ABSTRACT
Beginning with the idea of a “city of exception,” based on contemporary discussions regarding the negation of politics intrinsic to neoliberal projects, this chapter seeks to analyze the principal institutional ruptures and realignments that occur as a result of the organization of sporting mega-events in the places that host them. The chapter presents the argument that the political and juridical autonomy that the field of production of sport spectacle has claimed historically gives it the power to make specific forms of institutionalism and of exercising power viable. As such, this field creates ideal conditions for the authoritarian character inherent in neoliberal management models to assume its highest degree of sophistication. The convergence between the production of sport spectacle and the production of the city offers an ideal empirical object to show how market-oriented planning models engender and, simultaneously, are sustained in intensely authoritarian exercises of power and public management. Although the field of production of sport spectacle claims for itself a universal application of the regulatory apparatus that it produces to steer its relation with the field that produces the city, this does not occur uniformly across all territories. The macrostructural context and the correlation of forces that exist within the coalitions of dominant groups define the peculiarities, gravity, and limits of this application in every individual case.
