Suchergebnisse

Summary
The recent years have seen a surge in elite athlete activism. This article examines how Olympic athletes are currently challenging the stability of central institutions of the Olympic Movement as collective political actors. The study builds on explanations of stability and change stemming from punctuated equilibrium theory and path dependency. Applying a multiple mini case study design, it is first illustrated how these mechanisms have been in play in the reproduction and disruption of historic Olympic institutions. The main analysis then shows how Olympic athletes, through their different organizational forms, challenge institutions that are detrimental to their interest. The findings illustrate that Olympic athletes have increased their power resources and apply strategies to defy institutions, which are reproduced on the basis of path-dependent explanations. In doing so, athletes have the potential to severely destabilize the system if their interests remain unaccounted for by those governing the Olympic Movement.

The organisation of work and employment relations is a core issue of social policy, but also touches on fundamental questions of the political and legal order of communities. While employment relations have been researched in detail with regard to the general structure of employer-employee relations, there are hardly any information and studies available on the employment relations in the specific area of sport governance. This is even more the case in so-called Olympic sports that are organised outside of professional leagues and where athletes only rarely have an employment contract with a club. Against the backdrop of various approaches to sport governance on the national level and an increasing number of conflicts between athletes and sport governing bodies, this Fact Report provides unique data on the employment and social relations of athletes in Olympic sports in 29 European countries (27 EU members + Norway + UK). Data were gathered by national experts of the 29 countries and presented in five Regional Summaries (Northern, Central, Eastern, South-Western and South-Eastern Europe). The findings of the report serve as a sound basis for engagement with and discussion among the different stakeholder groups on the international, continental, national and regional level. As a result, the project team first looked more closely at the fields of enquiry and categories of employment relations in the specific context of sport and developed a research tool (January to April 2021). Adding to that, the large number of countries, the different approaches to sport governance and policy as well as the short time span of the data collection period (from April 2021 to August 2021) yield that the findings presented in this Fact Report are interim. The data and findings will be updated over the course of the project period (until December 2022).