SPORT 1913 - 2013

part one_CHAPTER 5

(ii) a shared cognitive profile , in which pro- cesses of identification, elaboration and re-elaboration of goals, as well as criteria of legitimacy, take place. The historical itinerary of the movement shows how much these processes have changed over time, nonetheless preserving a hard core represented by a relationship to its origi- nal political environment based on iden- tity and loyalty; (iii) the belonging to a cooperative network , in which information and resources are ex- changed in order to maximize efficiency. In the building and in the development of this cooperative network, one has to insert a number of critical events, sup- porting the dynamics of change as exog- enous factors. Among them are the 1 st World War as the bloody epilogue of the European Nation build- ing, the dismantling of the workers’ solidarity after the Red Revolution, the challenges repre- sented by the right-wing dictatorships and by the totalitarian drifting of Stalin’s regime be- tween the two wars, the 2 nd World War and the Cold War, the rise of Welfare State, the de-col- onisation, the beginning of European integra- tion, and finally the process of globalization in the political sphere as the result of the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Of course, these vast exogenous factors influenced a mass sports movement born (or re-born) as a proper political actor. At the same time, the representation of the body,

(i) on the concrete historical developments of the movement and (ii) on the changing rela- tionship between the sports actors and their social environments. The attention paid to the organizational conflict, to the leaders’ compe- tition and to the historicity of the social action does not prevent from taking into account the occurrence of unintentional effects, rejecting all kinds of mechanistic reduction of the orga- nizational acting. In short: the analytical frame must be characterized by the emphasis put on the organizational conflicts, the unin- tended effects of the social action and the manifold rationalities operating within a net- work of compatibility, negotiation and com- petition. A crucial point of this approach is represented by the dynamics of social rooting, organizational settlement (observing the pro- cesses affecting institutionalization and de- institutionalization of the sports movements) and political legitimation. That is to say, by the strategic ability of the actors to elaborate, reproduce, adapt and preserve values and symbols (Gasparini 2000). Consequently, Ben- son’s model of the political arena can be effi- ciently adopted only if a synchronic, morpho- logical and prevailingly descriptive level can be developed. This model needs to investigate the declared goals, the instruments of organi- zational control, the structural constraints, the rules of the games and finally the relation- ships between different organizations and their environments. Meanwhile, it has to de- fine a dynamic (diachronic) approach, centred on the historical genesis of the organization,

its institutionalization and its patterns of change.

In our case, WSMmay be represented as a ‘ne- gotiated political order’ (Daudi 1989) and as a network of constraints and opportunities within a system of rules (March and Olsen, 1989). During its hundred year old activity, the movement indirectly participated – as in each political order – in a wide range of negotiation of powers, responsibilities and organizational managements which had as prominent actors the Socialist and pro-Labour parties and the Trade Unions networks in Europe and beyond. More directly, WSM has been the protagonist of an increasing negotiation of roles and rules within a number of national sports systems and within the international Olympic move- ment. Coming back to our original question, it clearly shows that a mass sports organi­ zation – ‘infused with values’, according to Selznick’s (1949, 1957) theory on institutional- ization – is a proper social phenomenon. It holds the three main features characterizing a social movement: (i) a morphological structure , reproducing both the traditional Socialist paradigm for mass organisations and the more spe- cific sport subsystems (Olympism, com- petitive federations and so on), which can be described through the statistical outline of its membership, its economi- cal and organizational resources, its management and its framework of for- mal regulations;

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