Municipal Grants for Sports and the Merits of a Voucher System in the Czech Republic

Authors

PAVLÍK Marek DE VRIES Michiel S.

Year of publication 2013
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source The NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Economics and Administration

Citation
Field Management and administrative
Keywords Sports policy; grant; voucher system; transparency; subsidies
Description In Europe in 2008 governments spent 36 billion Euro on sports subsidies. One of the main goals for spending public money on sports is to increase the participation of people in sports. The Czech Republic even spent more than average on sports. However, the participation in sports in this country lags behind the European average. This article investigates whether the way such grants are given can explain this. One of the outcomes of this paper is that transparency in the decision-making process in sports-grants allocation is lacking, resulting in many cases of fraud. This paper also investigates the merits of an alternative way of allocating money, which is, using sports vouchers as a tool for allocating public resources. The experience with that instrument is, although rare, quite positive, especially in reducing fraud. Although there is a lot of hesitance against using vouchers, the experience shows that this is primarily based on prejudice and unfamiliarity with this instrument.
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