The "autonomy" of developing countries in the Olympic Movement: Assessing the fate of sports governance transplants in the Global South.

Introduction: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) imposes very specific ideas on sports governance, more precisely on sports autonomy, on countries joining the Olympic Movement. Given that the idea of sports autonomy originated in the Global North, this article introduces the concept of governance transplants to evaluate the impact that being part of the Olympic Movement has on domestic sports governance in Global South developing countries. The article explores the extent to which the IOC is successful in implementing the norms and regulations on sports autonomy as a governance transplant at the national level in countries from the Global South that are part of the Olympic Movement.

International sport governing bodies as agents of diffusion-The case of World Athletics.

The current paper conceptualizes international sport governing bodies (ISGBs) as "agents of diffusion," whose key strategic interest is in the broadest participation in their sports. Our research examines the impact of a specific diffusion strategy, adopted by World Athletics in 2008, which was essentially the decentralization of decision-making power to license athletics events, and which aimed to increase the sports' visibility and accessibility, especially in previously underdeveloped markets like Africa. We evaluate these efforts' impact by analyzing data from the season's bests lists of World Athletics from 2001 to 2019.

Women in International Elite Athletics: Gender (in)equality and National Participation.

Gender discrimination has been strongly related to the suppression of women's participation in sport. Accordingly, gender (in)equality has proven to be an important determinant for the participation and the success of countries in international women's elite sport. Hence, differences in gender (in)equalitity, such as women's participation in the labor force, fertility rates, tradition of women suffrage or socio-economic status of women, could be linked to success in international women's elite sports.