ABSTRACT
A pretty sordid pattern of sorts was emerging at the hegemonic sporting international non-governmental organizations (SINGO); let the culprit know the imminent outcome of the investigation, accept a resignation, and the number of expulsions for corruption and criminality is then kept to a minimum in the records of membership. The power of competition and imitation has meant that there is a surprisingly large number of SINGOs and that most of them are remarkably similar to each other, at least in their formal structures. Studying SINGOs is in some respects like studying the Soviet Union during the Cold War; it was easy enough to state the formal properties of the system, how it was supposed to work and who, for example, was supposed to report to whom. Thus, there are some gratifyingly broad generalizations which apply to most major SINGOs, but also some very good reasons to be sceptical about the value of those generalizations.
