Although often framed as politics ultimate ‘other’, it is hard to ignore that sport and the political are intimately connected. Historians, however, have up until now hardly reflected on the nature of this connection in the postwar years, on how the politicisation of sport has actually taken shape, and how actors and institutions have delineated, navigated, and crossed the boundaries between the two. This article tackles these questions through an analysis of three vectors of politicisation: political communication, struggles over the use of space, and governance and policy making. Based on a discussion of recent work at the intersection of political history, sport history, political science, geography, and communication studies, the article unearths the relationship between sport and personalised modes of political representation, explores the role of sport spaces as sites of community building and conflict, and the instrumentalisation of sport in policy schemes of the welfare state. It shows how policy schemes and governance arrangements drew sport into the orbit of the state; maps the various actors and institutions at the intersection of sport and politics, ranging from local residents’ groups to international non-governmental organisations; and highlights the gendered, exclusionary nature of new, popular forms of political communication through sport. All in all, the article makes the case for sport as a highly relevant field to engage with for those who are interested in the postwar history of political power, representation, communication, and governance.

尽管经常被描述为政治终极的“他者”，但很难忽视体育与政治之间的密切联系。然而，历史学家直到现在几乎没有反思战后时期这种联系的性质，政治化如何体育的概念实际上已经形成，以及演员和机构如何划定、导航和跨越两者之间的界限。本文通过分析政治化的三个向量来解决这些问题：政治沟通、空间使用斗争以及治理和政策制定。基于对政治史、体育史、政治学、地理学和传播学研究交叉领域近期工作的讨论，本文揭示了体育与个性化政治代表模式之间的关系，探讨了体育空间作为社区场所的作用建设与冲突，以及体育在福利国家政策计划中的工具化。它展示了政策计划和治理安排如何将体育引入国家轨道；描绘体育与政治交汇处的各种参与者和机构，从当地居民团体到国际非政府组织；并强调了通过体育进行的新的、流行的政治交流形式的性别化、排他性。总而言之，对于那些对战后政治权力、代表、交流和治理的历史感兴趣的人，本文将体育作为一个高度相关的领域进行了论证。