Institutional changes and transformations in an organisational field: the case of the public/private 'model' of French sport

Using a neo-institutional lens, this paper analyses the formation and evolution of the procedures, norms and conventions – both official and unofficial – of the French approach to managing sport. In the 1960s and 1970s, a centralising model for the public service was hegemonic, implying government direction of national sport governing bodies (private entities with a voluntary status) and guaranteeing the institutional stability necessary for the implementation of government policies. In the 1980s and 1990s – in the context of the decentralisation of public policy, European Union policy developments and the globalisation and commercialisation of sport and leisure – the arrival of new actors with different values in the organisational field of French sport entailed a crisis of regulation. A new institutional balance has emerged around the idea of co-regulation. This has led to the implementation of multi-level and multi-polar governance, but has not been transformational for the French sport model itself.