A Political scientist's guide to watching the olympics

By Emily Holland and Hadas Aron

He's too sexy for his shirt, too sexy it hurts.

Every four years, people all around the world, many of whom are otherwise uninterested in sport (I’m looking at you political scientists), are drawn to their couches to eat pizza and cheer as athletes perform super human achievements. But in addition to the anticipation, melodrama and tension of watching Simone Biles twist and flip through the air, the Olympics is a fascinating study of international relations in practice. Here, we examine the Olympics with the “impartial” eye of trained social scientists, applying the theories we struggle to teach undergraduates to several aspects of the games.

1. The Parade of Nations. The highlight of the Olympic opening ceremony is the Parade of Nations, where athletes from all participating “nations” march together in matching uniforms waving their national flags. As former students will no doubt tell you, one of the first lessons in any introductory international relations class is the difference between a state and nation. Need a refresher course? Max Weber’s oft quoted definition of a state  is a human community which lays claim to the monopoly on the legitimate use of force.”  In contrast, a nation is a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture or language, inhabiting a particular state or territory. While we won’t bore you (any further) with detailed analysis of the marked difference between the two definitions, suffice it to say that many of the “nations” competing in the Olympics are not nations at all…they are states. Some participants, like Libya, are neither states nor nations. And what about the team from Chinese Taipei? Well that too is neither state nor nation: it is just the name agreed upon in the Nagoya Resolution whereby the ROC and People’s Republic of China agree to recognize each other for the purposes of the Olympics only.
2. Nationalism. The Olympic Games are all about nationalism. Athletes compete for their country, for the opportunity to see their flag rise or ideally even hear their national anthem playing on the podium.  The entire games are ripe with national symbolism. In popular culture there are two types of nationalism good and bad. The good nationalism promotes national economies and protects rights in the name of belonging to a community of citizens, encourages pride in Nobel winners and other accolades, and builds trust and cooperation between co-nationals. The bad nationalism ignites wars, sets neighbors against each other, and builds fences (or walls) between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The Olympics enables otherwise liberal citizens to engage in extraordinary patriotism: proudly waving flags, wearing national colors, and rooting for members of their own tribe to beat all the others without the threat of violence. In other words, the Olympics is a pillar of “good nationalism”, and good nationalism is necessary for our world order.
3. The Olympics as a guardian of the traditional world order. Eagle eyed viewers of the Olympics may have noticed several unusual “nations” participating under their own flag. Palestine, although not technically a “state,” is engaged in an old school struggle for self-determination recognition. In this respect, participating in the Olympics under their own national flag is akin to official recognition in the United Nations. Parading a team of athletes wearing traditional dresses, kaffiyeh scarves and waving a Palestinian flag is nothing short of a political statement. In the Olympics, as in the UN, international recognition is the key to national success. This idea dates back at least to 1919, but is it still relevant today in a world of constant migration, multinational states and failed states? In some cases the team manages to represent state and nation: consider the national soccer teams of France in 1998 or Germany in 2014 World Cups, both multicultural and giving the appearance of a new tolerant nation. Team USA too is an image many Americans can identify with. However, other ‘national’ teams fail to represent the variety of cultures and ethnicities of their state, and are correspondently supported only by distinct groups.
4. Team Refugee. Perhaps the most moving aspect of the opening ceremony was the march of Team Refugees. “These refugees have no home, no team, no flag, no national anthem,” said Thomas Bach, International Olympic Committee president when announcing the selection of athletes. Indeed, in a world of states, the stateless are in the worst possible position. It is certainly true for refugees from conflict ridden areas, and the team’s march is a rightful call to leaders and citizens of strong states to neglect them no longer. As an afterthought, while we justly view states as a source of order, huge numbers of people are living in semi stateless conditions. Some are the fortunate wealthy, evading taxes through constant movement, some we call “expats”: Westerners living in a foreign community of their own making, some are international students, or international workers, and some live in areas, all over the globe, where state presence is hardly felt and services are not provided. The Olympics attempts to mask all of these realities and lends states a sense of normality and permanence, at least for 16 days of glory.
5. Olympic Carpetbaggers. While watching the women’s gymnastics qualifications, our interest was piqued when a young woman named Kylie Rei Dickson appeared on the floor under the national flag of Belarus. Now I don’t know about you, but the authors, having spent a considerable amount of time in former Soviet states, have rarely heard of Belrausian women named “Kylie,” who sound suspiciously Southern Californian. In fact, Ms. Dickson is not Belarusian. She is from Los Angeles, has never been to Belarus and is not of Belarusian descendance. Apparently, any athlete can compete under any flag, as long as they acquire dual citizenship. Because Ms. Dickson did not qualify for the US team but still wanted to compete at the Olympics, she reached out to Belarus, acquired Belarusian citizenship and voila. Other athlete-nation combinations include a 55 year old German businessman named Christian Zimmerman who is competing in dressage as part of the Palestinian team and pole vaulter Giovanni Lanaro, a southern Californian of Italian descent competing for Mexico. Some countries even make poaching athletes a national policy. Foreign Policy wrote in  an article in 2014 that “Qatar, meanwhile, invests heavily in athletes from both Kenya and Bulgaria. In 2000, Qatar’s government bought an entire Bulgarian weightlifting team—eight athletes in total—in exchange for citizenship and a little over $1 million. In 2003, it also reportedly bought two Kenyan long-distance runners: Stephen Cherono and Albert Chepkurui, who duly became Qatari Olympians Saif Saeed Shaheen and Ahmad Hassan Abdullah (neither Cherono nor Chepkurui were actually Muslim).” This works out for everyone, the athletes get to compete and  countries get to have a team. Of course, it also undermines the political statist goals of the Olympics, and demonstrates a lack of social investment in many states. 

Having said all this, the Olympics are still an enormous source of summer entertainment, with incredible personal stories, and of course, Katie Ledecky. But in those dead hours of badminton and handball (or another sport you find painfully dull, we mean no offense), we invite you to consider the political machine behind the human achievement.