Browsing by Subject "Sport governance"
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Item Exceptions and exceptionalism : The United States Soccer Football Association in a global context, 1950–74(2015-08) Kioussis, George Nicholas; Hunt, Thomas M.; Bowers, Matthew T; Dimeo, Paul; Hoberman, John M; Todd, Janice SSince the 2001 release of Andrei Markovits and Steven Hellerman’s Offside, the dominant narrative about football in the United States has been one of exceptionalism – a term used to denote uniqueness, but also one wrapped up in notions of superiority. A finde-siècle desire for exclusively “native” sports, so the theory holds, prompted Americans to turn a collective cold shoulder to the kicking game in favor of their own national pastimes. In the years thereafter, the American footballing experience diverged still further, as evidenced in the cachet the women’s game achieved at the turn of the millennium and the sport’s transformation from working-class pastime to bourgeois pursuit. Lost in these points of disjuncture, however, are important junctures. This dissertation endeavors to bring these junctures – the exceptions to exceptionalism – to the fore by focusing on the understudied United States Soccer Football Association. Using a rich array of archival materials, it connects America’s “soccer men” to the broader international football system and argues for a moderation of the paradigm of exceptionalism. It begins by focusing on the overlap of people, focusing on the social and developmental links members of the USSFA established with their colleagues abroad. It then transitions to the overlap of ideas – first with regard to the intrusion of business interests into sport, then with regard to adapting football to fit the patterns of an increasingly competitive sport and leisure marketplace. In sum, this work teases out the complexities in a historiography that has typically been written with a view to difference.Item A structural theory of Olympic governance(2014-08) Jedlicka, Scott Ryan; Hunt, Thomas M.This study investigates the suitability of applying international relations theory, specifically international regime theory, to Olympic sport governance. The reliance of the Olympic governance system upon its conception of sport as a politically transcendent source of moral inspiration and the importance of this ideology to political actors can be used to accurately classify it as an international regime or institution. Two outcomes derive from this argument. First, the Olympic regime acknowledges states as free riders and allows them to accrue benefits from association with Olympic sport without bearing any of the costs of providing it. This makes the Olympics an especially appealing target for state political manipulation. Second, the regime is relatively unable to enforce any of its rules for state behavior not because it is weak or lacking in legitimacy, but because its ideological principles make enforcement impossible. The arguments advanced in the first section of the dissertation are supported by empirical case studies in the second. Historical process tracing methods are used to synthesize historical narrative with causal analysis. The decision to ban South Africa at the 1968 Summer Olympics, the 1980 U.S.-led boycott of the Summer Games in Moscow, and the development of the International Convention against Doping in Sport are all instances in which the Olympic movement and international politics intersected, and thus represent useful illustrations of the relationship between the Olympic regime and international politics.