The Regulation of Transnational Sports Competition: Down from Mount Olympus

This article seeks first to identify the behavioral and organizational characteristics, and to clarify the shared goals of transnational sports competition. Against this background, the article will examine the formal characteristics of decision-making within the Olympic Movement, whose quadrennial Games provide the most highly developed for a for these events. Finally, four case studies are used to evaluate the Olympic organization's performance--that is, the efficacy of relevant policies, rules and procedures that are available to decision-makers to achieve the shared goals of the organization. Several modest proposals are advanced.

Aside from these, however, a comprehensive prescription of alternative policies, rules and procedures must await subsequent research.