ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s the institutional frame of international Olympism has been called into question. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), as an oligarchic, self-co-opting organisation with worldwide monopolistic tendencies, lacks democratic structure, legitimation and control from below. Although a social problem from the very beginning, this was not regarded as a special political problem as long as the IOC members were, elected or not, a mirror of the nations and cultures represented in the Olympic Games. Since the decolonisation of Africa and Asia, however, and since the rise of non-European sports movements, this has changed, and the Olympic structure now demonstrates a remarkable national-cultural inequality. This has resulted in increasing tensions between UNESCO, where the non-European countries form a solid majority, and the IOC, where Western and European members still dominate. The conflict is even more distinct between the IOC and the non-aligned nations, seventy-two of whom have no representation at all in the IOC. This problem is not restricted to the IOC. It is also a structural problem of the international sports federations in which Western and European functionaries still dominate. It is on this political level that the call for a ‘new international sports order’ has originated.
