International Security And The Olympic Games 1972 2020

Author : Megan A. Munroe
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (855 download)

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Download or read book Global Sporting Mega-events written by Megan A. Munroe and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hosting an Olympic Games is a large and complex undertaking that requires years of planning, billions of pounds and thousands of people to stage. While the rationale behind expending the effort required to stage an event of this scale may vary from host to host, all hosts maintain the primary objective of staging the event safely and securely. The issue of terrorism has been a major concern for Olympic planners since the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics. More recently, the terrorist bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and 9/11 have served to further amplify concerns of terrorism at these events and have increased pressures on hosts to ensure security. With the exception of incidents occurring before Games' openings, minor security breaches taking place during events, and terrorist threats directed at the Games, we have not witnessed a physical terrorist attack during an Olympi~4tft caused injuries or fatalities since the 1996 event. According to US News and World Rep~rt, there were .168 separate, significant terrorist attacks that occurred at sports-related events from 1972-2004.1 While it is impossible to know the reason for the lack of attacks on Olympics events in recent years, it is reasonable to postulate that the security policies in place have acted as a deterrent, at least in part. With this in mind, an array of questions arises: Which security policies have been adopted at events since the 1996 Games? Have all hosts employed the same security measures at their events? How can this be evaluated? Did 9/11 have an impact on Olympic security? Is there a "Best Practice" security model that is transferred from one Olympics to the next? This thesis explores those queries through answering the encompassing question: Is there an efficient, effective and systematic method for comparatively analyzing the security policies employed by various Olympic host cities, and what information would be generated by this . style of analysis? In response to this research question, this thesis applies General Morphological Analysis (GMA) to the topic of Olympic security policy. GMA is a methodology that has gained popularity over the past twenty years in the field of policy analysis and scenario development but has not been previously applied to the discipline of event security studies, which is what this study accomplishes. The core of this thesis consists of a twofold process: first, applying GMA to the topic of Olympic security from 2000 to 2012 to produce an analytical framework which allows for further, detailed analysis to be performed; and second, applying policy data to that framework to generate outcomes that can be analyzed in relation to the questions earlier raised regarding Olympic security policy. Through this process this thesis demonstrates GMA as an efficient and systematic method for comparatively analyzing topics in the field of event security policy and exhibits its effectiveness in generating unique findings from these policy inquiries. Through utilizing this method, an efficient and systematic analysis was able to be performed on an inherently qualitative and judgmental process. GMA's rigorous classifications and systematic process allow for the outcomes of the analysis to be replicated, which is a key benefit of utilizing this method in this topic. Through the use of matrixing, a comparative foundation is created onto which the security policies utilized at the Olympics can be superimposed in order to reveal where correlations in policy usage and event attributes exist. In performing this analysis, this study uncovered 79 trends in Olympics policy implementation that are original and noteworthy discoveries. Furthermore, this method allows for the observance of the transfer of policy between these events, which substantiates the commonly accepted theory of the existence of policy transfer. The fmdings of this research provide unique data on the impacts of 9/11 on the security policies employed at mega-events, and makes some interesting observations on the disconnect between the implementation of security policies and the level of threat present at these events.