Opinion series: The history and politics of the Olympic Games

The Paris Olympics are underway. Northwestern University international politics professor Ian Hurd and student Sadie Barlow explore the history and geopolitics of the Games in this three-part series.

Part 1: The Swiss tax code and global machinery bring you the Olympic Games

The global machinery behind the Olympic Games is rich, powerful and very weird.

The Games in Paris are the conjunction of three sets of organizations. First, each sport has an international federation that sets rules and organizes competitions, and second, each country has a national Olympic committee that chooses the country’s best athletes. Holding it together is the International Olympic Committee, the strange Swiss heart of it all.

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Part 2: At the Olympics, must it be men versus women?

It may come as no surprise that the first modern Olympics were a men-only affair. The second, in Paris in 1900, included 22 women, and from then on, every Olympic Games has wrestled with whether, and how, to treat men and women differently. The concepts of equality and fairness are murky at the point where sports meet gender, and Olympic history is full of stories that show how hard it can be to muddle through.

Sex segregation is as much a part of the Olympic movement as medals, anthems and bribery scandals. There is no Olympic sport that is indifferent to gender in the sense of allowing everyone to join without regard to sex. As a result, every Olympic sport tries to regulate the boundary between men and women — and keeping up the distinction is a tremendous amount of work.

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Part 3: As in 1936, war is not enough to exclude a nation from the Olympic Games

The founding myth of the Olympics is that sports bring people together and can bridge political divides. Governments may clash and politicians disagree, but the Games show what is possible when people compete in the Olympic spirit of “friendship, solidarity and fair play” on the playing field.

Like all fantasies, the ideal of world peace through sport has only a slim connection to reality. It has helped the International Olympic Committee become immensely profitable, but it masks the strategic decisions that guide the Olympics, especially in times of war, conflict and authoritarian rule. The Olympics are enmeshed in global politics, though the committee doesn’t like to talk about it.

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