The World Anti-Doping Agency: constructing a hybrid organisation in permanent stress (dis)order?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to outline a modern system-theoretical explanation of the emergence of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The approach embraced here is based on a conception of competitive sport as a functionally differentiated system organised around the binary coding ‘win/lose’. It is argued that sport produces a unique product beneficial for society as a whole, but the relationship between the sport system and its environment has been perturbed by the existence of doping. Therefore, the establishment of a new global governing body is regarded as a functional solution to a critical situation of increasing environmental criticism towards sport and its affiliated international organisations. WADA is characterised as a hybrid, heterophonic organisation because it refers to several functional systems without giving any of them primacy. On the one hand, this enables WADA to manoeuvre between several functional systems and build up its own complexity: on the other hand, the multiplicity of environmental demands can induce a state of permanent stress disorder. As such, WADA serves as a formulating agency that functions both as precondition and intermediary for a structural coupling between sport, law and politics.

Keywords:

• doping
• systems theory
• Luhmann
• structural coupling
• heterophony
• communication

Notes

1. Redundancy here refers to repetition of information for inclusion of additional information.

2. This notion is similar to the notion ‘conduire de conduire’ used by Foucault as discussed in Borch: ‘Here (Foucault, ed.) power is intimately associated with freedom; power is only power insofar as it conditions conducts that could have been different’ (2005, p. 158).

3. It refers to the page number in the downloaded document. See reference list.

4. Quoted from: http://www.wada-ama.org/en/dynamic.ch2?pageCategory.id=249 [Accessed 11 March 2008].

5. Quoted from: http://www.wada-ama.org/en/dynamic.ch2?pageCategory.id=262 [Accessed 11 March 2008).