Assessing governance without government: A proposal for the International Council of Sport Governance

ABSTRACT Over the past half-century global sport governance has, in the face of hyper-commercialisation and globalisation, been found wanting. Key institutions have lurched between scandal and outright failure to address their remit and duty to employees, fans and, perhaps most importantly, participants the world over. Critical sport scholars have investigated and demanded better, yet by and large, these demands have not been met, in part, as we argue, because there has been no solution proffered, beyond principled frameworks. In the spirit of critical proactivism, and drawing from international relations praxis and Critical Theory, the following paper seeks to catalyse discussion around a potential solution. We seek to promote and further elucidate the philosophy of and justification for the establishment of an overarching, morally sustainable, and democratically accountable regulatory and enforcement apparatus for sports’ global governance: namely the ‘International Council for Sports Governance’ (ICSG) as a much-needed credibility inoculation for global sport.