Definition of Politics Essay

The art and science of government; dealing with the form, organisation and administration of a state or part of one, and of the regulation of its relations with other states†¦political [means] belonging to or pertaining to the state, its government and policy. Oxford English Dictionary. There are two types of political systems, the Centralised political system, and the Decentralised political system. The centralised political system is a means to run the country under central control, with no local authorities creating rules and regulations for a specific area, an example of this is the former Soviet Union, or modern China. This ruling is known as communism. Sports in communist countries are controlled in the same way as any other social agencies, such as education. Sport was used for boosting morale, production, and effectiveness of the military and to provide a successful image for their regime around the world. The athletes of the communist bloc regimes dominated world sport for many years until the cold war ended. A decentralised political system is one where the administration of government is re-organised into smaller autonomous units such as local authorities in the UK and individual states in the USA. Each area decides its own policies on sport provision and effectiveness of sport in schools. Many sports people see sport as a means of escaping every day life, which is controlled by the government and do not which to see sport controlled except by their own governing, bodies e.g. IOC, FIFA. However, government influence cannot be avoided in some circumstances. Sport has been used for government propaganda purposes, for example the Nazi propaganda in the 1936 Olympic Games, which Hitler used to promote his Nazi ideals. In Russia, the government insisted that a fitness campaign called â€Å"Ready for labour and defence† was compulsory for all its citizens and was still operational in the latter half of the 20th century. In our own country, following heavy losses in the Boer war, it was felt that the military was not fit enough and so compulsory fitness exercises was instigated in all state schools in the early 20th century to improve the fitness of the working class. More recently, we can see how politics and sport cannot be separated when the English cricket team pulled out of a group match due to political unrest between Zimbabwe and England. Sport can be used to introduce or reinforce social harmony. By introducing good sporting facilities into areas that have suffered unrest, the government hopes to lure youths to use the facilities wisely in their spare time rather than be involved in anti-social behaviour. The governments Education Act of 1988 affected the provision of sport in schools. The conservative government wanted more control over the teaching of physical education in schools and produced a report called â€Å"Raising the game.†Ã‚  In reality, sport needs politics as much as politics needs sport. For example, the government can provide finance and locations to stage major sporting events such as the Olympics and the World Cup. In return, sporting teams who perform well promote a country to the rest of the world, and raises national pride. All beneficial to any government. Drugs have been used throughout history, since the time of the Greeks and Romans who took substances to improve their performance and so it is not a modern problem. However, drug use in modern sport has become more widespread, and is now shown to be a problem across all the sports and in both genders, at both amateur and professional levels. An increase in drug use came about through various factors such as advances in biology and medicine, the use of drugs in WW2, the development, and availability of testosterone steroids and growth hormones in the 1950’s. Weight trainers saw the potential of these drugs and used them to their own advantage and other athletes were able to see the potential of using drugs to improve their own play e.g. snooker players used beta-blockers to steady nerves.