Not just the Games? Power, protest and politics at the Olympics

Abstract

This article conducts a theoretical and empirical analysis of political protest activity surrounding the modern Olympic Games. Although the Olympics are certainly among the world’s most prominent and recognized events, they have seldom been explored from a political perspective within the mainstream International Relations and transnational protest literatures. We argue, however, that the Olympics provide a theoretically interesting context in which to examine political contention in International Relations in large part because they provide such a unique opportunity structure for a range of actors to exercise power in pursuit of their goals. The article presents an original dataset of all protest occurring between 1896 and 2008 and uses these data to show that not only has Olympic political contention grown substantially over time, but it also has evolved in interesting ways in terms of the particular actors engaged in contention, the tactics they use, and the resistance they face. Furthermore, we suggest that the study of the Olympics has important implications for understanding the power and power limitations of those actors (including transnational advocacy networks, international institutions, and sovereign states) participating in Olympic protest.