Racing to win: competition and co-operation between the National Olympic Committee and public authorities in the development of the Botswana sport system

Joining the Olympic Movement provides smaller countries with material and symbolic benefits. The Olympic Games represent a unique symbolic stage for national recognition and identity construction. Resource-poor countries can also access sport development funding programmes. However, participation in the international sport system comes at the price of a ‘coercive policy transfer’. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) requires countries to subscribe to a western sport system that includes ‘sports autonomy’ as a key governance principle, which restricts the discretion of national governments. Previous scholarship suggests that coercive policy transfers can create institutional and policy misfits, which inspire translation and customisation on behalf of the receiving countries. The current paper investigates the interactions between public authorities and the National Olympic Committee of Botswana, which has been imposed by the IOC as an autonomous organisation. The study of three policy processes suggests that the interactions between the National Olympic Committee and governmental authorities are shaped by a persistent institutional misfit and organisational rivalries, which are only manageable because all actors in Botswana sport policy-making share a common interest in increasing national sporting success. At the same time, it is hard to assess to what extent the coercive policy transfer has improved policy development and implementation in Botswana.