The dark side of social capital: An ethnography of sport governance

Abstract

This article extends the discussion on the ‘dark side’ of social capital in sport which has recently been increasingly conceptualized in civil society studies. We define the dark side of social capital as situations in which trust, social ties and shared beliefs and norms that may be beneficial to some persons are detrimental to other individuals, sport movements, or for society at large. Furthermore, we understand the dark side of social capital as attempts to manipulate and misuse trust to achieve a particular interest. We argue that the majority of studies using the notion of the dark side have investigated primarily sport practice rather than sport governance and have focused on either the macro- or micro-level, neglecting the meso-level. Additionally, previous studies have focused primarily on the exclusive role of bonding social networks at the expense of linking social capital and manipulation of trust. To contribute to reducing these gaps, our analysis draws on evidence gathered during a multi-sited ethnographic study of Czech and Italian sport associations governing football, handball and sailing.

Keywords

Czech Republic ethnography Italy social capital social networks sport governance trust

The concept of social capital has acquired an influential position in the academic debate on the nature of contemporary sport. This is true not only within the field of sports studies, but also within the more general theoretical framework of social and political sciences. Cooperation, trust, loyalty and respect for rules and adversaries are all considered natural outcomes of social interaction during sport practice or participation in sport governance activities. For this reason, sport practice is considered a ‘school for democracy’.

More in-depth theoretical and empirical explorations of the topic, however, have demonstrated that social capital in sport, as in other social spheres, generates both positive and negative consequences for those who practise it as well as for their society. Yet, the negative consequences have not been adequately reflected.

In line with recent literature on the topic, we suggest that academic examination of the relationship between social capital and sport needs to be revisited and informed by a more substantial analysis of its dark dimension. The existence of a dark side was briefly acknowledged by the editors of the recently published book Sport and Social Capital, who stated that the phenomenon ‘within different geographic and demographic contexts remains relatively untested and given the characteristics of sport organizations and their membership, it is reasonable to suggest that they have the capacity to engender the ‘‘dark side of social capital’’’ (Nicholson and Hoye, 2008: 12). However, more in-depth, systematic and empirically informed research is still missing.

To address this gap, this article focuses mainly on the dark side of social capital created in and through sports, with a particular interest on the seldom-explored area of sport governance. In particular, the article addresses the following questions: what types of dark side of social capital can we identify by analysing Czech and Italian sport governance? What theoretical implications do the explorations of the dark side of social capital have for further development of research into sport and social capital? What implications does this research have for policy and practice of contemporary sport governance?

In order to answer these questions in the following sections we briefly discuss the dark sides of social capital in general and then move to discuss a conceptualization of the dark side of social capital created in and through sport. We identify the topics and facets of theory that have remained unexplored. Next, we present the methods for and findings from our own research on the dark side of social capital in sport governance based on two multi-sited ethnographic studies in the Czech Republic and Italy.

The dark side of social capital

Following the vast literature comprehending works based on different epistemological traditions and summarized in different works (e.g. Castiglione et al., 2008; Field, 2008; Keller, 2009; Lin, 2001), some basic and common treats of social capital can be identified. We conceive of social capital as a relational individual or collective resource that is more or less intentionally built and created and is used to achieve defined goals. Such relational resources may be mobilized for very different purposes, for the economic and emotional well-being of an individual or of a group, but also in the interest of a community, an organization or an entire society.

As we argue more extensively throughout this article, contrary to some mainstream conceptualizations of it, we understand social capital as a more ambivalent concept: actions and resources mobilized for the good of an individual or of a group may be detrimental or harmful for another. Although the simultaneous existence of the dark side alongside the positive effects has widely been recognized by existing scholarship and its roots can be traced back to the work of social capital classics (Bourdieu, 1980; Coleman, 1988, 1990; Putnam, 1993, 2000), its further empirical and systematic examination has been rather rare (Field, 2008; Portes, 1998; Warren, 2008). Studies have pointed out that social networks can serve negative purposes, such as terrorism, crime or nepotism, as the cases of Ku Klux Klan, the Michigan Militia or even the Mafia show (Fukuyama, 1999; Gambetta, 1988). Social networks can also work as a tool of social exclusion (Bourdieu, 1980; Crossley, 2008) and increase social inequality (Field, 2008). From the methodological point of view, a contextual and situational analysis of different manifestations of social capital case by case is suggested in order explore a detrimental nature of social action where it is not evident or it becomes an object of competing interpretations (Warren, 2001, 2008).

We define the dark side of social capital as situations in which trust, social ties and shared beliefs and norms that may be beneficial to some persons are detrimental to other individuals, but also to sport movements as well as to the society at large. In the context of sport sociology research we understand the dark side of social capital as attempts to manipulate and misuse trust to achieve a particular interest that is in conflict with more general sports developments objectives. In other words, we conceive of the dark side of social capital not only in terms of a (negative) function that social capital can have, but also in terms of the nature of a social entity, a sport governing body, associated to social capital. To analyse the dark side of social capital therefore means to explore the nature and function of organizational social capital (Schneider, 2009).

While acknowledging the epistemological ambiguity of the social capital concept, we argue that the interconnectedness between different types of social capital must be considered in order to understand the complex nature of civic engagement within sport associations. In this sense, both Bourdieu’s and Coleman’s understandings of social action can be of particular interest when revisiting Putnam’s meso- and macro-socially driven explorations of social capital. To advance knowledge beyond the state of the art we examine the dynamic nature of civic engagement within sport clubs and sport associations throughout the individually possessed volume of social capital or by considering small networks of actors and their interaction. This perspective is not new; it has been employed previously by Blackshaw and Long (2005) and by Burnett (2006), who revisited Putnam’s ideas about social capital through Bourdieu’s and Coleman’s perspectives, respectively.

This approach also facilitates the re-introduction of the category of power, which has seldom been applied within idealized pro-democracy conceptualizations of the relationship between social capital and sport, although a wide range of literature within the neo-Marxist and hegemony theoretical perspectives (e.g. Hoye and Cuskelly, 2003, 2007; Sugden and Tomlinson, 1998) on sport governance emphasized its significance for the analysis of sport associations.

The dark side of social capital in sport

Scholars dealing with the dark side of social capital in sport have conceptualized the phenomenon in three different ways. First, they conceived of the dark side of social capital in sport as mirroring and reproducing macro-societal negative externalities. Second, they observed the dark side of social capital established in the relations between sport and social spheres external to sport. Third, some scholars emphasized the role of the dark side of social networks jeopardizing the potentially positive values inherent to sport activities.

The majority of writing on the dark side of social capital in sport belongs to the first category. These studies referred to social exclusion and to the negative effects of what Putnam called bonding social capital, which reinforces the networks of insiders and excludes outsiders. In this vein, social capital that is built through sport represents a sphere that mirrors and reproduces the same diversities that exist in the overall structure of society. Notions of sport as a facilitator of economically based social exclusion occurred in the overview of the studies on social exclusion and sport presented by Collins (2003), in Jarvie’s (2003) remarks on the patterns of privilege and elitism reproduced by sport illustrated using the case of access to private golf clubs, in the example of traditional rugby clubs excluding players or supporters from different socio-economic backgrounds (Skinner et al., 2008) and in Tonts’s (2005) study on the role of sport clubs and sport events in rural Australia. Similar attention as to socio-economic factors has been devoted to other socio-cultural factors such as race, ethnicity and gender (Dyreson, 2001; Long, 2008; Palmer and Thompson, 2007).

A second perspective claims that the dark side originates in the interconnectedness between sport practice and the spheres external to sports, namely business. In this manner, Dyreson (2001) suggests that social bonds created in sport are sometimes misused for commercial interests. He notes that social networks created in sport clubs form large communities where market products may be sold.

The third perspective suggests that social capital, which is built in sport, helps to maintain and reproduce a normative framework that is contradictory to idealized myths about sport being exclusively beneficial. Long (2008) emphasized that sports clubs and national sport governing bodies members tend ‘to maintain the essence of the sport they know and love’, which does not necessarily mean that the sport is safe based on fair play rules and codes of ethics (Long, 2008: 224), but it can rather be normatively framed by values such as winning at any price and top-down domination. Jarvie (2007) similarly noted that sport might contribute to the diffusion of downward levelling or conformity. The dark side of social capital was investigated in the case of sports fans, particularly a group of South Australian football supporters (the so-called ‘Groggies’). The dense networks and connections built in relation to sport were analysed in terms of facilitating the diffusion of other detrimental values as malignant behaviour (Palmer and Thompson, 2007). Similarly, Groeneveld and Ohl (2010) argued that networks built around football can be based on hate, aggression or violence.

While the scope of research on the dark side of social capital in sports has been wide, most studies’ primary concern did not expand beyond sport practice or sport supporting. Sport governance, an important topic, was either overlooked or only marginally addressed. In our study, we therefore aim to fill this gap.

Moreover, we suggest that the analysis needs to be strictly anchored within social capital terminology. Namely, studies of the first type (about the exclusive nature of sport practice) run the risk of conceptual slippage, since they employ the term ‘social capital’ as a linguistic rather than heuristic device. In particular, only a fragile distinction is made between manifestation of the dark side of social capital in sport and the aspects of sport that are simply negative and detrimental. Consistent adherence to the social capital concept requires not only addressing the misuse of social networks but also manipulating trust in sport governance.

Furthermore, following Putnam’s ideas, a wide range of evidence has been gathered on bonding social capital as a particular form of social capital in sports. Less explicit attention was given to the role of linking social capital. We attempted to find evidence of vertically (Côté, 2001) or horizontally linking social capital (Woolcock, 2001), connecting actors in dissimilar situations that contribute to the creation of dark side of social capital.

Finally, when reading the existing literature critically, it is clear that the layers of social capital analysed within studies on dark side are limited. Attention has been focused on social capital at the micro-level (as an individual) or at the macro-level (as a quality akin to society overall). However, the meso-level of sport association has been overlooked. Our analytical approach addresses the aforementioned issue of the need to analyse various levels of social capital in terms of their dynamics and interconnectedness, especially in relation to micro-level social capital.

Methodology

The analysis presented in this article draws on a multi-sited ethnographic inquiry among sport movement representatives. The study was carried out in two different countries, the Czech Republic (data collected by the first author) and Italy (data collected by the second author), mainly during the period from January 2007 to early 2008. In this timeframe we carried out fieldwork in Cagliari, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Rome, Trieste for Italy and geographically covered all the regions of the Czech Republic. During our ethnography we met dozens of persons (100 persons-interviews per country) involved in sport at very different levels: athletes, sport clubs’ volunteers, sport governing bodies’ managers or officials, representatives of public institutions, sponsors and experts.¹

The dark side of social capital was not initially an explicit focus of the overarching project, and the respondents of the research were not aware that the dark side of social capital was one of the topics of ethnographic scrutiny. The significance of the dark side emerged contemporaneously with the ethnographic fieldwork and was therefore explored as an inherent part of sport governance.

The dark nature of associational life can be demonstrated by the simple fact that our ethnographic efforts were not always welcomed, and we were occasionally referred to as spies, inspectors, controllers, or allies (exemplified in first author’s field notes from, e.g. observations of a Czech regional handball association’s general assembly on 24 March 2007; an interview with a secretary general of a regional football association on 28 May 2007; and observations at a national sailing regatta on 28 September 2007). Some respondents even consulted their colleagues and peers who had met us previously to prove our identity (second author’s field notes from an introductory meeting with a secretary general of a national federation on 3 February 2007 and first author’s field notes from an interview with a secretary general of a regional football association on 28 May 2007).

The existing distrust within some associations also forced us to be prudent when interviewing our respondents, such as when raising certain sensitive issues or when referring to the respondents to whom we had spoken previously and who provided us with specific information (first author field notes: personal communications with a volunteer for a football association, 26 September 2007; interview with an employee of the Czech football association, 7 November 2007). Repeated formal and informal requests to attend a general assembly of the Czech football association were rejected as well as the request to attend a meeting of the executive board of the Italian national sailing federation (first author field notes from, e.g. phone conversations with employees of the association, 15 and 16 January 2007; second author field notes, 10 March 2007).

Apart from reasons external to this article (an EU project), our choice of countries reflects strong evidence that dark side of social capital exists in real life and are mirrored in a wealth of academic reflections. As shown in studies not related to sport, both Italy and the Czech Republic are countries with relatively frequent episodes of corruption, political clientelism, high institutional distrust, and little respect for the laws (see, inter alia, della Porta and Vannucci, 1999; Frič, 2008; Passmore, 2007).

Needless to say, the aim of this research was not comparative given the novelty and the necessarily exploratory nature of the study. Empirical evidence gathered in different socio-cultural contexts provides the study with a variety of examples on which a solid, coherent and analytically elaborated conceptual model can be built in a future phase of our study.

We used three different techniques; semi-structured interviews were accompanied by observations and secondary analysis of documents. The collected data were thematically analysed both manually and with the Atlas.ti software package. The semi-structured interviews were carried out at the national, regional and local levels of sport federations and clubs for three sport disciplines: amateur football, handball and sailing. We selected three different sports to cover a variety of different sporting cultures and different styles of governance. Our research also touched upon the role of umbrella multi-sport associations as well as the role of public support of sport.

The fact that we did not intend to generalize from and compare partial examples specific to each of the sporting cultures and that we rather aimed to identify ideal types of the dark side of social capital, explains why sometimes no reference is made to a particular sports discipline to avoid challenging the principles of confidentiality and anonymity guaranteed to the respondents; engaging in research on the dark side of social capital creates a need to handle sensitive issues.

Such an exploration requires taking into account several ethical considerations. Interviews were conducted in an overt manner, yet confidentially, using either digital recorders or field notebooks. Throughout the data presentation, the identity of respondents is hidden and anonymized. Some respondents spoke openly about the risk of losing their jobs or positions on boards (first author field notes, e.g. an interview with a secretary general of a regional football association on 26 October 2007 and second author field notes, e.g. an interview with an official of the national sailing federation on 10 March 2007) but felt committed to disclosing the reality ‘for the good of the game’.

To better understand certain sensitive issues, observations and informal conversations proved to be useful (especially the off-record parts of interviews and meetings). Additionally, newspaper articles, internet discussion forums and sport association documents such as meeting minutes, charters, norms and resolutions were reviewed. Both participant and non-participant observations were carried out during different sporting events and sport governing bodies’ activities, such as general assemblies, executive committee meetings and annual conferences.

The evidence

The presentation of empirical evidence is divided into three main sections that present three different types of the dark sides of social capital in sport governance. The first section, entitled ‘Winners and losers of the sport governance game’, refers to the construction and use of sport-related networks (based on mutual trust and loyalty) as a tool to dispute the control of the material or symbolic resources of a sport governing body. We show that the instrumental use of these ties and the manipulation of the ties of others, existing in the form of bonding or linking social capital, results in harm to other members, the whole federation, and/or the embedding society.

The second section, entitled ‘Sport governance misused for the games played by others’, provides an account on those situations in which the social networks created primarily to foster sports development are misused in practice for political or economic interests. In these cases, the social networks that are established for sports development serve different purposes and are connected to the spheres external to sport in the form of linking social capital.

The third section, entitled ‘Playing at sport governance’ provides detailed insights in various instances when trust is deliberately manipulated by manipulating credibility, transparency or interpretations of sport governance processes. The social capital base of sport governance is therefore fragile, secured by a strategically constructed base of false trust.

Winners and losers of the sport governance game

As emphasized by scholars who have focused on the dark side of network-based social capital (Burt, 1992; Lin, 2001; Portes, 1998), networks and the trust developed within them may serve ‘exclusive’ interests, and their actions may result in damage to individuals or groups. Therefore, due to negative social capital mechanisms, the sport governance games have their winners and losers.

The constellation of winning and losing networks and actors can be first explained at a macro-social level. Sport associations represent potential spheres where macro-societal patterns of exclusion are mirrored and reproduced. In these cases, the bridging potential of social capital fails under the pressure of bonding dark side. This is illustrated by the example of Fórum Ukrajinců (Ukrainian Forum), a football team composed of Ukrainian immigrants² and playing in a regional division in the Czech Republic. The Ukrainian team faces discrimination and is kept away from its Czech rivals. Patterns of exclusion are reproduced during football games as well as in the corridors of the local football governing body. This is well documented in the following statement made by a football secretary about the efforts made by Czech clubs representatives to avoid playing against the Ukrainian team and to use their social networks in order to influence the selection of teams into division groups:³

They [The team Fórum Ukrajinců] are now playing in the B division. We have two regional B divisions with 14 teams playing in each [. . .] There are some rather friendly phone calls [from competitors] before each season asking us: ‘Do not put them in our group.’ Nobody wants to play against them. But the system of draw is always the same. This means that half of the teams always get them in their group.

The coalitions built at the micro- or meso-level of sport governance do not only mirror and reproduce macro-societal developments. Additionally, the creation of social capital with a darker side of a slightly different nature tends to be produced within the context of the sport federations’ internal power games. Federations are organizations embedded in a precise context: they manage both material and symbolic resources, and as such they are power arenas (Bernardeau Moreau, 2004; Hoye and Cuskelly, 2003; Porro, 2006). In this context, the networks of winners and losers do not reflect wider macro-societal patterns of exclusion, but rather the capacity of individuals to build strategically exclusive coalitions.

In various sports federations, networks are often used by individuals to achieve leadership positions such as presidency or board membership. A person interested in being elected or in maintaining his or her position at the head of the federation needs to be able to count on a network that will assure a majority of votes. Such a majority can be obtained by promising and managing the distribution of available resources, such as event hosting, funding, nominations for international competitions, prestige and victories.

For this reason, material and symbolic resources management may become instrumental to achieve and keep power and have little to do with the merits acquired by a sport club or by regional or local federations. In these constellations, it is rather the strength of relational resources, that is, the social capital, that matters. That is, sports volunteers’ and officials’ ties (often clientelistic ones) may affect sport governing bodies decisions more than clubs’ or individual performances and this is detrimental to sport development.

There are both relational (social capital) and material resources that are exchanged between sport governing bodies executives and local branches or clubs. For example, in some cases, sport federations managers can decide autonomously (at least de facto) about the allocation of the organizational budget, particularly the part of the budget devoted to supporting special events such as national or international championships. Some respondents in Italy criticized federations’ presidents or presidential candidates who, looking for the support of a certain number of clubs and regional branches, decided to confer a certain amount of federation resources and international and national sporting events to particular clubs and areas that had guaranteed their support at the next presidential elections (second author field notes, 10 March 2007). As we were confidentially told by one of our interviewees:

These clubs and areas are sometimes not those that are more worthy of hosting important events or receiving extra money based on their performances, but only those that qualify as loyal allies of the current or potential president. Hence, one of the most relevant principles of sport, the supreme role of meritocracy, is discarded for the success of power games.

The social network forms described previously can be understood as the dark side of vertically linking social capital, which connects persons with different positions (Côté, 2001) within the structure of sport governance. However, the dark side of social capital as part of the internal sport governance game not only includes active creation of bonding or linking networks, but they are also represented by a manipulation or even a destruction of the networks of competitors. During an interview in Italy, we were told that members of the federal council who openly challenge the president’s action are ‘for sure not confirmed in the next term’ (second author field notes: informal discussion with two officers of a national federation on 12 March 2007).

Potential competitors can be either re-confirmed or directly revoked. In the Czech Republic, the secretary-general of a regional sports association complained about losing his job because his activities and his knowledge could have weakened the position of the president (first author field notes: personal communication, 28 January 2008). As he explained more in detail:

I was dismissed by the regional executive committee, although everything was working perfectly and there were no complaints from the movement. Obviously, the president and some of his allies felt that their position was jeopardized by my strong connections built during years of regular personal encounters with the majority of the clubs’ representatives.

The secretary general possessed valuable symbolic resources, including information that could have eventually led to the revocation of the presidency. Not only was access to decisions at stake, but also the revocation of the presidency could have re-configured the power relations at the national level of the federation. This situation provides evidence of strong links between the micro- and meso-levels of social capital and its dark side.

Finally, publicly available examples of corruption scandals provide further evidence that existing social ties facilitate bribes in both Italy and the Czech Republic. Many examples show that these bribes are not used exclusively to affect the performance of sports practitioners, but that they also tend to be linked with sport governance. Therefore, the bribes might affect the decisions of officials who control the appointment of referees or evaluation of their performance.

Sport governance misused for the games played by others

Whereas the previous notion of the dark side remained limited to the field of sport, the second notion extends beyond its borders. The dark side is thus produced by the social capital created through sport (at the sport governance or sporting events levels) but serves interests external to sport. In other words, the interconnectedness between the sport and non-sport sectors is sometimes misused for economic or political interests. Metaphorically speaking, sport governance is misused for the games played by non-sport practitioners: politicians, corporations with an economic interest in sport, the media and sponsors.

The role of the social ties is analysed at a micro- and meso-level within the framework of horizontally linking social capital that is understood, following Woolcock (2001), as a resource based on ties and networks between individuals, communities and formal institutions: sport volunteers and spheres external to sport. According to experiences from both countries, close ties with politicians are quite common within football movements. This was clearly demonstrated during an interview with one of the leading officials of the Czech football association, whose office was decorated by a photograph of him with the president of the Czech Republic (first author field notes, 28 January 2008):

Today, it is not only about kicking the ball, but unfortunately also about the fact that the higher [in the associations’ organizational hierarchy – first author note] you are, the better for you it is [. . .]. On the one hand, you have politicians who need football in order to be elected. On the other hand, the people from football need the politicians to support their interests in the movement.

In particular, the notion of politicians who need football in order to be elected is striking. To be more specific, the link between sport and politics itself is not a symptom of the dark side of social capital. These ties become problematic when they are detrimental for sports development or some selected sport disciplines or are contradictory to the ethics and morals of sport. Moreover, the networks between sport and politics point out the dark side of social capital as public resources are not allocated to sport according to the criteria of necessity or merit, but rather according to political and personal interests.⁴ This may be supported by a legislative framework that allows these distribution patterns and a lack of evaluation mechanisms. This is exemplified by the complaint of a regional official in the Czech Republic:

We have a terrible thing here, the so-called ‘portioning the bear’ [a literal translation from Czech – first author note]: the deputies of Parliament decide where to allocate a budget surplus at the end of the year. Unfortunately, this money is very often spent in an absurd manner. Sports facilities are constructed in a small village in the middle of nowhere just because the deputy was born there and wants to build his headstone, or because the president of the sporting club is his good friend.

Furthermore, social ties between board members and sponsors are sometimes perceived as constraining sports development. These ties based on relations of trust and reciprocity include agreements for associations to buy and distribute certain products within their membership. Therefore, common members of sport associations are forced to buy products that they do not need (first author field notes, e.g. an observation at the General Assembly of a regional sport association on 27 March 2007). In other cases, the relations between federation top executives and monopolistic sponsors appeared rather opaque and, according to interviewees, prevented other sponsors to get involved in one sport discipline. The very confidential tone of a telephone conversation between a sponsor and a general director of an Italian federation (who after the phone call described the sponsor as ‘my dear friend’) provided further empirical evidence to the interviewees’ opinions on this aspect (second author field notes, 12 March 2007).

The networks with sponsors in several cases represented the dark side of social capital by placing excessive pressure on an athlete’s performance, results and manipulation through bribing and match-fixing. Although we did not collect any direct evidence on the issues during our ethnography, the existence of these mechanisms is reflected in dozens of stories, sometimes transformed into myths shared within football movement representatives in both the Czech Republic and Italy (first author field notes: participant observation in a local football club, 20 March 2007; personal communication with a volunteer of the football association, 8 November 2007; second author field notes: participant observation in a local football club, 8 May 2007; interview with a former player of a local football club, 10 May 2007).

Playing at sport governance

The actors involved in social ties of a dark nature often acknowledge the importance of what can be called ‘social capital at a meso-level’, that is relational resources derived from their role in a sport organization and they are willing to manipulate the nature of such ties and their implications, like trust, to pursue their own material and symbolic interests. Therefore, they tend to conceal any paths leading to the disclosure of their detrimental actions and act as if their behaviour followed the maxims of civic engagement and democratic principles. They actually do not behave according to established and shared normative principles of sport governance; rather, they are only playing at sport governance, creating an image of a fair and legitimate authority for the purpose of defending particular interests. In our analysis, we identified three ‘dark’ strategies employed to manipulate trust: manipulation of transparency, manipulation of credibility and manipulation of interpretations of the sport governance decision-making process.

First, with regard to the manipulation of transparency, in some of the analysed federations the official documents used by the executive board to make decisions were not publicly available, they were deliberately shortened, or their electronic versions were changed over time (first author field notes: personal communication with a volunteer at the national level of the football association, 8 November 2007). Decisions may also be altered illegally, as confidentially reported during an informal discussion with a federation official in Italy:

Sometimes the President changes the decision adopted by the Federal Council afterwards, without even informing the Council. He simply amends the official document as he likes, nobody checks it, and nobody makes a formal protest vis-à-vis such an illegal behaviour.

When transparency is manipulated, a form is used to create the idea of transparency and guarantee trust; however, its content is deliberately biased. As a Czech football club’s local official pointed out:

The board misuses the fact that the people in clubs have so much to do that they rarely have time to read everything in detail. If they see meeting minutes, they often do not feel the need to question them. It seems that it is an official document and everything stops there.

The correctness of the decisions made and the steps executed is sometimes inadequately justified by referring to a legal expert or to authorities. These strategies are understood as the manipulation of credibility. In this vein, some of the leading officials of the Czech football association several times attacked their opponents, employing legal actions to silence critical voices. Since this criticism challenged the distribution of power positions in the association, a specific topic-related discussion could suddenly turn into an examination or even contestation of formal procedures and rules.

An example from a regional football association shows how a decision made by the general assembly at a regional level was revoked by the national executive committee because of non-adherence to legal procedures and, more importantly, because of the vested interest of some of the members of the board. There were rumours about efforts to orchestrate an extraordinary national general assembly that would depose the executive committee, and the voice of the in pectore new regional president would have been the last missing voice necessary to convoke the extraordinary meeting. In other words, the decision would have jeopardized the position of the national executive committee (first author field notes: personal communication with a volunteer of a football association on 26 September 2007 and with the coach of a football club on 20 June 2007).

The manipulation of credibility by authorities, whose position is uncontested, represents another way of manipulating trust. In particular, this happened within the Czech football association where UEFA was often referenced to support the official (and often questioned) standpoint of the executive board. To increase the legitimacy of the official standpoint among the membership base, it was presented as approved. However, some of the association members questioned this discursive strategy, as can be seen in the following off-record comment on the General Assembly:

Yes, it is true that there was an independent delegate from UEFA, so theoretically, everything was all right. But who knows that this ‘independent delegate’ is a close friend of some of the board members? Those who participated in the assembly could have seen that he left the assembly after two hours to go shopping.

This example touches upon another strategy of trust manipulation: the manipulation of interpretation of the sport governance decision-making process. Some cases of bribery and match-fixing demonstrated that the interpreters of the sport governance game are sometimes corrupted in order to provide a biased evaluation and interpretation of the game. Both Czech and Italian corruption scandals in football demonstrated that some journalists and broadcasters were corrupted to prevent them from disclosing illegalities made in sport governance corridors (Numerato, 2009a). Similarly, stories about corruption within Czech football at the lower divisions speak of bribing delegates to force them to evaluate positively corrupted referees (first author field notes: participant observation in a local football club, 17 May 2007).

In sum, sports volunteers and officials active in sport governance can construct the appearance of prosperous civic engagement by playing at sport governance and acting as if the decision-making process were democratic and transparent. At a more abstract level of interpretation, they strategically build the appearance of trustworthy social capital at the meso-level of a sport association.

Conclusions and discussion

Contrary to mainstream conceptualizations of social capital, we have argued that the nature of social capital cannot be established once and for all as a positive or negative character for the society unless we contextualize it and unless we clarify the point of view from which we make the judgment of value embodied in the concept of social capital.

Drawing on the empirical evidence gathered during one year of multi-sited ethnographic studies in two different countries across three sports, we captured the neglected area of the dark side of social capital by looking at sport governance. Analytically, we distinguished between three different types of the dark side of social capital created in and through sport. By unpacking the nature of civic engagement which is commonly uttered to represent a good social capital (Driscoll and Wood, 1999; Putnam, 2000; Uslaner, 1999), we have demonstrated how social ties established and reproduced within sports association can be detrimental to other members, the whole federation, and/or the embedding society. We then provided evidence on how social ties created primarily to enhance sports development can be misused for political or economic interests. Finally, we have described different mechanisms through which one of the constitutive elements of social capital, trust, is manipulated.

These three dimensions of the dark side must be understood as interconnected; perhaps the last type, the manipulation of trust, can serve as a way to conceal the first or second type of dark side of social capital. Moreover, stronger social capital established within a sport association at the micro-level of narrow social ties can easily be misused for purposes that originated in spheres external to sport, such as commercial interests or politics.⁵

Although the three different forms of the dark side of social capital were identified in both countries including some very strong similarities (e.g. very often strong ties built between football and politics, distrust in the football movements developed as a consequence of corruption affairs or at a more general level, occurrence of different strategies to manipulate trust), we have explored some nationally specific differences. Some differences were observed in case of sailing that has two different positions in the Czech Republic and Italy, being a marginal sport discipline in the former and one of the most popular sports in the latter. The popularity of sailing in Italy is connected to higher stocks of material resources (e.g. sponsorship, mega-events, equipment) and the sailing association is therefore exposed to major struggles and conflicts that are though neutralized by a strong and exclusive management of power by the president and by his allies in the executive board. However, the community-based nature of Czech sailing culture (Numerato, 2009b, 2010) and generalized trust created within the association contributes preventing conflicts. Moreover, typical of the Italian reality is also the existence of strong connections between politics and sport, as leadership positions within Italian federations are connected to high social and political status (Baglioni, 2010), contrary to the Czech situation (with the exception of football) where a leadership position is sometimes considered to be a necessity as there is a lack of volunteers. This aspect of the Italian context enhances a tendency to produce negative effects of social capital, in particular in its horizontally linking form.

Another difference is rather structural than connected to particular positions of analysed sport disciplines and has to do with different historical contexts. The passivity of volunteers, which is characteristic for the Czech sport governance culture and has its roots in the communist regime before 1989, in a way facilitates any efforts to misuse sport governance. On the contrary, Italian volunteers are more likely to be involved in struggles over resources and strategic building of coalitions that can result in detrimental effects for sport development. In other words, whether the Czech examples of the dark side of social capital are frequently based on a deliberate manipulation with resigned, albeit suspicious masses of volunteers, the dark side of social capital in Italy is often characterized by its focus on struggles with opponents.

This study has several implications for both social capital theory and policy and practice. The article has contributed to theory development in two fields: in social capital literature per se and in sport sociology by enhancing a potentially critical role of sport sociology. On the one hand, it has taken the theoretical discussion on social capital further, and it has done it by virtue of a long ethnographic endeavour in multiple sport settings. On the other hand, it has brought back power and power relations in sport sociology with a new, strong body of evidence.

Our analysis confirms some of the findings of previous research on the dark side of social capital in sport. In synergy with previous studies, our ethnographies have demonstrated that bonding social capital can serve as a tool of social exclusion (Collins, 2003; Jarvie, 2003; Tonts, 2005) as well as particularized trust within small social networks that can facilitate anti-social behaviour (Long, 2008; Palmer and Thompson, 2007) or foster particular objectives contrasting with sport development.

Reducing the gap in the contemporary literature in sport sociology and sociology more broadly (Field, 2008; Warren, 2008), we explored the dark side of horizontally and vertically linking social capital and emphasized the need to study the manipulation of trust within sport governance. Furthermore, the collected evidence demonstrated that the links of sport field with external societal spheres are not only of economic or commercial nature, as suggested by Dyreson (2001), but also of political nature. Moreover, the analyses of power, hegemony and political-clientelism employed within the studies of sport governance, but omitted from explorations of social capital in sport, provided us with theoretical input that was further informed by empirical evidence. The question of power was not addressed only with an identification of different forms of power games, but also with a deconstruction of the mechanisms through which the power is uttered, in particular deliberate manipulation of social (and not only one’s own) networks and trust.

We have deconstructed the main tenets of trust that should theoretically cement members of sport associations and bind organizations through a shared responsibility for sport development. However, several examples demonstrated that these internal bonds are becoming more fragile hand in hand with the increasing importance of power, prestige or economic and political objectives external to sport. Everyday experience of sport volunteers and publicly exposed affairs can nourish distrust and decrease the organizational social capital.

The examination of the ways in which trust is manipulated inspires to further theoretical developments of the social capital concept. The fact that sport officials play at sport governance and act as if their behaviour followed the maxims of civic engagement and democratic principles confirms the notions about the proliferation of the concept of social capital understood as a collective good. The public diffusion of the concept has largely been acknowledged (e.g. Field, 2008; Portes, 1998; Roberts, 2004), yet consequences of the conceptual impact have not been analysed.

Our dialectic approach to understand the impact of the concept’s diffusion shows that sport actors may be reflexive about an emphasis which is put on social capital in policy documents related to contemporary sport governance. On the example of the dark side of social capital is evident that the proliferation of the concept leads not only to the promotion of democratic values, but also to their circumvention. Strategic adaptation of sports actors to these circumstances and a sort of impression management (see Goffman, 1990 [1959]) supports an illusory trust beyond which invisible and detrimental forces of civic engagement can be developed. This idea is in some regard complementary to another critical observation of the perverted role of sport-based intervention programmes, backed up by social capital concept, that can be transformed into tools of social control and regulation (Spaaij, 2009). We argue that further scholarship dealing with sport and social capital shall further examine this dialectic relationship, it shall analyse the dynamics fostered by a practical implementation of the social capital concept, its re-interpretation through the lens of socio-political ideologies and its unintended consequences.

This study also has other implications for further research and stimulate new research agendas as it calls upon for more informed and critical emphasis on sport governance and its exploration within different geographical and political contexts. Furthermore, it shall also enhance an analysis of different aspects detrimental to sport culture, such as doping, violence or corruption. The role of horizontally linking social capital could be explored not only by focusing on the links of sport with the spheres of politics or economics, but also in connection with medicine, as some recent research pointed out (Brissonneau et al., 2008; Malcolm and Scott, 2011).

As regards the implications for practice and policy, a greater understanding of the dark side of social capital could contribute to preventing disputes in sport governance and enhance their efficient resolution. Furthermore, an informed and critical use of the social capital concept by policy-makers could lead to a development of more efficient accountability mechanisms, which can be employed to counteract a strategic misuse of civic engagement associated with sport governance. As our evidence suggests, sport officials are able to reinterpret and adopt existing norms to support their own interests. In this context, a stronger regulation shall not necessarily work as a remedy to struggle negative externalities of sport governance. A promotion of change at an everyday basis of organizational culture rather than a formal intervention in terms of increased regulation could be beneficial. Initiatives promoting youth volunteering and inter-generational cooperation could enhance a collectively shared responsibility for ethically based sport development. Last but not least, a reduction of the dark sides of social capital could be enhanced through a cultivation of critical awareness among sport officials. In particular, a critical capacity to problematize an often naturalized, idealized and taken-for-granted allegiances between sport, business and politics and their consequences for sport, can reinforce the democratically based nature of sport governance and thus produce positive stocks of social capital at organizational and societal levels.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The research was funded by the European Commission 6th Framework Marie Curie Excellence Grant MEXT-25008 ‘Sport and Social Capital in the European Union’. We would like to thank our colleagues from the project and two anonymous reviewers for their inspiring comments and critical remarks on the earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

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