Sports mega-events and changing world order

Abstract

Processes of making, sustaining, reforming, and un-making world orders are constants in global politics and development. Understood in the neo-Gramscian tradition pioneered by Robert Cox, ideas, institutions, and material capabilities combine to shape the range of possibilities for more and less stable orders. Sports mega-events (SMEs)—most prominently, the Olympic Games—have played an underappreciated role in this process. This paper examines the ways in which the Olympics manifested and supported the rise of globalized neoliberal hegemony in the early 1980s, the reconfiguration and erosion of this order through the 1990s and 2000s, and efforts to fundamentally revise this order in the new millennium. Particular emphasis is placed on the dual role of SMEs and the Olympics as manifestations of conspicuous consumption and the pursuit of prestige on the one hand, and as focal points for sanctions campaigns and boycotts on the other.