Démocratie Participative et Sport Régional : La place des dispositifs participatifs dans la conduite de la politique sportive de la région de Tanger-Tétouan-Al-Hoceima

Abstract

Today, sport is inseparable from the economic world, social issues and universal values of inclusion, human development and strengthening social cohesion. What is also evident is that this field is an integral part of the regional political space. There is no question of territorial collectivities and public authorities neglecting this reality because it participates in one way or another in the construction of the identity of their territory. On this dimension, the organization of sport is looking for new technologies of power and a new integration of actors.

Our ambition in this article is to effectively verify the implementation of an innovative dynamic of democracy in sport. In other words, participatory mechanisms that allow for increased public participation during the development of regional sports policy. The logic of action of the actors is important in our study insofar as we must not neglect to identify those who have the power to influence sports policies, and take into account their positions in these spaces.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) Convinced that sports policies only make sense through the use that stakeholders make of them, we decided to examine how a group of heterogeneous actors manage to design a regional sports policy and what are the principles of action that structure their strategies. The aim of this article is to determine the dynamics of participatory democracy and its impact on the relations between local authorities’ associations. In order to answer this question, we followed the current of critical realism (Bhaskar, 1975) by characterizing the point of view of local actors, elected politicians and leaders of sports clubs and associations on the orientations of sports policy and on their reciprocal relations based on their occupied positions (Harvey, 2009). The method of the survey by semi-directive interviews was mainly used in our study allowing us to interrogate those actors likely, by their function and expertise, to take part in the conception and the conduct of the regional sports policy.

JEL Classification: Z28.

Paper type: Empirical research.