Olympic Facilities and Authoritarian Regimes: A Case Study of Sochi 2014

Melina Giannakopoulou ()
Additional contact information
Melina Giannakopoulou: University of Peloponnese

A chapter in Cultural and Tourism Innovation in the Digital Era, 2020, pp 493-505 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The effort to balance social and economic interests has always been a critical issue for the post-Games usage of Olympic venues. The planning, the construction but also the selection of the post-Games usage of a facility is a socioeconomic and most notably a political issue since it concerns how the public inherits capital goods and assets from mega-events. Using an instrumental case study approach this study explores the 2014 Sochi Games to critically examine how an authoritarian regime deals with its Olympic facilities pre and post-Games, and provides useful insights regarding the interrelationship between motivation for hosting, architectural philosophy, costs and post-use. Data has been collected through literature review; published academic studies were the principal source and official reports and releases, conference minutes and proceedings, directives and guidelines of official bodies and relevant news coverage were additionally used. According to the analysis mega-events in non-democratic settings are predominantly used as landmarks of strategic importance, offering legitimatization for megalomaniac developmental agendas, which result in the creation of large-scale facilities with more symbolic than functional qualities. Furthermore, since in non-democratic states the mechanisms of accountability and the institutional constraints are weaker (or absent) instances of corruption and extensive cost overruns are bound to occur.

Keywords: Olympic facilities; Post-use; Authoritarian regimes; Sochi 2014 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L83 L88 Z20 Z23 Z28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-030-36342-0_38

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030363420

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-36342-0_38

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().