Session 3D: Political Institutions Behind the Russian Winter Olympics Cheating Scandal
Session Number
Session 3D: 1st Presentation
Advisor(s)
Dr. Konstantin Sonin, University of Chicago
Location
IN2
Start Date
26-4-2018 12:40 PM
End Date
26-4-2018 1:25 PM
Abstract
By 2017, the eighteenth year of Vladimir Putin’s rule, the Russia is trapped in a highly inefficient, yet highly stable status-quo. The need for modernizing, forward-looking reforms is well recognized, yet attempts of such reform often end up with disappointing results. The drive to increase the country’s standing in winter sports that has accompanied the preparations to 2014 Olympic Winters in Sochi is one such example. While the results seemed to be impressive – the number of gold medals quadrupled in 2014 compared to that number in 2010, the ultimate outcome was far worse than the starting point: almost half of the Russian Sochi athletes were stripped of their medals for doping violations, and the Russian Olympic team and many of its athletes were barred from 2018 Winter Olympics. The doping scandal allows to study structural characteristics of bad governance in state-dominated authoritarian countries in general. We have concluded that developing a theoretical model can be crucial for future nations when experiencing political changes. We will provide a narrative description of the doping case in Russian winter sports and build a theoretical model of strategic interaction, in which the principal chooses a project that results in easily verifiable KPIs.
Session 3D: Political Institutions Behind the Russian Winter Olympics Cheating Scandal
IN2
By 2017, the eighteenth year of Vladimir Putin’s rule, the Russia is trapped in a highly inefficient, yet highly stable status-quo. The need for modernizing, forward-looking reforms is well recognized, yet attempts of such reform often end up with disappointing results. The drive to increase the country’s standing in winter sports that has accompanied the preparations to 2014 Olympic Winters in Sochi is one such example. While the results seemed to be impressive – the number of gold medals quadrupled in 2014 compared to that number in 2010, the ultimate outcome was far worse than the starting point: almost half of the Russian Sochi athletes were stripped of their medals for doping violations, and the Russian Olympic team and many of its athletes were barred from 2018 Winter Olympics. The doping scandal allows to study structural characteristics of bad governance in state-dominated authoritarian countries in general. We have concluded that developing a theoretical model can be crucial for future nations when experiencing political changes. We will provide a narrative description of the doping case in Russian winter sports and build a theoretical model of strategic interaction, in which the principal chooses a project that results in easily verifiable KPIs.