The Olympic Movement and the Sport of Peacemaking by Ramón Spaaij & Cindy Burleson

Author:Ramón Spaaij & Cindy Burleson [Spaaij, Ramón & Burleson, Cindy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, International Relations, Diplomacy, Security (National & International), Sports & Recreation, Olympics & Paralympics
ISBN: 9780415618786
Google: lLGpcQAACAAJ
Goodreads: 11277659
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

Theorizing the movement's rise and its global political role: sovereignty, image and identity

As there are currently 205 sovereign states participating in the Olympic Movement via the membership of their national Olympic committees in the IOC, the Movement can certainly be described as a major international institution characterized by near-universal participation.10 While a comprehensive genealogy of its meteoric rise - from its beginnings as an obscure French aristocrat's lofty ideal to its current position of largely unchallenged hegemony in the realm of global sport governance - is beyond this paper's scope,11 some explanatory insights into its emergence as a major global culturo-political institution are worth exploring, as this will in turn provide key insights into how the Movement today acts as an important global political site. Accordingly, this section will explore how and why - beyond the obvious popularity of the games among the global populace - the Olympic Movement has been so successful at attracting global participation. I will argue that this can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that it serves as a vehicle through which participant states and their governments can assert their sovereignty, augment their international image and propagate a particular virtuous identity at the global level.

To begin, a key indicator of the Olympic Movement s global political importance and a partial explanation for its emergence as an eminent international institution - is its role as a venue for the demonstration and assertion of state sovereignty. In this regard, it is clear that participation in the Olympic Games has emerged as a crucial signifier of sovereignty in the contemporary global political order, as the truly global spectacle of the Olympics provides an ideal arena in which newly sovereign states or discrete political communities aspiring to sovereignty can 'display themselves, be recognized, and be legitimated'.12 Indeed, Olympic participation has historically proven central to attempts by putatively sovereign political entities to secure international recognition of this status a crucial component of the contemporary understanding of state sovereignty.13 For instance, the People's Republic of China's recognition, in lieu of Taiwan, as the legitimate claimant to the name 'China' by the IOC in 1976 played a significant role in legitimating this claim within the global community more broadly, while the German Democratic Republic's notable successes at the games during the Cold War era worked to promote international recognition of its sovereign status as a separate state.14

More generally, securing IOC membership and subsequent participation in the next games has emerged as a key sovereign act for newly independent states, as exemplified by the proportional increase in IOC participation coinciding with the period of decolonization, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Moreover, major successes at the first Olympic Games have often served as something of a global introduction to a newly sovereign entity. Consider here the case of the Croatian men's basketball team, which brought considerable international attention to the recently independent state by capturing the silver medal at Barcelona in 1992, losing only to the

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