Conceptualising legitimacy, moral panics and performance enhancing drugs : Crisis? Whose crisis?

Abstract

In the debate surrounding performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sport, academic investigation has focused mainly on why some individual athletes use PEDs while other actors refrain from doing so. In this thesis I adopt a broader social perspective and argue that the debate can be usefully reframed by considering how sports governing bodies (SGBs) maintain legitimacy and moral authority over their sporting communities. This highlights how various drug-related controversies and reports are associated with a crisis of legitimacy for SGBs.

The thesis adopts a social constructionist perspective, using a modified'moral panic' framework based on the work of Goode and Ben-Yehuda. Situating legitimacy within this moral panic model reveals the'multifaceted' nature of legitimacy and the way doping debate reflects the interests of elite SGBs. At the same time, elite SGBs affected by the debate can use the media to resist other elite SGBs and impose their own interpretation of reality upon the situation. Using a grounded theoretical model, I examine whether the anti-doping debate is an example of a 'moral panic,' involving PED-using 'folk devils.'

In the first part of this thesis I present a socio-historical examination of anti-doping policies and interactions between the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the Australian Football League (AFL). Multiple methods were used, including a review of media coverage, an online survey and follow-up interview with sporting participants. This multi-layered approach revealed how the creation of PED-using 'folk devils' challenges SGBs legitimacy, while also providing opportunities to restore perceptions of legitimacy. A quantitative e-Survey and follow-up interviews revealed that grassroots sporting participants in Australia accepted there was a crisis of legitimacy for SGBs, even if the perceived causes of this crisis varied. Using this multi-dimensional approach, I conclude that the debate surrounding PEDs provides an example of a moral panic engineered by elite SGBs, and particularly WADA, based on a concern with maintaining the moral authority and legitimacy to control the ever-widening global sporting community.