Political celebrity and the Olympic movement: exploring the charismatic authority of IOC presidents

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the modernisation of the role of president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by analysing the actions of three men who held the position during the twentieth century: Pierre de Coubertin, Avery Brundage and Juan Antonio Samaranch. Employing Weber's concept of charismatic authority, and considering its connections to, and congruence with, contemporary understandings of political celebrity, we examine how each of these men mobilised their influence and authority to reinvigorate the political energy of Olympic sport and benevolent Olympism, particularly in times of crisis and/or apathy. In turn, we illustrate how the IOC under Samaranch came to embrace celebrity culture and spectacle in a way that solidified the organisation's legitimacy, power and influence amidst the challenges of governance posed by late modernity. Our central argument is that all three of these men were charismatic leaders, in the Weberian sense, and that they mobilised this authority using the forms, means and opportunities of power particular to their respective time periods. In turn, the extent to which they can be considered political celebrities should be considered against the ‘routinised authority’ that has become ascribed to the position of the IOC president itself.

Keywords:

• charisma
• Weber
• Olympic Games
• politics
• celebrity
• authority

Notes

1. These political contradictions have endured to the present day where the contemporary Olympic Charter maintains that ‘The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society’ (Olympic Charter 2007, 11).

2. ‘The primary, fundamental characteristic of ancient Olympism, and of modern Olympism as well, is that it is a religion. By chiseling his body through exercise as a sculptor does a statue, the ancient athlete “honored the gods”. In doing likewise, the modern athlete honors his country, his race, and his flag. Therefore, I believe that I was right to restore, from the very beginning of modern Olympism, a religious sentiment transformed and expanded by the internationalism and democracy that are distinguishing features of our day’ (Coubertin 2000, p. 580).

3. ‘The Olympic Movement was one of the most significant “invented traditions” (Hobsbawm 1992) of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it remains the preeminent international cultural movement in global society as we enter the twenty-first century’ (Roche 2002, 165).

4. This is not to say that Brundage's particular decisions or personality were necessary, only that the institution of the IOC needed this kind of charismatic leadership in order to continue to enjoy the place in world society that it had hitherto.

5. For his part, Killanin seemed to run (successfully) on a platform that he was ‘not Avery Brundage’ (Guttmann 1984, 247).

6. The commercialisation of the Olympic brand has been extensively treated elsewhere and we do not wish to repeat that literature here, except insofar as to recognise the Olympic turn towards global capital flows and the pairing of odd bedfellows in the form of sponsorships (see Payne 2006, Barney et al. 2002). The acceptance of professionals into the Olympic fold has likewise been extensively treated, and we only address it here as it applies to the appropriation of the influence of professional-athletes-as-celebrities (see Allison 2001, Slack 2004).

7. Think, for example, of Johnny Weismuller, the five-time Olympic gold medalist that became the famous ululating Tarzan in many films in the 1930s.

8. Even the choice of celebrities was illustrative of the use of celebrity power by the IOC. The inclusion of Nelson Mandela, for example, yielded a number of influential images to the Olympic movement. Mandela was, of course, a political leader and the head of the South African state. He also conjured remembrance of the IOC's (somewhat belated) boycott of apartheid-era South Africa. Further, as attested to in the recent findings of the Reputation Institute, Mandela is perhaps the most visible and admired ‘public personality’ in the world (Reputation Institute 2011).