The development of basketball in Taiwan: from the perspectives of theories of governance and strategic relations

This thesis has sought to investigate the nature of the governance system relating to basketball in Taiwanese society with emphasis on the development of basketball against the backdrop of societal development in Taiwan and in the broader political-cultural environment. Two complementary theoretical approaches are adopted in this study: those of governance theory at the meso level of analysis; and a strategic-relational approach at the macro level to explain the ways in which governance decisions are taken in strategically selective contexts which facilitate and constrain certain actions and thus outcomes. The empirical analysis draws on a qualitative case-study approach, which was based on documentary materials and semi-structured interviews. Three major cases, namely, the collapse of the Chinese Basketball Alliance, the emergence of the Super Basketball League and the sporting links with China, were selected on the basis of their significance in the operational governance of basketball. The first is a specific event, the second focuses on a particular process, and the third on the impact of context. The perceptions of the stakeholders in the specific groups were reviewed in order to compose insights into their account of the principal interests and forces in the governance system. Interview transcripts and government reports were subject to coding employing Nvivo 9 qualitative data analysis software, and coding and analysis were undertaken employing an ethnographic content analysis approach. While governance theory provides an explanatory framework at the meso-level of analysis, the thesis argues for embedding this within a wider strategic relational meta-theoretical account. This emphasises the dialectic relationship between strategic, reflexive actors and the strategic selectivity of the context of decision-making which privileges certain strategies and tactics, and explains the structural coherence (and/or patterns of incoherence) which have emerged in the evolving nature of the governance of basketball in Taiwan. By focusing on these three inter-related studies, we provided linked spatio-temporal forms of explanation of how the collapse of the CBA provided the strategic context and strategic resources for the emergence of the SBL and the Sina Basketball Club s migration to China. Subsequently the case of the SBL and Sina provided the strategic context and strategic resources for Taiwanese players migration to China as individual sportsmen. The thesis has thus produced explanations of how the outcomes of one case provide the strategically inscribed selectivity of the next which with recursively selected strategies and tactics on the part of stakeholders produces the structured coherence/pattern (and / or incoherence) of the Taiwanese (male) prospective-professional basketball system.