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Abstract
This paper examines the current Olympic bidding crisis and evaluates the accompanying Agenda 2020 reform process at the International Olympic Committee. The organization’s decline in public opinion, particularly in Europe, is associated with its recent failure to consistently and convincingly represent the Olympic Movement (as opposed to the Olympic Sport Industry). Using IOC relations with international human rights organizations as a template, real progress in the course of the Agenda 2020 process was achieved, but then suspended or reversed by the selection of Beijing as host of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
* Prepared for the conference De l’Administration à la gouvernance olympique: défies pour notre siècle. Lausanne, 25–26 June 2015. I thank Jean-Loup Chappelet for the kind invitation to participate.
1. The new IOC president Thomas Bach stated in a press release: ‘I am delighted that six cities are bidding to host the 2022 Olympic Winter Games. These cities and their supporters clearly understand the benefits that hosing the Games can have, and the long-lasting legacy that a Games can bring to a region’. ‘Six Cities Bid to Host 2022 Winter Olympics’, BBC, 15 November 2013.
2. Some speculated that the Norwegian NOC’s rejection of a Tromso bid as too expensive turned Norway’s North against the capital.
3. The tendentiousness of the rhetoric is revealed by the paper’s failure to discuss London 2012 in any serious way in the article. ‘Norway’s withdrawal from a race they were certain to win all but re-writes the criteria for a modern Olympic host: (1) A massive stadium of minimal practical use; (2) An unquestioning population and (3) A large stockpile of missiles. London, in the end, had all three, but it wasn’t easy. North Korea already has the lot’.
4. Even the documents and petitions of groups of athletes were unwelcome by the IOC 2000 Commission (Koss, Peel, and Orlando Citation2011). Agenda 2020’s greater openness to public opinion took its precedent instead from the Thirteenth Olympic Congress in Copenhagen, 2009. ‘More than 40,000 submissions were received from the public during the process, generating 1200 ideas’ (International Olympic Committee Citation2014b).
5. I first met Thomas Bach at the International Olympic Academy in the early 1980s, and our conversations on certain deep cultural structures organizing the Olympic performance system have stayed with me until this day. We disagreed on certain recommendations when he was chairing my culture and education section of the IOC 2000 Commission. (I found his pet proposal to award a medal for accomplishment in the arts at each Olympic closing ceremony terribly naïve and ethnocentric: Who can define for 204 national cultures what is ‘art’ much less what has world aesthetic significance? He found my proposal to have the IOC members March in the opening ceremonies procession equally naïve: the members would never consent to present themselves so publically ‘out of fear of being booed’). But I have never found reason to doubt that he understands what the phrase ‘Olympic Movement’ has to mean in order to be real.
6. The Agenda 2020 Working Groups were as follows: (1) Bidding procedure; (2) Sustainability and legacy; (3) Differentiation of the Olympic Games; (4) The Olympic program; (5) Olympic Games management; (6) Protecting clean athletes; (7) The Olympic television channel; (8) Olympism in action including youth strategy; (9) Youth Olympic Games; (10) Culture policy; (11) Good governance and autonomy; (12) Ethics; (13) Strategic review of sponsorship, licensing and merchandizing; and (14) IOC membership.
7. These summary comments derive from wide reading in the Anglophone and Francophone press. I would not expect any marked differences in the German, Polish, Swedish or Norwegian press, but would happily defer to anyone working in those languages.
8. This reticence is quite understandable, as the report’s authors are close professional and in some cases personal associates with IOC leaders and members and are seeking to influence rather than to alienate that body with a public document that could already be seen in some IOC circles as a challenge to normal ‘Olympic Family’ protocol. It is also the case that a great deal of the press portrait of the contemporary IOC is ignorant and unfair, and the authors may well have consciously refused to reinforce such ignorance and yellow journalism.
9. ‘The simple reason why, of course, is Sochi, and the $51 billion figure. That number has freaked out voters and governments alike. Layered on to that is public mistrust of the IOC itself.’ Alan Abrahamson, ‘A Four-Nation Rethink of the IOC Bid Process’, 3 Wire Sports, 15 July 2014, 1. In his speech at the conference for which this paper was prepared, senior IOC member Richard Pound strongly agreed that that the IOC’s failure to respond publically and firmly to the $51 billion figure ‘was a major mistake’.
10. By making ‘representative members’ from the IFs voting members of the IOC, the 2000 reforms inadvertently increased pressure on bid committees to succumb to exorbitant IF demands for grandiose venues and service. See MacAloon (Citation2011).
11. The current FIFA scandal and Qatar 2022 World Cup disputes have lately made the country the international poster child for labour exploitation and abuse as well as climatological challenges, all in the context of regional political instability. As of this writing, Doha seems highly unlikely to bid for the 2024 Olympics, as was once expected. No other Emirates bid is presently expected for quite some time.
12. The Nominations Committee was an important innovation of the IOC 2000 reform process, meant in part to restrict Juan Antonio Samaranch’s personal selection of new members that had led to several disastrous decisions bringing the organization into ill repute in certain quarters around the world. But the Nominations Commission was seriously compromised at the outset and never developed into the effective agency its proponents intended (MacAloon Citation2011).
13. Agenda 2020 called for a full review of the YOGs (25[1]), an action registering the belief of a significant fraction of the IOC that this pet project of Jacques Rogge should be allowed a dignified death. The YOGs were quickly taken over by the IFs and NOCs and have been increasing transformed from the culture and education festival originally intended into a high performance youth sports competition under the model of U-20 and U-17 world championships.
14. This new position is ironic since Pound was a chief proponent of IOC executive and staff professionalization and legal/managerial rationalization across the same period. Perhaps the situation has gotten so desperate in the current host city crisis that he is seriously rethinking his position.
15. For example, a Canadian delegation of gay athlete activists were stunned by the personal reception afforded to them in Lausanne by President Bach. Bruce Kidd, personal communication, April 2015.
16. Amnesty International has been the second most active human rights organization targeting Olympic practices. Brownell (Citation2012) judges that, in the run-up to Beijing, the ‘NGOs provoked a transnational debate in which “human rights” in China played a central role. This level of influence was new in the Olympic context, and manifested the increased presence of NGOs in global politics’. Her LexisNexis search turned up 5243 items in all languages on the topic Beijing/Olympic/human rights. Though doubtless more extended given the subsequent development of electronic communication, NGOs also had plenty to say during the anti-apartheid struggle of the 1970s and 1980s.
17. It should be pointed out that ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ was reduced to ‘sexual orientation’ in Agenda 2020’s Resolution 14. Was this a mere verbal economy, or is it a significant reflection of a regime of clear-cut distinction between ‘men’s’ and ‘women’s’ sports events in the Olympic system which shows no inclination to wish to further complicate matters with ‘transgender/sex sport’.
18. Katie Ross Quant. 2014. ‘Olympics to Crack Down on Human Rights Abuses ... After 2022’. Mother Jones, 21 October. http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2014/international-olympic-committee-human-rights-clause-host-city-contracts.
20. ‘Olympics Host City Contracts To Ban Bias’, HRW press release, 25 September 2014. http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/09/25/olympics-host-city-contracts-ban-bias.
21. ‘Olympics Host City Contracts Will Include Rights Protections’, HRW press release, 22 October 2014. http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/22/olympics-host-city-contracts-will-include-rights-protections.
22. Other consultants include: Coface on the country risk assessment, Economist Intelligence Unit on economic country reports, Rider Levett Bucknell on venue construction costs, International Union for Conservation of Nature on World Heritage site reports, Repucom for public support polling, UN-WHO on air quality data and UN-Aquastat on water resources.
23. Daniel A. Bell, Beyond Liberal Thought: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context. Princeton: Princeton University Press (Citation2006).
24. This was first pointed out to me by Kyle Kurfirst.
25. This managerial control comes at a severe price to the IOC itself, an embarrassing matter to many within the organization and so not publically discussed. In Beijing 2008, the IOC was so thoroughly set aside that it cancelled the customary daily coordination sessions with the OCOG. President Rogge announced that this unusual step was taken because everything was going so well that there was nothing to discuss. The real situation was that the Chinese government authorities saw little reason to bother, once the Games began, with the IOC. President Bach may be a stronger leader, but there is little doubt the same situation will likely obtain in 2022.
26. According to HRW, UN-HRC further asked Kazakhstan ‘to review the religion law, amend the trade union law, release Zinaida Mukhortova, decriminalize defamation, and remove restrictions on freedom of assembly’. UN-CEAFDAW wants more ‘effective investigations into complaints of violence against women’. UN-ERD recommended a ‘comprehensive anti-discrimination law’ and clarification of the present law on incitement of social discord. Certainly there seems room for progress in these rather straightforward matters.
27. An unusual number of members had been ‘excused’ from attending the Session in Kuala Lumpur, 11 in total, from Norway, Zimbabwe, Canada, Pakistan, Colombia, Luxemburg, USA, South Korea, and Egypt. Though no one can know how they might have voted, the outcome could potentially have been different.
28. Sam Borden, ‘Beijing Defeats Almaty in Bid to Host 2022 Winter Games. The New York Times, 31 July 2015.
29. Quoted in Borden 2015.