The study of politics in Cyprus' sport

This research attempted to determine the degree to which Cypriot sport organizations use politics. Six Research Questions guided this study: (a) Do the sport organizations in Cyprus use politics, how do they use it and what are they trying to accomplish? (b) By what type of political pressures are the various sport organizations in Cyprus challenged and for what reasons? (c) What kinds of diplomatic policies and/or political tactics do the sport organizations use to deal with issues of national identity and recognition? (d) Are there any political factors that lead to the increase of hooliganism, fanaticism, and violence among the Cypriot sport fans? (e) How could sport and the Olympic ideals serve as means of minimizing the politicization, commercialization, and exploitation of Cyprus' sport? (f) What is the degree to which nationalism, patriotism, and politics affect Cyprus' sport?

A survey was developed which addressed the purpose and research questions for this study. The questionnaires were delivered to the participants, completed and collected for analysis. The participants in this study were 62 Cypriot male and female sport administrators holding managerial positions in the Cyprus Sport Organization, the Cyprus National Olympic Committee, Sport Federations, the Sport Writers' Association and Sport Clubs. Data were analyzed and reported as follows: (a) frequencies and percentages were used to record the results of the demographic questions, which were exhibited through tables, (b) cross tabulations using frequencies along with percentages of responses to survey questions 5 through 17 were used to address all Research Questions, ( c) total responses collected from each of the 5 sport organizations were compared to determine if there were differences between the sport administrators' perceptions of the different sport organizations, and (d) all subjects' responses were reported by sport organization categories and patterns were identified in survey questions 18 through 21.

The results revealed that the degree to which Cypriot sport organizations use politics was high. It was concluded that: (a) the majority of the sport organizations in Cyprus used politics for various reasons such as personal, political, economic and national, (b) the majority of the sport organizations in Cyprus were challenged by various types of political pressures such as that exerted by political parties, political figures and state governmental officials or agencies, ( c) the majority of the sport organizations in Cyprus used diplomatic policies and political tactics to deal with issues of national identity and recognition, (d) the majority of the sport organizations agreed that political factors led to the increase of hooliganism, fanaticism and violence among the Cypriot sport fans, ( e) all sport organizations agreed that sport along with the Olympic ideals could serve as means of minimizing the politicization, commercialization and exploitation of Cypriot sport, and (f) all sport organizations agreed that the degree to which nationalism, patriotism and politics affected Cypriot sport fans was high.