some would argue that this problem is a misnomer in relation to sport policy, simply because mainstream political scientists have too often snubbed sport as a research subject.Indeed one study of protests at the Olympic Games finds it 'puzzling that such a significant global event with potentially broad theoretical appeal is largely overlooked by both the mainstream International Relations (IR) and broader transnational literatures'.(Cotrell & Nelson, 2010, p. 730) 9 8 'Understanding why individual initiatives succeed and fail to gather collective support, which ideas are carried within groups and which institutional conditions limit political creativity are therefore necessary parts of a research agenda concentrating on the micro-level of political change in the European Union.For traditional EU theorists, this might be an uncomfortable exercise, because it makes the study of the European Union as complex as the study of all human action and therefore drives another nail in the coffin of a unitary "EU theory".' (Woll & Jacquot, 2010, p. 121)  9 Further: 'The Olympics, after all, represent the largest regularly scheduled international gathering in the world.More states participate in the Summer and Winter Games than belong to the United Nations, and up to 90 percent of the world's television sets tune in to at least some portion of the virtually ubiquitous Olympic media coverage.The Olympics represent one of the world's oldest symbols of cooperation and sportsmanship, yet the athletic competition also stokes nationalistic passions and informs identity formation.Moreover, there is a great deal of prestige and perceived economic benefit attached to hosting the Olympics, as US President Obama's failed bid to land the 2016 Summer Olympics in Chicago would attest.' (Cotrell & Nelson, 2010, p. 730) While there may be a disinterest in these matters among IR scholars, it should be maintained that studies of political and policy aspects of sport do exist, in particular within other academic (sub-)disciplines, not least in the legal field.Many of the topic areas of an 'EU & sport' sub-discipline may be easily recognisable in terms of subject matter as well as methodology: sports law may, for instance, be discerned as a discrete research area based upon ECJ jurisprudence, as posited already a decade ago (Parrish, 2003).This may in part be explained with reference to the tension between ECJ case law and the private 'lex sportiva' of the sport movement, with the lead question being whether the ECJ is basically neutralising or respecting the latter (Parrish, 2012).It seems to emerge from this analysis that 'EU sports law only patrols the outer limits of the lex sportiva, thus helping to shape the standards with which the CAS develops this law ' (ibid., p. 733); yet it is precisely due to (not in spite of) the discrete nature of the 'lex sportiva' that such a thing as 'EU sports law' can be discerned within EU law and ECJ jurisprudence.Yet this is an empirical fact rather than a piece of theoretical guidance.The 'EU & sport' field is not fundamentally different from generic EU studies, inasmuch as the sheer mass of empirical knowledge has grown to a point where ontological clarification may become the only way out (Kauppia, 2010, p. 19).
Does this mean that 'EU & sport' studies need to become more theoretical?We can easily share the analysis of Simon Hix regarding the uncertain usefulness of a general EU theory -'We have no general theory of American or German government, so why should there be a general theory of the EU?' (Hix, 1998, p. 46) 10 -, so why deploy serious efforts to elaborate a general 'EU & sport' theory?'The maturation of sports law as an academic discipline is also reflected in the growing volume of academic texts on the subject' (Parrish, 2003, p. 23), yet this cumulative effect does not in itself solve any epistemological problems.According to a pragmatic perspective, cumulative or additive effects are not a problem per se but need to be managed (Gabel, Hix & Schneider, 2002):11 it is not information overkill but rather incompatible data and inconsistent (and possibly irresponsible) use of them which need to be tackled.This can only be done if conceptual and epistemological issues have been clarified beforehand.Drawing on Carnap (1950), Kauppia (2010, p. 32) has claimed that such an exercise can overcome imprecisions which follow from (the reductionism involved in) empirical observation. 12The 'EU & sport' field will have to grapple with the same dilemma: as much evidence as possible and as much (or as little?)theory as needed.
As the paper has shown, the findings from generic integration research (Keeler, 2005;Andrews, 2012;Kreppel, 2012) indicate that the conjunctures of this research are essentially driven by developments within the political dynamics under scrutiny, and the same appears to apply to 'EU & sport' research (Kornbeck, 2012) (Figure 2).This result will not only comfort those preferring empirical knowledge to airy theory: it also points to an interesting feedback loop, given that early integration was largely influenced by theories published prior to concrete political action (see Rosamond, 2000;Mittag & Groll, 2010). 13Within the field of sport, many crucial developments at the level of policy or jurisprudence may have been well known before they emerged at that level: in the field of sport, the 1995 ECJ Bosman ruling is the most natural case to study.According to an ECJ judge, 'Bosman itself was not a complete revolution' (Ilešič (2010, p. 478) (inasmuch as the rules of free movement for workers had already been in force for decades), so that the effect generated by the Court was rather a psychological one: 'after Bosman, the sports associations suddenly and definitively lost their aura of inviolability' (Van den Bogaert, 2010, p. 493). 14Feedback loops can thus be found in both directions -from action (policy, jurisprudence) to research, and vice-versa.
This means, in turn, that if integration research can benefit from being conducted in part by researchers from the thematically relevant disciplines (social policy for EU social policy research, etc.), this must apply mutatis mutandis to 'EU & sport' research also: the 'normality' of the EU as a polity and a research subject then implies the 'normality' of 'EU sport policy' or 'EU sport law' as well.Yet this does not solve the problem whether 'EU sport policy' is better researched by political scientists, sport scientists or a combination of both.The only conclusion which seems halfway certain, at this stage, seems to be that within political science, the branch of Government is more appropriate than that of IR: the 'normalisation of the European Union' as a research matter (Kreppel, 2012) can then apply to the 'EU & sport' field, too.

The implications of 'normality'
Until this stage, drawing conclusions and identifying implications may have been rather straightforward and painless, yet what exactly are the implications of 'normality'?If generic integration research is 'normal', and if 'EU sport policy' is normal too, is 'normality' significant at all? (If everything is normal, what is significant about being normal?)At least one implication can be identified -one which relates to the disciplinary locus of such research. 13This applies to a number of programmatic words which, in retrospective, must be called seminal.Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi (1926) published three decades before the EEC Treaty was even being negotiated; David Mitrany (1933) in the year when Hitler took power (a moment in time when the idea of European integration based on democratic and voluntary association must have seen more improbable than seldom before or after); Ernst B. Haas (1958) in the very year when the EEC Treaty entered into force and the EEC and EAEA Commissions started working.(The ECSC Treaty and High Authority had been a reality for only half a decade by then.) 14See also the consultancy report by Coopers & Lybrand (1994).
If a sub-discipline of 'EU & sport' studies will wish to pick up on the lessons which can be drawn from this material and take the lead in conceptualising its own discursive future, it will need to address the underlying epistemological questions.It will have to come to terms with the fact that (otherwise sympathetic) commentators still doubt if it actually exists (see Tokarski, et al., 2010, p. 7) and 'a political science of sport needsjust like a political science of social welfare or labour relations -to limit and define its own subject matter' (Lösche, 2010, p. 25).Ironically, while many sports governing bodies continue deploying considerable efforts in defending their notion of a 'specificity' of sport (implying its idiosyncratic nature and incompatibility with rules complied with in other sectors), a 'political science of sport' will have to insist that it addresses the subject matter 'EU & sport' in basically the same way as other political phenomena, while at the same time arguing in favour of a sport-informed approach to this discourse -one which mainstream political science may be unlikely to deliver.Regarding the choice of disciplinary locus between the IR and Government branches of political science, recent research output has shown that a non-IR perspective can be very effective and convincing (e.g., García & Meier, 2012;García & Weatherill, 2012).

Central and Eastern European research questions
In a Central and Eastern European readership, the findings will probably prompt additional questions regarding past, present and future directions of sport-related research in the 'Old' versus the 'New' EU Member States.Differences between national contexts with and without an experience of state socialism exist at all levels of society and the world of academia is no exception in this regard.Different socio-economic and socio-cultural realities lead to variegating patterns in sport and physical activity behaviour and thence to diverging sport policy choices.Among the post-socialist states, eleven joined the EU in 2004, 2007 and 2013 respectively (alongside two countries without this previous experience). 15The new reality of EU membership led to new opportunities for staff and student exchange, research cooperation, involvement in policy and practice development projects, access to EU funding, etc.At the same time C&E European societies, including their sport and physical activity sectors, found themselves confronted with many new impulses resulting from EU-led or EU-inspired processes and trends.Yet C&E Europeans have not merely been recipients of these new changes: the ECJ judge quoted above (Ilešič, 2010) is Slovenian.
States into Nordic, Anglo-Saxon, Continental and Southern, for instance.It may also be salutary when comparative research detects some of the problems commonly attributed to 'socialist' sport policy systems in 'capitalist' systems; in August 2013, for instance, a German report pointing to state-sponsored West German doping during the Cold War attracted massive media coverage, including outside of Germany (BBC, 2013).Crucially, such research should address the extent to which research has shifted as a result of EU membership.A recent piece of British scholarship has characterised the East German sport policy and sport science model as instrumental, while also showing that recent British sport policy shows some convergence with this past 'socialist' model, on account of the recent emphasis on investment and training as a means to achieve medals as a public policy goal (Dennis & Grix, 2012).Following this line of thought, it would be interesting to see whether directions in 'EU & sport' research have converged since 2004.