Sport and International Understanding—A Contradiction in Terms?

Abstract

The official value orientation of international sport emphasizes common good causes such as international understanding, peace, friendship, and Olympic solidarity. However, when nations compete in international sport events their operational goals are defined in terms of national interests and materialized in terms of competitive success. This is a basic dilemma and contradiction in international sport, and it is clearly evident in the Olympic movement. While the International Olympic Committee (IOC) operates on the basis of common good causes, the national Olympic committees (NOCs) operate on the basis of national interests. In fact, the NOCs are even reluctant to supervise any rules and resolutions interfering with this national pursuit of success, let alone recognize the common good values in international sport. In this paper it is hypothesized that international sport is vulnerable to a legitimation crisis because it is premised on values that are incompatible with the values and policies that guide involvement at the national level. This hypothesis is based on the results of a semantic differential pilot study through which the basic ideological concepts of international sport are compared with the operational concepts underlying national sport systems. It is concluded that since we know very little about the meanings people assign to international sport, it is difficult to make statements about the consequences of international events.