ABSTRACT
In times when cities around the world are withdrawing from consideration to host the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has responded by enacting policy reforms. Entitled Olympic Agenda 2020: 20 + 20 Recommendations, we examine forty recommendations through the lens of critical policy analysis. Specifically, we use Strittmatter et al.’s framework of legitimation strategies in policy formulation and implementation to investigate the ways in which the use of sustainability and legacy terminology is employed in the process of legitimating the IOC today. Findings demonstrate two general legitimation strategies. One is the familiar framing of the Olympic Games in terms of sustainability and legacy with a new emphasis on the Games as an opportunity to integrate cities’ long-term planning needs into bidding and hosting the event. The second focus asserts the Olympic Movement’s global leadership role in sport in the context of sport itself being depicted as a leading social institution in making meaningful social change. In this paper, we detail these legitimation strategies and offer commentary related to the need for the IOC to use this policy reform process to move beyond rhetoric alone to embed meaningful and measurable accountability standards in the hosting process.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Thanks to a reviewer who suggests a slightly different but important perspective on the IOC’s position vis-a-vis prospective hosts. The reviewer posits that at times the IOC can be seen as victim, vulnerable to the uncertain actions of potential host cities at a time when the interest is already waning. In this paper, we choose to accentuate the considerable but nascent power of the IOC to pressure hosts to deliver Games that are more sustainable and therefore more attractive. At the same time, we do believe that we offer a positive programme for the Games as lever for community-based legacies.