Managing Civic Activities by Performance Impacts of The Government S Performance Based Funding System and The Domain Structure in Finnish Sports

International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics
ISSN: 1940-6940 (Print) 1940-6959 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/risp20
Managing civic activities by performance: impacts

of the governments performance-based funding
system and the domain structure in Finnish sports
policy
Jarmo Kalevi Makinen, Outi Aarresola, Jari Lamsa, Kati Lehtonen & Maarit
Nieminen
To cite this article: Jarmo Kalevi Makinen, Outi Aarresola, Jari Lamsa, Kati Lehtonen
& Maarit Nieminen (2016) Managing civic activities by performance: impacts of the
governments performance-based funding system and the domain structure in Finnish
sports policy, International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 8:2, 265-285, DOI:
10.1080/19406940.2016.1164742
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19406940.2016.1164742
Published online: 18 Apr 2016.
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Date: 04 September 2016, At: 11:00
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS, 2016

VOL. 8, NO. 2, 265285
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19406940.2016.1164742
Managing civic activities by performance: impacts of the

governments performance-based funding system and the
domain structure in Finnish sports policy
Jarmo Kalevi Makinena, Outi Aarresolaa, Jari Lamsaa, Kati Lehtonenb and Maarit Nieminena
Research Institute for Olympic Sports Rautpohjankatu 6, Jyvaskyla, Finland; bLIKES Foundation for sport and
health sciences Viitaniementie 15a, Jyvaskyla, Finland
ABSTRACT
ARTICLE HISTORY
This article focuses on a turning point in Finnish sports policy at which

the new performance-based governmental steering model replaced the
old corporatist operational model. This shift is approached through a
long-term analysis of Finnish sports policy and structures. The governments power increased when the old hierarchical and representationbased pyramid structure of the sports movement crumbled and was
replaced by a sports community that was based on looser collaboration.
The article reviews the performance-based funding system applied by
the Finnish government to sports organisations and the structural reform
of the sports movement. The aim is to estimate the impacts of these
changes on large national sport federations, in particular. The article
analyses the eects of the new steering model and the development
process of the various domains in the areas of youth sports, elite sports,
adapted physical activities and adult sports. The results of the analysis
show that the structural reform was never fully completed and that the
impact of performance-based steering has waned in the activities of the
large sport federations in the 2000s.
Received 11 February 2013

Accepted 24 February 2016
KEYWORDS
Governmentalism; sport
movement; Nordic model;
performance-based funding;
corporatism; new public
management
Introduction
In the 1990s, the Finnish government signicantly tightened its control of the sports movement. The
performance-based funding system adopted in 1995 was a clear manifestation of the government
wielding its power. It was the rst time that the government dened detailed objectives and
indicators that the sports movement should aim to be entitled to government subsidies. It was a
fast transfer from old norm-based funding to the era of performance-based funding. This change
had a drastic impact on the organisational structure of the sports movement. The traditional Nordic
pyramid organisation was replaced by a cluster structure in which the ties between the organisations were weaker. The sports movement concept was replaced by the term sports community. The
sports movement metaphor gradually disappeared from the language used by the actors in the
eld of sports in Finland (cf. Eichberg and Loland 2010, p. 676) and was replaced by domain
ideology as a structure to keep the dispersed community together. This ideology suited the
performance-based funding system well.
The Finnish case is primarily comparable with the other Nordic countries, in which organised
sports is mainly based on voluntary civic activity. There is plenty of written material available on the
Nordic or rather Scandinavian sports model. For instance, Sport in Society (2010) and the
CONTACT Jarmo Kalevi Makinen
Jyvaskyla 40700, Finland
jarmo.makinen@kihu.
2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Research Institute for Olympic Sports Rautpohjankatu 6,
266
J. K. MAKINEN ET AL.
International Journal of Sports Policy and Politics (2011) published special issues on Scandinavian
sports. As Finland is not regarded as a Scandinavian country, these special issues did not contain
articles on Finland. In fact, the exclusion of Finland might be explained by matters related rather to
the language and research communities than geographical considerations. The denition may,
however, hit the core, as the changes implemented in Finland in the 1990s at least partly made it
arguable whether the denition Nordic could be applied to Finnish sports any longer. The two
central features of this model, unity of the sports movement and its autonomy in relation to the
government, were really put to the test in Finland (cf. Bergsgard and Norberg 2010, p. 574). The
structural disintegration of the sports movement discouraged unity, and the funding mechanisms
of the state authorities gave the sports movement less autonomy than in the neighbouring
countries.
Based on the above, this article has two inter-connected aims/purposes. First, the article
analyses how the performance-based funding system and the domain structure of the sports
community were created and how well they met the objectives set for them. Second, this analysis
is supported by a wider interpretation of Finnish sports policy and its relation to the Nordic model.
The purpose is to point out how the reform of the early 1990s dismantled the operational
prerequisites of the old corporatist system.
The rst section (after the Introduction) discusses the relationship between the government and
civic organisations in the Nordic sports policy and interprets the case of Finland as one variation in
it. The second section focuses on the background factors behind the changes in the traditional
model that led to a new sports political model. The following four sections analyse the new
performance and domain-based operational model. The material on which the analysis is based
is presented in the third section. It is followed by sections that discuss the birth process of the
domains and the principles of performance-based steering. The fth section (Results) presents the
results based on the material and their interpretation. The article ends with conclusions on the
most essential observations concerning performance-based steering and the domain structure
reform.
Long cycle of Nordic sports corporatism

A central prerequisite in the interpretation of the long-term sports policy typical of the Nordic
countries is the nature of the interaction between the government and civic organisations. In
historical terms, the (social) democratic features and extensive welfare services in the Nordic
countries are based on civic activity channelled through civic movements. Social reforms were
driven through collective action, and the social responsibility of the government was expanded by
increasing public services. According to Salamon and Anheier (1998), this kind of third-sector social
democratic regime that emphasises the role of the government leaves little space for service
providing non-prot organisations typical in other countries. They, however, emphasise that this
does not diminish the signicance of civil society in the Nordic countries. Instead of providing
services, non-prot organisations serve as tools for expressing social and recreational interests
(Salamon and Anheier 1998, p. 229.) In the Nordic countries, civic organisations have extensive
activities, and both the degree of organisation and the number of members are high. Membership
in several organisations is common, but active participation in their activities is not regular as there
is wide condence in the eciency of the organisations. In general, Nordic civic organisations act
as links between the citizens and the governments, and the governments in the Nordic countries
have been more open to peoples interests than governments elsewhere in Europe (Alapuro 2010,
p. 13, 1718.)
Based on the above, the relations between Nordic governments and central organisations have
been characterised or analysed in several scientic publications in corporatist terms (e.g. Bergsgard
and Rommetvedt 2006, Bergsgard et al. 2007, Enjolras and Waldahl 2007, Peterson and Norberg
2008, Bergsgard and Norberg 2010). Corporatism can be understood as a system between the
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS
267
government and society for representing collective interests, a system that works outside constitutional political processes (See Poggi 1978, p. 122). Schmitter (1974) identied consistent and
systematic features in the negotiation and representation practices that have developed between
the government and various interest groups in several countries, and on the basis of them, he
dened ideal-based characteristics of a corporatist system. In an ideal situation, the interest groups
of the sector concerned have organised themselves into representative organisations based on
obligatory membership and a hierarchical structure. The number of the representative organisations should be limited, and there should be no competition between the compartmentalised
sectors. In addition, the government should in some way recognise or conrm these organisations
and their representative monopoly in a functionally limited area (Schmitter 1974, p. 93-95.).1 In
practice, a corporatist system can be identied from working groups, committees and councils
which bring the representatives of the government and preferred interest groups to the same table
to outline and decide on the aairs or resources of a certain sector (See Bergsgard et al. 2007,
p. 250).
The foundations of Nordic sports corporatism are in the free civic activities started at the
beginning of the 20th century and in their organisation into hierarchically structured sports
movements that aim at mutual alliances (Itkonen 1996, Eichberg and Loland 2010, Andersen and
Ronglan 2012). In the course of the 20th century, the movements became strong enough to
represent sports-related collective interests to the governments. The wider and more united this
movement grew in a country vertically from local clubs to national federations and horizontally
from physical exercise to elite sports the more inuential it became. National sport policy lines
were dened by the sport movements as the governments sports-related resources, role and
ocials were modest, especially before sports, together with culture, was adopted on the agenda
concerning the construction of the Nordic welfare states in the 1960s and 1970s. At this time, the
governments support and interest in sports increased signicantly, but the support still continued
to be focused almost solely on voluntary organisations, and the sports organisations maintained
their inuence and autonomous status (Bergsgard and Norberg 2010, p. 574). In Sweden, Norway
and Denmark, corporatist policies prevailed, and the sports sector was not nationalised to the same
degree as culture.
A closer look at the Nordic countries shows that there are distinct dierences in the negotiation
and representative practises between the sports movement and the government. Before we can
understand what makes the Finnish variant of sports corporatism special, we need to dene the
other Nordic variants. According to Bergsgard and Norberg (2010), Sweden and Norway are
countries of strong corporatism in terms of sports policy. In Sweden, the relationship between
the sports umbrella organisation Riksidrottsfrbundet (RF) and the government has traditionally
been so close that it has sometimes been dicult to draw a borderline between them. The lack of
administrative bureaucracy might be the best proof of this. In Norway, the power of the government is stronger, but the fact that the Ministry of Culture and the sports umbrella organisation
(NIF) abandoned the council system as too formal a body shows that the relationships between
them are direct and condential. In Denmark, the corporatist features are not as clearly identiable
because the sports movement is divided (DIF, DGI) and the government is not too eager to
interfere in sports political issues (Bergsgard and Norberg 2010, p. 568572).
Also in Finland, corporatist practices characterised the relationships between the sports organisations and the government until the beginning of the 1990s. Apart from similarities with the
neighbouring countries, Finnish sports corporatism also had its own special features, which is
probably one reason why the corporatist era in Finland ended dierently compared with the other
Nordic countries. As this subject has not received much international attention, the following short
review might be appropriate.
In the Nordic countries, civic activity created the basis on which sports was organised into a
national sports movement in the early 1900s. In Finland, the life cycle of the sports movement
reected a wider social change which resulted in the division of the movement into several
268
competing camps based on the language and the social class. The main struggle took place
between the non-socialist and workers sports movements. The Swedish speakers sports movement (Swedish Central Sports Association), the division of the workers sports movement into two
(19591979) and the Football Association of Finland gaining a central organisation status added to
the split. Dierently from the other Nordic countries, civic activity organised itself into several
competing sports movements in Finland. At one point, there were a total of ve organisations that
were recognised as central organisations of the various sports movements (Figure 1).
Like civic organisations, the sports movement had a three-level organisational structure. In view
of democratic decision making and administration, an essential feature in the sports movements
was the members direct decision making and election right on the various levels. Individual people
belonged to sports clubs as members. In the non-socialist sports movement, local sports clubs and
the national central organisation were linked to each other through a district-based organisation
and through national sport federations. Individual sports clubs were members in both the regional
organisations and the national sport federations. The national sport federations under the Finnish
Central Sport Federation (previously Finnish Gymnastics and Sports Association) controlled the
important international representation rights. The ght between the districts (mass sports) and
national sport federations (elite sports) characterised the struggle inside the movement. In the
workers sports movement, the power of the sports clubs and districts was stronger. The various
sports were only represented in operational activities as divisions
In Finland, the unication of the sports movement was a project that took more than 70 years.
During this period, the various central organisations and the government carried on negotiations
on more than 30 dierent models under which the various sports movements could be unied
(Hentil 1992a). In most cases, the initiative came from the non-socialist camp, and the political
atmosphere clearly aected the negotiation settings. In the beginning, it was about the separation
of the non-socialist and socialist worlds, an era of dierent kinds of camps in which the athletes
representing the Workers Sports Federation were excluded from international elite and national
The structure of Finnish sport before 1993

C.O.
C.O.
NGBs
Districts
Districts
Clubs
Clubs
Finnish Central
Sport Federation
Workers Sport
Association
C.O.
C.O.
Districts
Clubs
Finnish Football
Federation
Sport fed.
Districts
Clubs
YOUTH SPORT:
Young Finland ass.
ELITE SPORT:
Finnish Olympic
Committee
Workers Sport
Association
Swedish
Sports Association
Finnish Sports
Federation
(FSF)
SPORT FOR ALL:

Finnish sport for all ass.
DISABLED SPORT:
Finnish Sports Association
of Persons with Disabilities
National governing
bodies of sport
(NGBs)
NGBs
Regional org.
Sport clubs
Figure 1. Structure of Finnish sports before and after the 1993 reform.
FSF Regions
DOMAINS
DOMAINS
The structure of Finnish sport after1993
269
team competitions. When the dispute about representation rights was solved in the 1960s, the next
phase in the ght was the reorganisation of overlapping organisations and activities.
In general, the same social status and language-based divisions led both to separate sports
movements and to political party division. In Finland, the bond between sports and politics was
exceptionally strong and long-lasting compared with the other Nordic countries. This is also
reected in the practices of the state sports administration. According to Vasara (2004, p. 12),
the state sports administration was a stage for political conicts ever since the establishment of the
rst State Sports Board in 1920. The corporations that contributed to the view that government
control would be more benecial for sports were able to look for support direct from the political
parties and actors instead of government ocials. The representatives of the sports organisations
who sat at the Sports Board had a dual role as both the distributor of funds and as the receiver of
funds in their own organisations. This was something that the state auditors criticised strongly
(Vasara 2004, p. 208). As the result of this criticism and the establishment of an independent sports
oce in the ministry, the number of state ocials and their powers increased in the early 1970s. In
1973, the Ministry of Education established a separate department for sports and youth activities.
The Sports Act, which entered into force in 1980, dened the sports political tasks and
responsibilities of the government, provinces and municipalities in detail, increasing the power
of the government in relation to the sports organisations.2 However, it was not until early 1990s
that organisation and politics-driven corporatism changed drastically.
NPM reform and the decline of corporatism in Finland

The relationship and the practices between the government and the sports movement changed
signicantly in the early 1990s. Both the parties transferred new types of operational environments
and adopted new working and thinking methods, with the consequence that their mutual relationship could not be based on the old corporatist paradigm any more. The change took place in the
parties themselves, not only in their mutual relationship. For the part of the government, the
change started towards the end of the 1980s in the form of public ownership and market
deregulation, and it continued throughout the 1990s as reforms aimed at enhancing administrative
performance and eectiveness. This development was due to the changes in the economic
operating environment: Finlands membership in the EU (1995) deepened relations with West
European countries, and the trade with Russia declined.
According to Temmes (1998), Finlands administrative reforms were fuelled by a doctrine that
emphasised managerialism. The doctrine was later called New Public Management (NPM). The
reforms were not preceded by in-depth political dialogue, nor did they attract signicant media
attention. This was at least partly due to the fact that the reforms consisted of several separate
projects which were either too small or too abstract to arise media or public attention. The
dialogue was also dampened by the fact that the power to plan and implement reforms remained
in the hands of state ocials, and their powers in Finland had traditionally been strong (Temmes
1998, p. 443).
According to Temmess estimate, this administrative revolution mainly implemented in 19871995 is known better among international experts than in Finland (Temmes 1998, p. 448). Finland
has applied the NPM doctrines more systematically than any other Nordic country but has also
tried to abide to some of the special features of the Nordic welfare states (Temmes 1998, p. 453).
For example, privatisation was not implemented in Finland to the same degree as in other
European countries (Temmes 1998, p. 448).
In the NPM doctrine, the axioms of the public choice theory include methodological individualism and the concept of people pursuing their own interests. At the same time, trust is put in
market forces, such as supply and demand, and generally in the ability of systems to organise
themselves. In the simplest terms, if public service providers operate in a non-market-driven
environment and pursue their own interests only, the result is the maximisation of the budgets.
270
The tendency of the public expenditure to rise is also due to the promises politicians make in
election years to ensure they are elected (Julkunen 2001, p. 96). Based on this, reductions in the
public sector and the enhancement of its productivity and eectiveness became essential goals in
public administration.
In addition to privatisation, attempts were made to slow down the growth of the public sector
by utilising voluntary organisations in service production (Alapuro 2010, p. 19). Sports organisations and clubs were also expected to assume more responsibility for the production of sports
services (See Ilmanen and Itkonen 2000, p. 154). The idea of public support against performance
narrowed the traditional Nordic conception of civic activity as a value in itself and was in conict
with the autonomous status of civic organisations in Finland. At the principal level, voluntary sports
organisations were also classied as rightful objects for NPM reforms, such as performance-based
funding, in public administration.
The preparation work carried out in the public sector, which had traditionally included civic
organisations, also went through drastic changes in the 1990s. The long-term corporatist committees with broad member bases were replaced by xed-term reduced working groups led by
ministries and by various kinds of administrators (Temmes 2001). Committee work was considered
too slow, inexible and expensive. In the new inclusive democracy model, civic organisations were
not considered to represent civil society to the same degree as before. Instead of seeing civil
society as consisting of representative organisations formed by interest groups, a new interpretation that emphasised the role of individuals was presented (Rainio-Niemi 2010, p. 262).
As the applications of the NPM doctrine were spread across the whole public administration, the
possibilities to continue corporatist practices in the eld of sports were reduced drastically. As the
responsibility for the planning and implementation of administrative reforms in the sports sector
was assigned to the ocials of the Ministry of Education, their role in the national sports policy
became more central. The sports organisation within the Ministry of Education adopted strategic
working methods, setting its own goals and striving to achieve these goals in a more systematic
and determined way than before (Vasara 2004, p. 414). This diminished the role of the Sports
Council in decision making and thereby the inuence of the organisations represented by it. On the
other hand, integrating government subsidies in the performance-based funding system shifted
the focus of the negotiations between the government and the sports movement from an open
advocacy of the interests of the organisations to a formal recording and assessment of their service
or social impact related goals. The performance assessment areas were dened in cooperation
between the sports organisations and the government but in a new, clearly government-driven
negotiation environment. Sports Policy Outlines in the 1990s published in 1990 remained the last
comprehensive corporatist committee report on sports.
The nal blow on the corporatist operational model came from the organisations. The sports
movement was taken unawares by the breakdown of its representative pyramid structure and the
dierentiation of its internal operational logics, which led to a new multi-centre operational model
(Koski and Heikkala 1998, p. 222). The new structure of the organisational eld only provided weak
support to shared interests or to a strong, united representative front towards the government as
was assumed in the neo-corporatist theory (Schmitter 1974).
Paradoxically, the new dispersed structure was the result of processes aiming at unity in the
movement. This unication process eventually got o the ground in the late 1980s, when the
leaders of the non-socialist sports movement declared that unication would bring signicant
savings. The non-socialist organisation had developed a new kind of organisational model for
Finnish sports, based on corporate thinking. Eventually, the emerging new strategic thinking, the
transfer of the public sector from norm-based management to performance-based management,
the economic recession of the 1990s, and Finlands intellectual convergence with Western Europe
gave way to a completely new and unpredictable structural process in Finnish sports. In the new
structure, the position of the Finnish Sports Federation (FSF) was not at the top of the organisational pyramid any more. It became a mere lobbying and service organisation. All national sport
271
federations and eight independent regional organisations (FSF Regions) joined FSF as member
organisations.
The structural change meant a structural shutdown of the sports movements and the end of the
competitive and elite sports hegemony in the Finnish sports culture. The most surprising development was that the non-socialist Finnish Central Sport Federation almost went bankrupt and was
consequently dissolved. The Workers Sports Federation and the Swedish Central Sports
Association continued their activities as non-prot associations. Completely new concepts on the
Finnish sports scene were outlined: domains and organisations that managed them. The power
and responsibility of the national sport federations for their own sports was emphasised. The task
of the domain organisation was dened as the production of shared services and the management
of the domain concerned.
Research material
The research material was collected in a project carried out in 2010-2011. The aim was to nd out
how the domainisation of sports had aected civic activity in sports and the operational models of
sport federations (Mkinen ed. 2012a). In other words, how the sport federations had operationalised the domain structure and the performance-based steering system since 1995 when the
system had been adopted in full scale. This was the rst time that the results and impacts of the
new steering system were systematically analysed after 15 years of its operations. The project was
initiated and funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and it was implemented
jointly by the authors of this article.
As we considered that the choices of the federations concerning the nancial focuses were
reected in how performance-based steering was implemented in practice, we analysed the
nances of the largest national sport federations in detail. This was facilitated by the fact that
the nancial reporting obligation of the sports organisations was tightened considerably in connection with the reform. The nancial data submitted by the sport federations to the government
made it possible to analyse their activities by domain and by performance assessment area.
The nancial data covered a total of 32 sport federations. This includes 15 largest national sport
federations, 9 domain organisations, 2 other national level central organisations (Finnish Sport and
7 regional associations). Their ocial nancial statements, income statements, balance sheets and
annual reports submitted to the Finnish government were analysed systematically. As the performance-based funding system was created especially for the large national sport federations
(N = 15),3 this article focuses on them and on the domain organisations.
The earliest data on domain-specic accounts were available from 2001.4 The nancial data was
gathered from every fourth year (i.e. 2001, 2005 and 2009). As the statistics of the Ministry of
Education oered less detailed information on the years before 2001, we included only one pre2001 year (1997) in our analysis to see how the new steering system had aected the economic
behaviour and resource allocation of the sports organisations in the long run. The data was
analysed account by account in four major categories:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Own income
Public subsidies
Expenses
Balance sheet and personnel key gures.
In their reporting, the sport federations were required to specify their own income and expenses
related to actual activities and fundraising by domain/result area as follows:
1. Youth (children and youth)
2. Adult
272
3. Elite
4. Administration (organisation)
The work was started by expert reports on the formation of each domain written by the members
of the research team. Apart from performance-based funding, the aim of the project was to
establish the impacts of the domain structure. The opinions of the Executive Directors of the
national sport federations and the examination of the expenses and income of the federations
domain by domain was the most concrete method to establish both the impacts.
As the performance-based funding system was created especially for the largest national sport
federations, this article focuses on them and on the domain organisations. The primary material of
the article consists of nancial data of fteen largest Finnish national sport federations, interviews
of six of their Executive Directors, and analyses of the documentation on the performance-based
funding system of the Finish government.
The examination of the interview material was based on a semi-structured interview framework
and theory-based content analysis. The criterion for the selection of national sport federations was
as equal representation of the largest federations as possible, taking into account both individual
and team sports, summer and winter sports, conditions (indoor/outdoor), Olympic and nonOlympic sports and the overall nancial scales of the federations. Based on the above, the
following national sport federations were selected for the interviews: Finnish Volleyball
Association, Finnish Ice Hockey Association, Finnish Swimming Association, Finnish Gymnastics
Federation, Finnish Orienteering Federation and Finnish Floorball Federation. The main themes in
the interviews included the views of the Executive Directors of the national sport federations on
the domain structure and domain organisations, sports political steering, and the goals and
functionality of the performance-based steering system.
Domains
This section describes the organisation of the four domains. In the early 1990s, the structural
problems of the fragmented sports movement were addressed through domain-based thinking.
The foundations for both domain-based thinking and performance-based steering were created in
the so-called Likustra process in 19911992. (Liikunnan strategiaty [Sports Strategy Work] 1992).
The process was implemented by the sports organisations and the Ministry of Education, and the
aim was to reach a unied view on the essential results of the sports culture. The participants in the
process wanted to create a shared value base and shared goals, visions and domains. The grounds
for public support to sports were also strengthened. The new steering system was developed in an
enthusiastic atmosphere by equal parties.
The hierarchical pyramid model of one top organisation was replaced by several functional
centres. The aim was to avoid the overlapping development tasks of the national sport federations
and assign them to separate domain organisations (Liikunnan strategiaty [Sports Strategy Work]
1992). The idea was to change the practices in which each national sport federation developed e.g.
youth sports without consideration for the activities of the other national sport federations.
The original idea was that domain organisations served the national sport federations. Apart
from providing services to the sport federations, they were also expected to manage the whole
domain; in other words, they were seen as a solution to the ineciency caused by the overlapping
tasks of the national sport federations. It was also expected to ll the management vacuum
followed by the crumbled hierarchical structure by some kind of a multi-centre management
model. As the domains were assigned both service and management tasks and duties, their
position in relation to the national sport federations was dicult right from the beginning.
The foundation of the youth sports domain was created in work seminars. The domain started to
develop on the basis of casual cooperation between individual sport organisations and the central
organisations, and it proceeded in three phases. In the rst phase, the possibilities and the position
273
of the domain in the Finnish Central Sport Federation community were established. In the second
phase, the focus was on the creation of the structure, resources and operational culture of the
domain. The third phase was the time for creating the actual strategy for the domain.
(Nuorisourheilu [Youth Sports] 3, 1993). The participants in the work seminars of the youth sports
domain included representatives from the national sport federations, central organisations and the
Ministry of Education. All the domains were considered important as they were seen to support
each other. The general view in the seminars was that the youth should be guaranteed versatile
possibilities for sports and that the sports club was the foundation pillar of the activities.
(Nuorisourheilu [Youth Sports] 1, 1993).
In the early 1990s, youth sports was not included in the governments sports organisation
categories. The situation started to change in 1993, when the Young Finland Programme, which
had been launched to promote youth sports and physical activities, became the Young Finland
Association and was assigned the task of managing and developing the youth sports domain.
(Haarma 2010, p. 46, 48). The new association ensured that the development work that had been
done to promote youth sports continued. The most important objective of the Young Finland
Association was the overall promotion of sports on the basis of the needs of children and youth.
The basic task of the Association was to support the national sport federations, to ensure the youth
sports strategy and to provide concrete services. In addition to the basic task, the Association
focused on acquiring additional resources for the youth sports domain, lobbying for youth sports,
and enhancing the social signicance of youth sports. (Haarma 2010, p. 47).
The objective of the Young Finland Association was to achieve eligibility for government
subsidies. A step forward was when the Young Finland Association was accepted as a member
organisation in the Finnish Sports Federation in autumn 1994. (Haarma 2010, p. 4748.) During the
next few years, the Young Finland Association focused on the development of youth activities in
the national sport federations in terms of performance-based funding (Letter to Martin Saarikangas,
16.1.1995). The Finnish Sports Federation continued to be responsible for providing the Ministry of
Education with reports on the decisions concerning the distribution of funding, but the Young
Finland Association participated in the strategy work of the domain and in the distribution of
performance-based funding (Haarma 2010, p. 47-48). Towards the end of the 1990s, the focus was
shifted from the implementation of systems to communication and marketing as an advocate and
creator of possibilities for youth sports (Annual Report of the Young Finland Association 1997, p. 1).
In the 2000s, the strategies of the Young Finland Association have been closely connected with
the youth sports and physical activity programmes funded by the Ministry of Education. This has
strengthened its ties with municipalities, schools and youth organisations and thereby its social
role (Haarma 2010, p. 80). At the same time, the resources of the Young Finland Association have
increased signicantly, and its activities have expanded beyond its traditional work with sport
federations. This has raised debate on its services and relations with the national sport federations
and sports clubs.
In the development of the elite sports domain, the central issues have been the relations
between the domain and the national sport federations, as well as the role of the Finnish
Olympic Committee. The national sport federations were acknowledged as both the owners and
leaders of the elite sports domain, but several other actors also inuenced the development of the
domain, for instance sports institutes, KIHU-Research Institute for Olympic Sports, Finnish
Antidoping Agency, sports doctors clinics, media and sponsors. The prominent role of the
Finnish Olympic Committee in the eld of elite sports was never challenged as such in the
development of the domain structure. The idea behind dissolving the old central organisations
in the structural change did not directly concern the Olympic Committee, even if it had developed
into a signicant player, a kind of Olympic sports umbrella organisation (Lms 2012, p. 93, 103). As
to its role in the domain structure, the biggest challenge for the Olympic Committee was its
primary purpose, the dissemination of the Olympic ideology and ensuring success in the Olympic
Games, which meant that it was merely a cooperation organisation for Olympic sports. The
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Committee wanted to focus its activities on its actual task and on supporting its member
organisations, and therefore it aimed at direct interaction with the Ministry of Education and
the National Sports Council and participation in the performance development reviews regarding
government subsidies for Olympic sports (Olympic Committee 1996, p. 34). In principle, the
Committee promised to expand its activities as a representative body to all sports but hoped that
the Finnish Sports Federation (FSF) would adopt part of the responsibility for supporting nonOlympic sports (Olympic Committee 1996). By doing this, the Committee emphasised the role of
the new organisation (FSF) in supporting non-Olympic sports. This line of thinking was supported
by the representatives of successful Olympic sports, e.g. skiing, athletics and wrestling.
The Olympic Committees thinking was in line with the Swedish model, in which the central
organisation was in charge of general and non-Olympic elite sports matters and the Olympic
Committee concentrated on Olympic sports. The new Finnish organisational structure did not,
however, correspond to the Swedish one, and FSFs role as a supporter of competitive and elite
sports remained insignicant. In the end, the question of the domains leadership and the role of
the Olympic Committee remained unsolved in the change process.
Apart from the horizontal disintegration of the organisations, another challenge to Finnish elite
sports has been the weak vertical connections from the club and regional level to the national elite
sports organisation (Mkinen 2012b, p. 210). The connections have depended on the activity of the
regional organisations, and especially in sports with a limited number of participants, the connections have been practically non-existent. After the structural change, elite sports were dened as
activities that represent a minimum of national team level in youth and adult sports. This denition
of elite sports set big challenges to the sports clubs concerning competitive sports activities. Sports
clubs were expected to produce potential elite athletes and bring them to a level from where the
national sport federations and the Olympic Committee could pick them for Olympic coaching. In
the new pluralistic sports culture, traditional competitive sports lost their signicance. This has
partly been due to the increase in health-enhancing physical activities among children and youth.
Competitive sports have had to compete with several other, often lighter forms of sports that have
emerged on the sports scene.
The structural change was labelled as elite sports oriented, but in hindsight, elite sports lost the
most in the reform. The old structures that had supported competitive and elite sports fell down,
and sports movements fragmented into a complex mesh of organisations. In the 2000s, several
studies have emphasised the signicance of the coordination of the national sports system as an
important success factor. In Finland, eective coordination has been lacking, and the Olympic
Committee has not been prepared or able to adopt a full-edged role in the domain system in any
phase of its development. The latest national elite sports strategy of 2010 proposed that the whole
elite sports domain and its procedures should be changed.
In connection with the reform of the organisational structure of sports in the early 1990s,
suggestions were also made for a special domain for adapted physical activities. As adapted
physical activities form a wide concept, it has always been dicult to see adapted physical
activities as one large, unied domain represented by one organisation which is acknowledged
by all the actors in the eld. The special needs groups cover a wide spectrum of chronically ill,
disabled and older people from rehabilitative activities to elite sports.
The organisation of adapted physical activities has been connected to changes in society. After
the Second World War, there was a special need for organising disabled sports and physical
activities. In the beginning, the activities focused on rehabilitation, exercise and general recreation
(Myllykoski and Vasara 1989, p. 69). In the decades after the war, industrialisation and urbanisation
increased free time and created new possibilities in dierent elds of life. Towards the end of the
1950s, the Finnish government started to steer and support sports in a more systematic way. For
disabled sports, this meant that sports had to be separated into a special sector in the general
national organisations of e.g. the visually and physically disabled (Myllykoski and Vasara 1989,
p. 15).
275
The Sports Act, which entered into force in the early 1980s, included the idea of an equal
welfare society (Juppi 1995, p. 235). For disability sports and the physical activities of chronically ill
people, this was a positive signal. In the early 1990s, new adapted physical activity organisations
became eligible for funding from the Ministry of Education (Koivumki & Luona-Helminen 2005,
p. 4). The organisational eld of adapted physical activities expanded, and by the mid 1990s, when
the transfer to performance-based funding and domain-based structure of the sports organisations
took place, there were about 20 dierent adapted physical activity organisations in Finland, part of
them within the performance-based funding system of the Ministry of Education.
Today, the adapted physical activity eld is divided into the following main organisations:
Finnish Federation of Adapted Physical Activity, which promotes health-enhancing physical activity
and active lifestyle (16 member organisations), Paralympics Committee, which is responsible for
Paralympics activities, and the Finnish Sports Association of Persons with Disabilities (VAU). VAUs
activities combine activities of the above organisations and also cover competitive sports and
tness activities in various age groups for visually, physically and mentally disabled people and
people with organ transplants.
In the 1990s structural change, the Finnish Sport for all Association became the domain
organisation for adult sports. The tasks of the Association have varied considerably, but since the
1990s, its activities have focused on recreational sports, health-enhancing physical activities, sta
sports of work places and tness centre sports. In the 1990s, the Association was also assigned the
task of carrying out preparation work for government subsidies in the performance assessment
area related to tness activities.
Recreational sports have not traditionally been in the core of civic activities, i.e. the sports clubs.
Despite the wide popularity of tness activities among Finnish adults, people have not found sports
clubs and vice versa. According to a national sports survey (2010, p. 25), 15% of the Finnish adult
population participated in sports club activities, men more often than women. On the other hand, the
sports club survey carried out by the Finnish Sport for all Association (2011) showed that sports clubs
mainly organised activities for their own members in their own sports. This means that the clubs have
not been particularly interested in promoting health-enhancing physical activities or general tness
activities. As sports clubs have mainly focused on their own sports, the domain organisation for adult
sports has had no particular need to be active in the civic activity eld, and as most of the adult
population do sports outside clubs, it has been natural that the domain organisation has not focused
its activities on organised sports. This is why adult sports have not received much attention in the
examination of the domainisation process of civic and sports organisations.
The above review of the domains shows that the concept of a domain organisation remained
fairly unclear and to some extent problematic. The ideal of having one umbrella organisation to
steer all the domains was not reached. Instead, the number, tasks and features of the organisations
vary from domain to domain. The youth sports domain came closest to the ideal situation. In the
beginning, also competitive and elite sports seemed a natural domain and so did the role of the
Olympic Committee as its leader. However, the Olympic Committee was not able or prepared to
assume this role clearly later on. As to adapted physical activities, the whole domain concept is
dicult. There are several national organisations, and their activities range from rehabilitating
physical activities to elite sports. There is no single domain organisation in student and school
sports or health-enhancing physical activities either. In adult sports, there is one domain organisation but its inuence has been limited. The number of national organisations is larger than before
the structural change, and their categorisation is not simple. It is easy to conclude that domain
thinking did not lead to structural cohesion on the organisational level.
Performance-based funding
The transfer from norm-based to performance-based funding of the sports organisations by the
Finnish government was aected by two concurrent processes. One of them was the general
276
transfer of public administration to performance-based steering in the 1990s. The economic

depression fuelled the transfer. The other was the Likustra Process in 19911992. In line with
the spirit of the time, managerialistic ideologies and marketisation of activities had a strong impact
on the strategy work. Traditional methods were replaced by strategic planning, productisation and
customer-orientation (Koski and Heikkala 1998, p. 16870). The Ministry of Education played an
important role in the strategy work, even if the target of the strategy was sports organisations
operating in the area of civic activities.
Performance-based funding was initiated in a report issued by a working group and another
report issued by the department of the State Sports Committee which deals with subsidies
distributed to organisations. It was already in these working groups that the division into youth
sports, adult sports and elite sports was created. Since then, the Ministry of Education has set up
ve working groups to deal with the subsidies. Sports organisations have always participated in the
consideration of performance-based funding principles in the meetings of the Ministrys working
groups. Central problems in the work of the working groups have been how to take the quality of
the activities into account and how to organise the fragmented organisational eld for performance-based funding. Performance-based funding was implemented for the rst time in 1995, and
its principles have remained the same since then.
The main features of performance-based funding are presented in Figure 2. The task of the
domain organisations was to provide national sport federations with leadership related to their
elds of activities as well as development ideas. On the other hand, the national sport federations
put these ideas to practice by oering the services to their member organisations on the grass root
level. The national sport federations reported to the Ministry of Education on their activities
annually by performance assessment area. The performance assessment areas were practically
the same as the domains. The national sport federations and the domain organisations also
convened to review how the sport federations had succeeded in their tasks in the various domains.
The summary of these negotiations and the resulting proposal on the subsidies granted to the
national sport federations were submitted to the Ministry of Education. The next phase was that
the Ministry and the domain organisations met at the negotiating table. The representatives of the
PERFORMANCE
NEGOTATIONS
YEARLY REPORTS
OF THE
PERFORMANCE
MINISTRY
DOMAIN
ORGANIZATIONS
EVALUATION
TARGET
ORGANIZATIONS (NSOs)
LEADERSHIP
SERVICES
GRASSROOT LEVEL (CLUBS)
Figure 2. Performance-based funding process.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 90-95 %

Adults
Physical activity
25 %
Children and youths

Physical activity
50 % %
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OTHER 5-10 %
Elite Sport
Civic Activity
Internationality
25 %
Figure 3. Performance assessment areas and weightings.
domain organisations presented the reports that had been submitted previously and their views of
how each national sport federation had succeeded in the various domains, e.g. youth sports. The
Ministry also had detailed domain-specic reports submitted by the national sport federations at its
disposal. Based on this information, the Ministry and the domain organisations had to be able to
decide how well each national sport federation had succeeded in view of the domain-specic
scoring system, and how this would aect the future funding of the sport federation concerned.
In the early 1990s, a working group set up by the Ministry of Education started to analyse the
principles according to which the subsidies to national sport organisations were distributed.
According to the working group, improving peoples possibilities to do physical activities and
general increase in sports activities were primarily due to the national sports culture. Therefore,
government subsidies should encourage physical activities (Figure 3). On the other hand, the
working group gave civic activities e.g. the number of voluntary workers involved and international
activities like the number of international events arranged, a very low rating in terms of importance. (Ministry of Education 1992, p. 1).
The aim of the working group that was set up in the mid 1990s to assist sports organisations
was to prepare a proposal on the development of a performance-based funding system and on the
categorisation of the sports organisations. The performance assessment area system and the
weighting scale, which are still valid, were created in this context: youth sports 50%, adult sports
25% and elite sports 25%.
When the government subsidies were distributed in 2012, the quantitative, qualitative and
social results of the national sport federations in the various performance assessment areas, i.e.
youth sports, adult sports and elite sports, were taken into consideration. There were four main
categories listed for these performance assessment areas (organisational activities; educational
activities; recreational, training and competitive activities; events), and the national sport federations were assessed in these categories on the basis of a scoring system. The assessment also
included the antidoping activities of the organisations and the promotion of equality and tolerance. If necessary, the way the organisations activities were weighed in the various performance
assessment areas and their dierent possibilities to acquire funding were taken into consideration.
The performance area-based assessment primarily focused on quality (70%) and secondarily on
quantity (30%) (Ministry of Education and Culture 2011).
Between 1991 and 2009, a total of eight working groups set up by either the sports movement
or the government held meetings to develop the performance-based funding system and related
principles for the purpose of government funding. The basic premise of the working groups stayed
the same throughout this period: the national sport federations were expected to invest in the
physical activities of the citizens, especially children and youth. How well the sport federations
succeeded in this was assessed on the basis of the number of people participating in the various
sports and physical activities.
Results
The aim of our research project was to establish how the domain structure and performance-based
funding had impacted sports organisations in terms of civic activities. One way of doing this was to
analyse how the resources of the national sport federations had been allocated in the various
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domains and performance assessment areas. In other words, we analysed if the national sport
federations had allocated their economic and personnel resources in accordance with the governments performance-based funding guidelines presented in Figure 3. We also interviewed some
Executive Directors of national sport federations on the eectiveness of the performance-based
funding and domain structure.
Since the mid 1990s, the governments performance-based funding has clearly focused on
increasing youth sports. However, the domain-specic personnel numbers and operational costs
of the national sport federations do not indicate that they have shifted their focus to youth sports.
At the end of the millennium, the number of personnel involved in youth activities in large
national sport federations was even slightly smaller than before (Figure 4). Instead, the national
sport federations had increased the number of personnel involved in elite and adult sports. From
2001 to 2009, the operational funding invested in the youth sports domain increased slightly, but
proportionally the largest increases in operational costs were in adult sports. It is dicult to see
investments in youth sports in these gures, even if the weighting of youth sports in performancebased funding has been twice as high as that of adult sports and elite sports.
Performance-based funding has not channelled the resources of the national sport federations to youth sports in the 2000s, but it seems that in the 1990s, this kind of development did
take place (Figure 5). The creation of the performance-based funding system started in the early
1990s, but it was not actually adopted until 1995. Unfortunately, the earliest domain-specic
accounts were from 2001. The statistics of the Ministry of Education from 1997, however,
include a domain-based specication of the operational costs. According to the statistics, the
share of youth sports in 1997 was 20%. This means that the share of youth sports increased
from about 20% to 24.5% between 1997 and 2001. A 4% increase can be considered a fairly
clear overall change even if yearly percentages varied. It was a more remarkable change than
the change in the proportional share of any domain in 20012009. The report of the Ministry of
Education from 1996 supports the notion that national sport federations made increasing
investments in youth sports in the early years of the performance-based steering system.
According to the report, the youth activities of the national sport federations had become
more eective (Ministry of Education, 1996). In their study Koski and Heikkala (1998), also stated
that performance assessment areas and performance-based funding had a clear impact on the
2005
2009
46
35
47
51
52
57
58
55
52
64
76
90
2001
YOUTH
MASS
ELITE
Figure 4. Number of personnel by domain in large national sport federations (N = 15).
OTHER
279
Figure 5. Operational costs by domain in large national sport federations (N = 15).
activities of the national sport federations after they had been adopted in the 1990s. According
to Koski and Heikkala, about 70% of the national sport federations changed their activities in
some way as a result of performance-based funding. Consequently, domainisation increased in
national sport federations, and the weighting of youth sports increased in both the structures
and action plans (Koski and Heikkala 1998, p. 172173). Why then has the impact of performance-based funding on national sport federations waned in the 2000s? The Executive
Directors interpretations of this and other factors are described in the following.
The disregard of the national sport federations for performance-based funding shows clearly in
Executive Directors interview answers. To deepen the understanding of the performance-based
funding system and the domain structure, the research team included interviews of the Executive
Directors of six national sport federations in the analysis. The central research themes were the
consequences of domainisation and the eectiveness of performance-based funding. The themes
and results of the interviews were compared against the national survey of the organisational
reform published in 1998 (Heikkala 1998).
The domain structure received both positive and negative feedback. It was generally understood that domain organisations had promoted sports and physical activities also in areas which
were not traditionally included in the tasks of sports organisations, for instance in day care centres,
schools and workplaces. The role of the domain organisations as the service organisations of the
national sport federations was not found very successful. The domain organisations did not meet
the needs of the national sport federations properly, they increased overlapping work and they
decentralised the activities of the sport federations. All the Executive Directors who were interviewed advocated a new structure with one umbrella organisation.
The domains and performance-based funding have divided the sports eld into youth sports,
adult sports and elite sports. For the national sport federations, this division has not, however, been
self-evident, and few of them have regular activities in all the above domains. The division has also
led to a situation in which national sport federations have felt pressured to implement projects that
are not part of their core activities. As to performance-based funding, the division has not been in
line with the national sport federations own ways of organising their activities. For example, smalland medium-sized elite sports-focused federations felt that the requirement to participate in
projects promoted by Youth Finland because of the 50% weight on youth sports in the funding
system would not be feasible due to their limited resources. Therefore, performance-based funding
could not steer their activities in the long run. All the Executive Directors who were interviewed
emphasised that their activities were steered by the mission of the federation, not the
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governments performance-based funding system. When asked about the steering eect of performance-based funding, the Executive Directors commented as follows:
Performance-based funding does not have a steering eect. It is a relevant factor only when I prepare
government subsidy applications or write reports. - We do what is sensible in view of the development of our sport. (Interviewee 1)
It has no signicant impact on our everyday activities. Our practices are very much due to the fact that
what we do doesnt have an essential impact on the amount of the subsidies. (Interviewee 3)
According to the interviews conducted in the 1990s (Heikkala 1998) and the interviews in this
report, the major problems in performance-based funding were the maintenance of overlapping
reporting systems and the high degree of discretion in decision making. Discretion has helped the
national sport federations which are not involved in youth sports, such as motor sports and diving,
or in which the member prole is primarily adult, such as riding, but it has blurred the purpose and
thereby the sensibility of the performance-based funding system. The national sport federations
were not very convinced, either that the activities of the various sport federations were analysed
carefully when the system was implemented in practice.
In spite of the problems connected with the performance-based funding system, all the
Executive Directors felt that some kind of performance-based funding ideology would be useful.
There should be a uniform weighting system in the distribution of government subsidies, and the
distribution criteria should be transparent. Even though the Executive Directors felt that the
steering eect of performance-based funding was insignicant, they regarded the government
as a signicant funding provider and partner in sports, as can be seen from the following answers.
All in all, the role of the Ministry of Education and Culture in the eld of sports and thereby for us is
signicant, thats for sure. (Interviewee 3)
On a certain level, the funding provider is able to participate in the discussion on what is the most
sensible course of action. (Interviewee 2)
We have quite a close relationship with the Ministry in the sense that our sport requires facilities. In the
construction of facilities, both the government and the municipalities play an important role.
(Interviewee 5)
In the interviews, the organisation leaders expressed clear opinions on the domain structure and
its reform. On the other hand, the relationship between sports organisations and the government
was considered a more dicult question what should it be like and how should it be improved?
There was no clear shared view on this at least no serious discussion seems to have taken place
about the matter. This is another indication that the performance-based funding system was not
seen as a highly signicant factor in the activities of the national sport federations or in the funding
structure.
What went wrong in the performance-based funding model? The nancial material and the
interviews show that the governments performance-based funding system does not have an
impact on the activities of the large national sport federations. The performance-based funding
process presented in Figure 2 has remained more of a theoretical model than a description of
actual activities. In the following, we present six probable reasons for the situation.
The rst reason is that the development process of the domain structure connected with
performance-based funding was never fully completed. This was mainly because the large national
sport federations were not prepared to surrender their power to the new domain organisations.
They felt that at least some of the domain organisations rather disturbed than supported their
activities.
The second reason is that the domain organisations changed their strategies by providing
services outside the traditional sports community, such as schools and day care centres. This was
interpreted as turning their backs to the national sport federations. Some of the interviewed
Executive Directors felt that this increased the disintegration of the Finnish sports movement.
281
The third reason is that the national sport federations are only able to make a small and indirect
impact on the performance objectives set for them. The performance criteria are based on
numbers that describe the physical activities of the population, not the core activities that the
national sport federations have dened for themselves, especially the services provided to sports
clubs. The task of the national sport federations is therefore to support their own members, the
clubs. However, work that supports civic activities is not regarded as part of the results of the
organisations, and consequently the organisations have not made major shared eorts to develop
civic activities, such as voluntary work. As to youth sports, the national sport federations are
responsible for maintaining a competition system, but their actual results in view of physical
activities are made in the clubs. The same applies to adults in so far as they participate in club
activities. On the other hand, in elite sports, the national sport federations have operational
responsibility for e.g. national team level activities. As is shown above, the possibilities of the
national sport federations to have an impact on their results vary in the dierent performance
assessment areas, and on the other hand, the core tasks of the national sport federations are not
shown as performance assessment areas at all.
The fourth reason is that the governments nal funding decisions have had no clear connections to the operational objectives dened in the performance-based funding system for the
national sport federations. Despite the detailed scoring and weighting system, the question of
how the national sport federations have reached their objectives has always been left completely
open and subject to consideration in the nal performance reviews. The activities have been
scored, but scoring has not aected funding, if it has been regarded as causing too radical changes
to funding, or if factors outside the scoring system have had to be taken into consideration.
Probably for many reasons, the national sport federations have felt that they need not be worried
about the impact of the performance-based funding system on actual funding.
The belief that the governments performance-based funding system was based on an objective scoring system got the nal blow when the Finnish Floorball Federation appealed a funding
decision to the Supreme Administrative Court in 2000. The new sport had attracted especially
young people, and it had scored very well in quantitative terms throughout the 1990s. The
Floorball Federation considered the government subsidy it received too small, taken into account
the growing number of members and participants. The appeal of the federation for a larger
government subsidy based on the results it had achieved failed. According to the Courts ruling,
the government ocials had not exceeded their discretionary power as the government subsidies
distributed to sport organisations were tied to the amounts dened for them in the government
budget. In practice, this meant that government ocials could make funding decisions independently without any reference to the scoring system.
The fth reason is that the signicance of government subsidies and thereby the signicance
of performance-based funding has decreased as the national sport federations have been able
to increase their own fundraising, for instance by collecting membership and participation fees
on the grass root level. Almost 80% of the increase in the funding of large national sport
federations has come from the members and participants, the share of outside funding being
about 20%. The costs of participation in sports and physical activities have raised a lot of debate
in Finland recently.
The sixth reason is that the assessment of the performance of an individual national sport
federation has been found problematic. In some of the national sport federations, the activities
naturally focus more on certain domains than others. When the performance-based funding system
has been developed, the special features of the national sport federations have not been taken into
account. In our opinion, this is something that should be done, not by increasing federationspecic discretion but by reviewing the whole system on a more general level. For the government,
which is interested in the positive eects of peoples physical activities, it is hardly necessary to
have people take up a certain sport but to go in for physical activities in general. On the other
hand, for a national sport federation, it is natural to provide activities to people who are interested
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in its sport. The current performance area-specic assessment could work better if it focused on a
larger group of similar organisations or the whole spectrum of sports organisations.
There seems to be two partly contradictory arguments prevailing on performance-based funding. On the one hand, there is a consensus that some kind of performance-based steering is
necessary. There should be criteria on the basis of which government subsidies are distributed. On
the other hand, the current system is not believed to really steer the activities. As civic organisations, the national sport federations do what they feel is important to them. For the sports
organisations, performance-based funding is more of a transparent way to support their activities
than an actual performance-based steering tool. From the governments point of view, it is clear
that the current system will not produce big changes. This is shown by the strong increase in the
governments special and programme-based subsidies through which the government tries to
steer the sports organisations in a situation in which the subsidy-based steering mechanisms do
not work any longer.
Conclusion
The waning of the steering eect of the performance-based funding system described in this article
clearly shows how limited the governments exercise of power is in the eld of sports and physical
activities. The change eected by the NPM reform, which made the government a party that was
more independent, active and goal-oriented than it had been in the corporatist phase, can, as such,
be considered positive, but the system only worked as long as the sports organisations were
excited about the reform and the management level recognised and acknowledged the logic in it.
The legitimacy of the performance-based funding system broke down when the gulf between the
theoretical world of the system and the real world experienced by the organisations grew too wide.
After all, the Finnish government does not have the operational power to forcibly change this
reality.
The other component of the 1990s reform was the domain structure of the Finnish sports
movement. The old hierarchical pyramid model of one top organisation was replaced by several
functional centres. These centres were led by domain organisations assigned to serve and lead
national sport federations in tasks related to the domains concerned. The conditions for
restructuring were favourable as the sports movement was fragmented and without a clear
power centre. Domain thinking also extended to the performance-based funding system, and
the sport federations were required to specify their income and expenses by domain/performance assessment area.
The analysis of the development of the domain structure showed that the attempt to create one
umbrella organisation to steer all the domains had failed. Instead, the number, tasks and features
of the organisations varied from domain to domain. The incomplete domain structure was
probably due to SVUL being dissolved in 1992 and to the disintegration of the sports movement
in the middle of the reform process in 19911992. The reform was left without a leader in the
organisational eld, and the government was left with the responsibility to carry on the process. It
is unlikely that domain organisations would have even come about without support and contribution from the government (Lehtonen 2014, p. 11). For the government, the domains only meant a
structure that supported the implementation of performance-based steering. It needed domain
organisations mainly for monitoring on how the national sport federations managed in various
performance assessment areas. Otherwise, the reform was not steered to completion by any parties
concerned.
Our conclusion is that the impact of the domain reform and governmental performance-based
steering weakened the more time elapsed since their creation in the early 1990s. Dissatisfaction
with the domain structure and performance-based steering and the general disintegration and
ineciency of the sports movement fuelled a series of new reforms that are still going on. The
Finnish sports movement has succeeded in joining forces in a signicant manner after almost 20
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years.5 Since 2009, the government and the sports movement have also, both jointly and separately, initiated several sports political reforms that aim at establishing shared goals and new
steering mechanisms. Whether these reforms have been about reviving corporatism or completely
new forms of steering will remain for future studies and articles to determine.
Notes
1. There are several variations of corporatistic systems, and their development histories deviate from each other.
B. Rothesteins (1991) article provides interesting information on the special features and presumptions of the
Swedish variation in particular.
2. The organisation of the sports system by enacting an Act and Decree was unique even in an international
context. According to the Finnish Sports Act and Decree, the sports administration extended to the government, provinces, municipalities and volunteer organisations from national federations to local clubs. The Act
bound the government and the organisations tight together (Hentil 1992b, p. 356; Juppi 1995, p. 256). The
basic principle was that the government and the municipalities were responsible for creating the prerequisites
for sports, and the task of the sport organisations was to make the prerequisites available to people. In
practice, this mainly meant the responsibility of the public authorities to build sports facilities and the
responsibility of the volunteer sector to ensure that the facilities were utilised (Juppi 1995, p. 252). The Act
was a result of thorough committee work of 3 years. The 400-page nal report of the committee was an
extensive review of sports in Finland ranging from the essence of sports to economic-technical details (Report
of the Sports Act Committee 1976). The report reects Finnish society in the 60s and 70s characterised by
planning ideology, belief in progress, emphasis on the role of the government and idea of a welfare state
based on equal opportunities. The Act shifted the emphasis from competitive and elite sports towards health
enhancing physical activity, and the challenge of encouraging all citizens make physical activity as part of their
lives (Juppi et al. 1995, p. 110). Since their enactment, the Sports Act and Decree have been amended twice,
but the contents have mainly remained the same until today. In terms of contents, the Act is a framework act
that covers several dierent target organisations without going into detailed regulations or concrete provisions, which weakens its usability for interpreting practical issues
3. A national sport federation is classied as a large federation if its annual operational budget exceeds one
million euros.
4. The retention obligation of accounting records in Finland is ten years.
5. In 2012, the Finnish Sports Federation, Young Finland Association and Finnish Sport for All Association
established Finnish Sports Confederation (VALO). In 2014, the Finnish Olympic Committee joined the
organisation (VALO-OC). For the time being, however, VALO and the Olympic Committee have separate
boards.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the authors.
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Managing Civic Activities by Performance Impacts of The Government S Performance Based Funding System and The Domain Structure in Finnish Sports

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ISSN: 1940-6940 (Print) 1940-6959 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/risp20

Managing civic activities by performance: impacts

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Date: 04 September 2016, At: 11:00

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS, 2016

Managing civic activities by performance: impacts of the

This article focuses on a turning point in Finnish sports policy at which

Received 11 February 2013

2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Research Institute for Olympic Sports Rautpohjankatu 6,

Long cycle of Nordic sports corporatism

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS

The structure of Finnish sport before 1993

SPORT FOR ALL:

The structure of Finnish sport after1993

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS

NPM reform and the decline of corporatism in Finland

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS

transfer of public administration to performance-based steering in the 1990s. The economic

GRASSROOT LEVEL (CLUBS)

Figure 2. Performance-based funding process.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 90-95 %

Children and youths

Figure 3. Performance assessment areas and weightings.

Figure 4. Number of personnel by domain in large national sport federations (N = 15).

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS

Figure 5. Operational costs by domain in large national sport federations (N = 15).

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT POLICY AND POLITICS

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