‘A Secret Instinct of Social Preservation’: legitimacy and the dynamic (re)constitution of Olympic conceptions of the ‘good’

Despite the relative novelty of the contemporary sport-for-development movement, instrumentalising sport for purposes of human and collective development is nothing new. The International Olympic Committee's (ioc) belated efforts to play a leadership role in this movement is ironic, given its 117-year commitment to placing sport at the service of world-cultural ideals of progress, equality, development, modernisation and international understanding. The ioc's behaviour is best understood with reference to the institutional environments it has inhabited. Rather than adapting primarily because of ineffectiveness, the ioc has changed the meanings of its social interventions (often unwittingly) in order to secure legitimacy among its institutional peers and other exogenous actors in world politics (eg states, activist organisations, etc). Reinventing itself in accordance with evolving world-cultural preferences allows it to survive and have a measure of power. Three historical periods are reviewed to illustrate how the social purposes of the Olympic movement have adapted to account for changes in the ioc's institutional environment. Its recent embrace of the sport-for-development movement is merely its latest reinvention.