Governing the Games: High Politics, Risk and Mega-Events

Abstract

Prima facie, spectacular public events and large-scale capital projects are an ideal vehicle for 'high politics' and the predilection of policy-making elites for grand, iconic and schematic visions that offer high-profile policy successes and historic legacies.Yet the prospective political rewards from such mega-events and projects must be offset against high levels of risk and complexity. Further, such schemes tend to be at odds with the prevailing doctrines and practices of the modern state: in particular its deference to market-based mechanisms and its liking for instruments of calculation and control. Indeed, mega-projects and events often prove uneconomic despite the predictions of forecasters.This review essay considers how the bidding and planning process for the London 2012 Olympic Games demonstrates this tension between high politics, risk and the preferred methods of governing the modern state.Who gains and who loses from spectacular public events and the large-scale capital projects often associated with them? 'Mega-events' and 'mega-projects' are often linked to 'high politics', specifically in policy-making elites' adoption of these sorts of projects and policies with a view to their symbolic value, at the same time as highlighting the role of power in planning disasters and policy fiascos (see Moran, 2001, for a discussion of how different 'systems' of politics give rise to catastrophes under the British regulatory state and see Flyvbjerg, 1998, for an in-depth study of the relationship between 'rationality' and power in urban policy and planning). They are also, increasingly, vehicles for neo-liberal ambitions of the state, facilitating its ties with private interests (such as private financing, multinational corporations, property developers, professional services firms), yet they often violate neo-liberal deference to the ability of the market to enforce discipline in public projects. Because of this, major events such as the Olympic Games raise a number of questions that are political in character yet encompass a wide range of disciplines, theories and fields of inquiry. This review article explores how mega-events shed light on the relationship between politics, risk and the modern state.Decision makers at the highest reaches of government are often attracted to grand, schematic visions and the potential for high-profile policy successes with the hope of reaping political rewards and leaving historic legacies. Mega-events such as the Olympics tend to be iconic either through the visual spectacle of the event itself or otherwise through the construction of vast and impressive infrastructure and buildings and the recreation of public space, and the communication of political or ideological narratives through events and ceremonies. At the same time, ambitious expressions of design and engineering can provide justifications or opportunities for governments to implement projects that are of strategic importance, signalling their economic power, technological innovation or global status. Such symboli...

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