Global Governance and Global Sports: Law, Regulation, and Hybrid Sovereignty

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

From the World Cup to the Olympics, the grand spectacles of sports mobilize public loyalty and private profit. Despite their scale and resources, they are missing from most accounts of global governance because they are constituted largely by private actors. These actors nonetheless possess unusually deep forms of political authority: they set, and also enforce and adjudicate, global norms. Their authority is not limited to sports - they regulate a wide range of public issues including employment conditions, sustainability, corruption, health, and inclusiveness. Directly and indirectly, they affect the lives of billions of people around the globe. Global sport governance thus constitutes one of the most significant examples of global governance beyond the classical intergovernmental model. The intrusiveness of private authority in sport as well as a range of governance failures including high-profile scandals raise unique questions of legality, legitimacy, accountability, and good governance. Moreover, the resultant increased public interventions in the initially fully private regimes has resulted in a complex mix of public and private authority at the top of global sports. This panel suggests that sport is an especially useful domain for thinking about global governance, international affairs, and hybrid sovereignty.

Sub Unit

• Division 17: International Collaboration

Individual Presentations

• Institutions of Global Sports Governance - Ian F. Hurd, Northwestern University; Sadie M Barlow

• The Transnational Legal (Dis)Order of Sex in Sport - Michele Krech, University of Chicago Law School

• Hockey Canada’s Governance Crisis: Between Law and Governance - Ryan Gauthier, Thompson Rivers University

• The Dark Side of Governance: Discursive Strategies in Global Sport Governance - Arnout Geeraert, Utrecht University

Chair

• Ian F. Hurd Northwestern University

Discussant

• Swati Srivastava Purdue University