Are the Olympics a bureaucracy?

Everybody loves the Olympic Games. Except when you’re the host nation in the middle of a pandemic.
Unfortunately for Japan’s government, it’s not really up to them to decide whether the Games of the 32nd Olympiad get cancelled. While Tokyo could theoretically pull the plug right now — two months from the rescheduled start date — the city is contractually obliged to go ahead. With Covid-19 cases once again surging, parts of the nation (including Tokyo) under a state of emergency and vaccine rates in the
single digits, it’s unsurprising that 59% of Japanese say the event should be cancelled.
Those voices against proceeding, while vociferous, are largely confined to Japan. Rakuten Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Hiroshi Mikitani and SoftBank Group Corp founder Masayoshi Son are among those vocalising their opposition.
Meanwhile, Seiko Hashimoto, one of the nation’s most decorated Olympians and now head of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee, noted that although the number of people coming for the event has been cut from 180,000 to 80,000, “There are not a few people who feel uneasy about the fact the games are going to be held where a lot of people are coming from abroad.”
But it’s not their choice. As Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told members of a parliamentary committee earlier this month, even though he has “never put the Olympics first,” it’s the International Olympics Committee that has the final say. It states as much in the IOC’s contract with the city of Tokyo.
So the most likely way for the games to be halted would be through a negotiated settlement involving Japan, Tokyo and the IOC.
It’s easy to explain the
insistence to push forward as being driven by sponsorship money. That’s certainly a part of it, but not the
entirety.
In fact, the committee is composed of 103 people who are “not their country’s delegate within the IOC.” This isn’t like the United Nations, where each state gets a seat in the General Assembly. If democracy were to be defined as one vote, one nation, then the IOC is certainly not democratic.
Some nations have three members on the committee — China, the US, Switzerland, among them — others just one or two, and
some none at all (Nigeria, Malaysia).
There’s a lot to be said for this organisational structure. Rather than being run by a cohort of career diplomats, the membership is weighted towards sports officials, with more than a third themselves former Olympians.
With the Olympics meant to transcend politics, it may be a good thing that national and international geopolitical issues are separated from the core decision-making of the IOC.
Instead, these 103 guardians of the Olympic Movement are charged with promoting and strengthening the integrity of sport. They also hold the power to grant recognition to the two other components of the Olympics — National Olympic Committees, of which there are 206, and International Federations, which represent 46 different sports at this year’s games.

—Bloomberg