Olympic Games and democracy

Abstract

We analyze whether the Olympic Games contribute to a process of democratization in the awarded country, as postulated in the cases of the 2008 and 2014 Olympics. We control for endogeneity issues that may arise if the decision to award host status by the International Olympic Committee is affected by democratization in the bidding countries. Building on a broad-spectrum model of concepts and variables of democratization, we cannot reject the hypotheses that the Olympics have no effect on the democratization trajectories of host countries, neither positively nor negatively. We check for robustness of our results via a bundle of difference-in-difference and synthetic control methods and a number of alternative specifications. The one-off event of the Olympic Games, although they attract considerable international attention, does not seem to be able to lead to lasting changes in democratization.