Scandal and governance: inside and outside the IOC 2000 Commission

This article offers an ethnographically based analysis of the work of the IOC 2000 Commission, the official body commissioned to propose reforms in the wake of the IOC bribery scandals. The composition and modus operandi of the reform commission, its main debates and recommendations, the actions taken upon them by the IOC Session and the record of these reforms over the ensuing decade are characterized and evaluated. Special attention is paid to the impact of the reform process on IOC governance, the Olympic Games bidding process, and the growing tensions between the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Sports Industry. Notes 1 University of Toronto, 18–20 May 2009. I am grateful to Bruce Kidd, Dean of the School of Health and Physical Education, for the invitation to participate and, as ever, for his leadership in the Olympic Movement. 2 CitationGusfield, The Culture of Public Problems. 3 See CitationMacAloon, 'Ethnographic Imperative' and 'Theory of Spectacle'. 4 CitationChappelet and Kübler-Mabbott, The International Olympic Committee. 5 CitationMacAloon, 'Doping and Moral Authority'. 6 For a new set of case studies of the backstage micro-practices and events that compose the larger process, see CitationMacAloon, ed., 'Bearing Light'. 7 CitationWeber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1, 241–54, 266–71. 8 Truth be told, however, much of what he suppressed were intentional provocations of mine. For example, the Research Council of the Olympic Museum was then struggling against the IOC Marketing Department in our effort to keep the Olympic documentary heritage a public good instead of being turned into a commodity for sale on the international market. I had a 'hands off' resolution inserted into an early draft of our RC section's recommendations in the effort to foment discussion across the IOC. It did not survive the internal editing process. 9 MacAloon, Field Notes, Seoul, 1987–89, including interviews with Seoul Olympics President Park Seh-jik in August 1988 and May 1989. 10 For example, in 1999 Michael Kontos was a low-level public relations operative for Hill & Knowlton assigned to the IOC 2000 Commission, where his activities were regarded with considerable scepticism by many RC members. Ten years later, after Olympics-related work for Beijing and London, Kontos resurfaced as de facto communications chief and de jure international relations director of the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid. To have such sensitive posts filled by an operative seconded from a public relations firm is compelling illustration of the normalization of practices that would have seemed bizarre in IOC circles only a decade earlier. 11 See CitationMacAloon, '"Legacy" as Managerial/Magical Discourse'. 12 CitationTurner, The Ritual Process. 13 At the same time, it must be pointed out that the (distant) second place finisher in the presidential election was Kim Un-yong, who had been implicated in the scandal and had received a warning from the IOC Ethics Commission. Kim was subsequently jailed in South Korea for embezzlement and money laundering. 14 I thought to myself, 'Yeah? Too bad you didn't consult me before bombing Cambodia.' The invited collaboration in the Olympic peace movement of persons regarded as war criminals by others around the world testifies to the ambiguities of growing interlocks among international non-governmental organizations, states and new social movements. (Kissinger, of course, also holds the Nobel Peace Prize.) 15 CitationPound, Inside the Olympics, 252–9. For the 1980's general background to these membership debates, see CitationLandry and Yerlès, The International Olympic Committee, 59–74. 16 I do not imply here any self-conscious effort on the part of the IOC administrators to use the persons, issues and resolutions of the Olympic Movement types on the RC to legitimate their own agendas as paid professionals. I have no evidence for such a strategy, and to hint at it would be self-serving in any case. Although a handful of IOC directors and dominant IOC members do sincerely care about the issues that preoccupy the 'culture, international education, and social justice crowd', the majority consider that they know best on these issues too. They do not recognize any important distinction, much less struggle between the OSI and the Olympic Movement and are generally patronizing of the 'amateurs' and 'volunteers' who claim to speak for the latter. 17 See MacAloon, Bearing Light. 18 See CitationInternational Olympic Committee, VI World Forum on Sport, Education, and Culture. 19 Our late friend Nikos Filaretos, IOC member in Greece and International Olympic Academy president, never forgave me for rendering him a vice chairman under Chairman He Zhenliang in the new body. Filaretos ended my long association with the IOA as a consequence. 20 Such as the Japanese National Olympic Academy, various university bodies in South Korea, China and Chinese Taipei, the Busan Forum, Qufu public authorities and leaders of the IOA in Greece. Professor Kang Shin-pyo has been the chief author and spokesman of the movement for an East Asian IOA in Qufu. 21 Prior to my own city's bid, I have offered counsel as an unpaid advisor to any and every bid committee that has asked for my input. For 2016, I worked for Chicago exclusively, again as an unpaid volunteer, but I nevertheless told my friends in the Rio bid what I thought was their greatest challenge to defeating Chicago and the other two bidding rivals. Not crime, but poverty. Since the 1983 Session on Delhi, the IOC has painfully understood the media and public relations cost of plonking down the Olympics amidst the world's most abject poverty. Whether realistic or not, it remains to be seen, but President Lula da Silva and the Rio bid team began last spring to position Rio 2016 as an urban poverty-alleviation project. By choosing Rio for 2016, the IOC has arguably made a powerfully 'Olympic Movement' choice, one different from but potentially more courageous and more controversial than the choice of Beijing.