Example: Sports

Sport is practiced freely according to mutually agreed-upon rules – an ideal type of rule-based communal activity that brings joy to participants, promotes fitness, and, especially as competitive sport, is highly attractive. Accordingly, authoritarian power systems have always attempted to instrumentalize sport for their own purposes. However, this places them in a fundamental dilemma, since sport, by its very nature, is strictly rule-based and therefore contradicts authoritarian power structures.

However, an analytical distinction must be made between sport, sports policy, and general politics. Even if sports policy, for example the awarding of the Olympic Games or World Championships, is corrupt or driven by authoritarian power structures, this does not necessarily distort sport itself; moreover, in a world where power structures play a significant role, sports policy can often only be conducted with difficulty according to fair (rule-of-law) procedures. Political analysis must therefore differentiate between sport itself, sports policy (which should be as fair and democratic as possible), and general politics – an ethical consideration as distinct from moralism.

Sport itself, which has now spread worldwide, forms a fundamental counterweight to power-hungry thinking and action. Even in sports politics, following the example of the ancient Greek Olympics, it is repeatedly possible to sanction those who wage wars of aggression.