POLÍTICAS PÚBLICAS DESPORTIVAS: PROPOSTAS ELEITORAIS AO MANDATO 2013-17 NOS MUNICÍPIOS DA ÁREA METROPOLITANA DO PORTO

Abstract

It is commonly agreed that the municipal public sport service is supposed to adopt as overarching purposes the promotion, construction, maintenance and conservation of infrastructures, and that a wide range of sport practice activities is made available to the population. In this regard, the objective and the empirical analysis of this study are focused on the programmes of the local candidates and review the various electoral proposals submitted by the candidates to the 2013-2017 mandate in the municipalities of the Metropolitan Area of Porto (AMP). The idea is to draw up a summarised but comprehensive report in order to identify the main guidelines of the municipal public sport policy for the current four-year period. Methodologically we used a qualitative approach based on the content analysis of the seventeen political programmes voted in the recent local elections. From this analysis we found that sport is central to the interests of the candidates to the local authorities, and amongst the number of measures advocated, the main political and strategic proposals are (i) “establishing” physical conditions for the citizens’ sport practice; (ii) “upgrading” the municipal sport facilities; (iii) “endorsing” the associative movement; (iv) “implementing” municipal sport programmes; (v) “giving visibility” to the municipality, and (vi) “organising” the municipal sport.