DANIEL TURNER AND PROF MALCOLM FOLEY MAKING THE CASE FOR EVENTS Legitimation Crises: The Ethics of Making the Case

Legitimation Crises Capitalist society requires a shared set of cultural attitudes as boundary conditions without which it will be unstable and in the absence of which government will be unable to find the resources to legitimate its steering activity. Capitalist economic activity rests upon certain moral expectations such as trust, truth, honesty, fair-dealing and promise keeping without which the economic system cannot operate. The problem posed by legitimation crisis is how the growing intervention of the state in the economic activity can be rendered legitimate to those who are affected by the authority of the state in this sphere. When the state fails to deliver on its promises a crisis of legitimation occurs.

Legitimating the event: key claims and crisis areas [As discussed previously…] Events as economic provider Events as social development Events as commercial activity

The ‘economic’ argument… “Which large projects get built? Those for which proponents best succeed in designing – deliberately or not – a fantasy world of underestimated costs, overestimated revenues, overvalued local development effects and underestimated environmental impacts” (Flyvbjerg, 2005:52) “while the Nagano Olympics were reported to have generated a surplus of JPY 2.5billion, the benefits of this have largely by-passed the taxpayers” (Whitson and Horne, 2006:75)

The ‘commercial’ argument Commercial return focussed on small community of official partners at expense of the wider business community. Commercial return is not sustained in the longer term beyond the ‘banner year’ (Horne and Whitson, 2006) Sponsors do not receive commensurate return on investment  “results suggest that utilizing Olympic sponsorships in the marketing communications mix may not be value-enhancing” (Farrell and Frame, 2004)

The ‘social’ development Facilities provided by peripatetic events often end up recycled into commercial sector rather than community. (Horne, 2004) Or: White elephants (Nagano Bob-Sled track) Jobs and skills provided are often low level service jobs offering little ‘development’ (Garcia, 2004) Volunteering opportunities taken up by m/c rather than the ‘target’ group.

Legitimation Crisis “The irony is that government, which is meant to be serving the public interest, is instead concentrating… on entrepreneurial and corporate rather than broader social goals” (Hall, 2001:180) When the claims made to ‘legitimate’ hosting events are shown to be false then the legitimation of those advancing the claim is then brought into question.

Re-legitimation Lukes 2 nd dimension of power Agenda changing to alter the framework under which legitimation is bestowed. London 2012 Olympics – from regeneration message to spectacle and pride