A Futile Contestation for Olympic Power: The Case of Roberto G. Peper’s Election to the International Olympic Committee

Abstract

Since its founding in the late nineteenth century, the procedure to elect the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has remained largely unaltered. Although generally accepted in the Olympic Movement, this procedure has been criticized and even contested. Moreover, particular nominations and elections for membership in the IOC have occasionally been challenged. For the most part, due to the inner workings of the IOC and its tight-lipped approach, these criticisms, contestations, and challenges have not played out publicly and scant details are known about them. This paper analyzes the contentious election of Argentine Roberto G. Peper to the IOC in the mid-1970s. The vicissitudes of his case lay bare a challenge to the IOC’s procedure to nominate and elect its members. They reveal that the Argentine Olympic leadership was not a passive recipient of the IOC’s dictates and illustrate the existing tensions between the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and the global Olympic leaders, which at the same time help to frame and understand the controversy at hand. The paper demonstrates that the IOC’s insistence on its procedure to elect its members brought unexpected instability to its structure and offered the NOCs an opportunity to challenge its power.