S TAGE III: I NTERVENTION

Should non-compliance inevitably occur, Stage III: Intervention functions as an institutionalised scheme to review and respond to potential non-compliance cases brought forward from Stage II. We will examine the strategies used by IFs to ramp up social pressure, taking into consideration (1) their interactions with the entities external to IFs’ own pyramidal network, as guided by the dimension of horizontal linkages, as well as (2) IFs’ political advancement as a sport, as guided by the dimension of institutional profile.

Stage III: Intervention is supposed to be consisting of an informal consultation/bargaining phase, where non-compliance is reviewed and misunderstandings are cleared, and formal infringement proceedings, where actions are

taken as per a rule-based legal procedure. The focus of Stage III is to pressure non-compliant federations to conform.

4.4.1 Strategies in the informal process

The informal process is a phase preceding the formal infringement proceedings where non-compliance cases are reviewed and maybe negotiated mainly to eliminate inadvertent cases. We have identified one strategy in this informal process: IFs aim to reinforce their authoritative role. This strategy is categorised within the dimension of institutional profile. It is argued that the strength of institutional profile is often determined by the level of states’ involvement in international institutions, i.e. whether only low-level bureaucratic coordination is involved or a periodic ministerial conference is being held (Haas, 2007). According to the empirical evidence, we gathered for this research, we argue that the factors affecting IFs’ institutional profile are not exclusive to the state actors. We will discuss the substance of the dimension of institutional profile further in Ch. 4.4.3.

IFs reinforce their authoritative role. IFs reinforce their authoritative role in

two ways. First, IFs proceed with a direct conversation with the violators. It can be a rule-based conversation which is close to the EU example (Tallberg, 2002). For example, Participant K (Interview, 2 May 2020) suggested that applying and following the rules is fairer to all parties involved:

…it's really got to be rules based…And it's got to be consistent, consistently applied. If you apply something different over here to over there, then you're going to lose credibility…We respect your autonomy, but you also have to follow our rules because you are a member…But we have a framework of rules that

we both work with.

It can also be a rather unique style of exhortation that is similar to ‘parenting’, i.e.

with good intentions and disciplinary. For example, Participant L (Interview, 17 April 2020) shared a case where non-compliance took place in the middle of a domestic support programme, and it was the President of the IF who made a call to that NF’s leadership and solved the issue. Participant F (Interview, 12 Mar 2020) also provided a

brilliant interpretation of the IF-NF relation:

It's like when you have a naughty child, you know, like the parent kind of knows what's best for the child, but the child is adamant that he does not want to go to sleep. So then you have to not punish the child, but you have to give the child consequences for his behaviour. It's kind of like that. …We care…We love our children…We care about them. But at some point, we have to discipline them when they are being naughty.

Once again, it implies a tremendous authoritative normative role of IFs in their respective vertical network, especially when the IFs have advantageous resources to aid the other actors.

Second, IFs would withhold funding or certain entitlements as a provisional measure should non-compliance occur. This is a mechanism in place to ensure the capacity-building benefit or other entitlement/rights associated with the membership in general will be immediately stopped or denied access to should the IF’s monitoring system send an alert or indicate certain issues. For example, Participant K (Interview, 2 May 2020) explained that if a member does not pay their membership fee by the due date “we switch off their ability to enter players into international competition until they pay….” These provisional measures are taken simultaneously with the consultative

phase and are considered to add leverage to IFs’ negotiation in the consultation.

As another example, Participant A (Interview, 9 Feb 2020) said, “one national federation we know they have many governance issues requested for an equipment donation, we would ask them to sort out their governance issues before we talk about donation.” Similarly, Participant N (Interview, 1 June 2020) shared “there is not much of a stick but certainly rewards. If they [the flagged NFs] want the funding [from the IF], they have to address those issues.” Participant B (Interview, 17 Feb 2020) shared

that when circumstances arise, “whenever it's the right decision to make, we freeze their activities and then we reopen them later on [when the issue is being resolved].”

Another “carrots and sticks” strategy shared by Participant C (Interview, 17 Feb 2020) is to encourage NFs to participate in the world championships. This IF also offers

25,000 U.S. dollars per year to each NF that has participated in previous championships in addition to subsidising NF delegates to travel to world championships. If an NF does not participate in a world championship, it will lose the funding and the right of being considered for the universality team quota to the Olympic Games, “there is a long line of consequences” said Participant C (Interview, 20 Feb 2020).

4.4.2 Strategies in the formal infringement proceedings

This section outlines the strategies used by IFs to ramp up social pressure against the non-compliant federations within the dimension of horizontal linkages and institutional profile. We have identified two strategies; first, IFs leverage the existing horizontal linkages to ramp up pressure against non-compliant federations, which is a typical strategy within the dimension of horizontal linkages. Second, IFs reinforce their institutional profile through increasing their political representation at all levels, which we categorised within the dimension of institutional profile.

IFs leverage the existing horizontal linkages to ramp up pressure against

non-compliant federations. In the EU’s compliance system, the EU Commission

would issue incriminating press releases to “declares its readiness to eventually use economic sanctions” or publish scoreboards on state violations to “name and shame”

(Tallberg, 2002, p. 617). While using the policy of transparency to ramp up social pressure against the violators is not widely adopted by IFs (s. details in ch. 4.2.1.), IFs’

existing relations with other organisations in the larger policy network (s. Figure 3, p36) alternatively create a social environment that puts pressure on NFs to conform.

In the EU’s compliance system, the declaration of sanctioning intentions is made directly by the international institution to the member states or to the public

(Tallberg, 2002). In the context of international sports federations, sanctioning intentions can be made clear through an existing horizontal linkage. For example, Participant A (Interview, 9 Feb 2020) shared a case where a strong-worded official letter declaring the IF’s intention to withdraw funding was sent to the local government with whom they had worked with in the past, to leverage pressure on a NF that has not complied with several official requirements. In many instances, when non-compliance occurs, the existing horizontal linkages become information outlets where IFs can get valuable information about a non-compliance case from (s. Ch. 4.2.1).

IFs reinforce their institutional profile through increasing political

representation at all levels. It appears that the extent to which a sport is recognised as

a global sport, in comparison to other sports, is politically represented in the Olympic Movement, i.e. at NOC board level, or is important in the national sports policy, enables or hinders an IF’s and the NFs’ advancement at the national level, particularly when non-compliance occurs.

Particularly, for an institutional profile lacking a certain strength can hinder an

IF’s advancement in the domestic political agenda, or undermine an IF’s ability to wield influence over a non-compliant NF. After discussing a non-compliant case, Participant I from an IF that is less resourceful and with a relatively short Olympic history (Interview, 23 Mar 2020) commented that to the IF or many other IFs in a similar position it is a global issue and a struggle to get recognised at the NOC and national policymaking level. In the same vein, Participant E from an IF that is less resourceful and with a relatively short Olympic history (Interview, 10 Mar 2020) said that it is of strategic importance to the IF to ensure the president or high-level officials of the IF hold strategic or political positions at the IOC, NOC and ASOIF levels to reinforce the IF’s global leadership. Participant E (Interview, 10 Mar 2020) added, “we also encourage our athletes to become athletes’ commission member at all levels, especially to their NOC.” Participant A (Interview, 9 Feb 2020) implied that the presence of the

IF’s elected officials at strategic events, such as the continental multi-sports games, is the main political work to elevate the presence or status of a sport. Some efforts of raising institutional profile may seem far from a compliance inducement measure but they are politically important to IFs in terms of strengthening the institutional profile.

Overall, in Stage III: Intervention, one strategy has been identified regarding the informal consultation, IFs aim to reinforce their authoritative role. With regard to the formal infringement proceedings, we have identified two strategies. First, IFs leverage

the existing horizontal linkages to ramp up pressure. Second, IFs reinforce IFs’ global leadership through raising institutional profile.

4.4.3 Discussing the dimensions of the strength of international

institutions

In Haas’ (1998, 2007) seven compliance inducement dimensions, the conceptualisation of ‘horizontal linkage’ and ‘institutional profile’ is distinctive from others. First, these two concepts focus more on the strength less on the actions of the international institutions. Second, the strategies within these two dimensions play a role across IFs’ entire staged compliance system.

In this subchapter, we aim to first discuss the aspects in relation to the dimensions of horizontal linkages and institutional profile that have not been mentioned previously. Second, we aim to summarise the strategies within these two dimensions across the stages to highlight their significance to compliance inducement, as well as to discuss in what ways these two dimensions contribute to the strength of international institutions.

The dimension of horizontal linkages. The horizontal linkages dimension is

concerned with institutions’ efforts in creating “a dense network of institutional factors”

(Haas, 2007, p. 56), including the number of institutions involved and the frequency of interactions. This dense network amplifies the institution’s legitimacy and discursive

capacity that are considered to be contributing to a higher level of compliance (Haas,

1998).

From the literature review, we have understood that IFs’ interactions with their existing horizontal linkages, i.e. the CCs in IFs’ own pyramidal structure (s. Figure 2,

p33), and with actors in the external policy network of organisations, i.e. NOCs (s.

Figure 3, p36), form almost the entire social environment of the IF-NF relations.

However, our discussion on IFs’ compliance inducement so far has been concentrated more on the actors inside the pyramidal structure, even though IFs’ interactions with

external entities have also been mentioned several times as part of the strategies within

other dimensions (s. 4.2.2, and 4.5.1).

According to the research data, we argue that the accumulation of horizontal linkages is a social process indispensable to the environment of international institutions. First, we see the effects of these accumulated linkages most visibly in Stage III when social pressure is ramped up against the violators (s. 4.5.2). However, the formation and maintenance of these linkages with external entities can be traced back to the operations in Stage I: Prevention and Stage II: Monitoring. Within the dimension of horizontal linkages, we particularly look at the ways in which horizontal linkages

within the total Olympic system (Chappelet, 2016) are important to IFs’ compliance inducement (s. Figure 3, p36).

We have identified two additional aspects of horizontal linkages. They prominently emerged from the interview data and are highly related to IFs’ compliance

inducement. First, it is the horizontal linkages with the Olympic organisations in a broad sense, such as the Olympic Solidarity. Second, it is the horizontal linkages reinforced

across or between the national federations.

IFs reinforce the linkages with the Olympic stakeholders. The research subjects

of this research are summer Olympic IFs. Their association with the Olympic Games or the Movement is obvious and easily taken for granted. It appears that the Olympic status of an IF is quite relevant in IFs’ advancement of development objectives at the national level. According to Participant A (Interview, 9 Feb 2020), the fact the IF is on the Olympic programme helps tremendously because an Olympic sport has higher political and financial leverage to attract public funding, hence an IF or NF of an Olympic sport is more likely to advance it political agenda at the national level.

When carrying out their missions, IFs tend to make an effort to work with the Olympic organisations. For example, Participant G (Interview, 23 Mar 2020) said that

“[when donating equipment to an NF] we are strongly in favour of having the NOC involved in our equipment donation process, i.e. assists in custom clearance.” This is typically a strategy within the dimension of horizontal linkage which are considered to contribute to higher level of compliance.

Furthermore, the sporting interests around the Olympic-related major events are wide. The large multi-sports games in the Olympic System, i.e. Asian Games, and their qualification events create an important traction for regional sporting stakeholders and development. For example, Participant I (Interview, 23 Mar 2020) shared that the next upcoming Youth Olympic Games will be in Africa. The YOG qualification events are therefore seen as the golden opportunity to mobilise the African NOCs and NFs. In other words, the development policy target is prioritised on the African nations. For example, Participant C (Interview, 20 Feb 2020) also said that the IF funds a training centre located in the next YOG hosting city “to help the locals develop their international relations.” Participant A (Interview, 9 Feb 2020) also shared that the IF

often utilises the upcoming events as a reference for leading a discussion about a domestic support programme.

In addition, IFs’ partnership with Olympic Solidarity is an integral part of the compliance inducement process. The Olympic Solidarity provides the NFs via their NOCs with financial support for sports technical programmes. The size of this financial support may be significant for especially the smaller IFs. However, the significance of working with the Olympic Solidarity to both larger and smaller IFs goes beyond the funding relations. It is not just about the money. The relation itself matters, too. For example, Participant I from a smaller IF (Interview, 23 Mar 2020) explained that

“maximising the Olympic Solidarity opportunities with our national federations through their NOCs” is part of the strategy to reinforce the presence and position of the

sport/the IF in the Olympic Movement. Participant B from a resourceful IF (Interview, 17 Feb 2020) also emphasised the importance of maintaining and reinforcing the

relationship with the Olympic Solidarity:

The Olympic Solidarity is extremely helpful…and so we are extremely grateful for that. But, you know, it's part of the relationships we have with them…we explain the vision we have so we can better synergise the efforts for their interest in our interests.

In addition, the way the Olympic Solidarity (OS) funding for technical programmes works forms a social environment that is hospitable to conformity or unfavourable to unconformity. According to the description of the global network of partners in the OS Strategic Plan 2017-2020 (International Olympic Committee, 2017,

p. 19), for a technical programme’s application to pass, usually, it requires all of the four entities involved, the Olympic Solidarity, NOC, NF, and IF, to have a streamed administrative/funding releasing and monitoring process. The multilateral characteristics of OS technical programmes matches with the dense network of institutional factors that is emphasised in the conceptualisation of horizontal linkages by Haas (2007).

IFs strengthen their authority through reinforcing the linkages between

national federations. A bilateral collaboration scheme has been adopted by the

international anti-doping policy regime, according to Tan, Bairner and Chen (2018), through which the strong nations are able to showcase their soft power, and the weaker nations are able to improve their capacity. In Tallberg’s (2002) EU case, technical knowledge exchanges take place rather systematically having a programme of coordination centres and contact points among member states in Stage I.

In the context of IFs, in most cases, IFs are the main facilitator of these international exchanges, but somehow we did not observe a widely adopted systematic cooperation scheme set up by IFs. For example, Participant I (Interview, 23 Mar 2020) shared that the IF attempts to establish a coaching technical community to ensure the newly certified international coaches and officials can continue their learning outside

the technical educational programme:

...just got the level one coaching course. You have to have two years in practice to be able to be eligible to apply for the next level…over these two periods of time, you can come back to a camp or you can have a person who is helping you on a daily basis. So this is the mentor … mentoring program that we are setting up to create a network, a global network for coaches, technical officers, and also in leadership, for people to have an opportunity for a continuous learning out of the organised course environment.

Participant I did not specify the relative roles of developed or developing nations in this technical exchange scheme. However, Participant I did depict an epistemic

community of sports technical knowledge where the more knowledgeable guide the less knowledgeable.

On the other hand, Participant A (Interview, 9 Feb 2020) said that the IF had attempted to establish a mentoring programme between the stronger and weaker nations.

However, in a bilateral mentoring programme it is practically very difficult to manage the outcome. Compared to similar cases of bilateral cooperation schemes in the anti-doping policy regime, i.e. Handstad & Houlihan (2015) and Tan et al. (2018), there is less incentive for stronger nations to showcase their soft power in developing sports because medals speak louder, nor have there been incentives to help another nation, a potential opponent on the field of play, to grow a sport systematically.

Second, IFs can play a role in bridging nations to cooperate for humanitarian aid.

For example, Participant D (Interview, 2 Mar 2020) shared that this international bridge-building between the NFs for humanitarian causes would not have happened

without the IF’s participation:

…it's just creating those bridges, which they would have never done it directly…If I may share, we've had this experience with a Caribbean Country following that hurricane…because they are one of our strongest leading [sporting]

nations in the Americas...they were not reaching out to anybody [to ask for help for building gyms and donating equipment] …They wouldn't...And now all of a sudden, [the IF] putting them in relationship and saying [the IF is] willing to pay the shipping fees…[say to] the North American Countries…, ‘can you collect

your second [hand] sporting equipment’, and then they did it.

In this case, the IF is seen as being able to mobilise precious resources internationally that would not otherwise be mobilised. It is in a way reinforcing the IF’s legitimacy and perceived capacity in the pyramidal structure; in other words, raising the institutional profile.

Chappelet (2016, p. 747) argues that the linkages among the actors in “the total Olympic system” are essentially capital. What is seen from this research is that IFs’

frequent interaction with their existing horizontal linkages contributes to IFs’

compliance inducement by creating and maintaining a social environment favourable

compliance inducement by creating and maintaining a social environment favourable