Governing Mobility Under Uncertainty: Travel Risk and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games
Abstract
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games took place under profound uncertainty about international mobility. Rather than treating travel as a technical question of logistics, this paper examines how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) constructed and governed travel as a problem of risk and legitimacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Ulrich Beck’s theory of risk society, the paper analyses how the IOC grappled with manufactured and transboundary risks as it sought to stage a global mega-event amid fractured mobility regimes and domestic opposition in Japan. The study is designed as a master’s-level qualitative document analysis. It proposes a corpus of IOC Playbooks and protocols, Japanese government border and health regulations, and international and Japanese media coverage produced between March 2020 and August 2021. Through thematic coding, the analysis focuses on three dimensions: anticipation of travel risk, concrete mechanisms for governing mobility, and public justifications for exceptional movement. The paper argues that Tokyo 2020 illuminates how a transnational organisation governs by risk, using classifications, exemptions, and surveillance to reconfigure who may move, under what conditions, and with what claims to responsibility and legitimacy.
Introduction
The Olympic Games are often described as one of the most complex recurring events in the world, not only because they gather thousands of athletes and officials from across the globe, but because they rely on a finely tuned system of international mobility. Every edition of the Games depends on predictable flows of people. Athletes, medical staff, journalists, technical personnel, and volunteers all travel along well-established routes and schedules that are rarely questioned. Under normal circumstances, this circulation appears routine. Travel functions as a silent foundation that makes the Games possible rather than a topic that requires sustained organisational attention. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this assumption. As borders closed and travel restrictions multiplied in early 2020, mobility became a primary source of uncertainty. Instead of being a background condition, travel became a central site of public health concern, political debate, and organisational negotiation.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games illustrate this transformation vividly. The postponement of the event, the suspension of qualification events, and the fragmentation of global travel infrastructure forced both the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Japanese government to reconsider the basic question of how thousands of accredited individuals could enter, move within, and exit Japan safely. These challenges were not only regulatory or logistical. They carried symbolic weight in a period marked by anxiety, heightened sensitivity to infection risks, and widespread debate about appropriate behaviour during a global crisis. Public opposition in Japan was significant. Polling in early 2021 showed that many residents believed the Games should not proceed at all (Kato, 2021). Concerns centred on the possibility that incoming delegations could introduce new infections or variants at a moment when domestic restrictions were still affecting ordinary life. As a result, travel became entangled with judgments about responsibility, legitimacy, and the fairness of exceptional mobility for Olympic personnel.
This paper approaches these developments through Ulrich Beck’s theory of risk society. Beck argues that modern societies generate risks through their own systems of technological and organisational complexity, and that these risks regularly transcend national borders (Beck, 1992). In such circumstances, institutions are compelled to engage in forms of reflexive governance that attempt to anticipate emerging uncertainties and justify decisions to multiple audiences. Travel during the pandemic provides a clear example of what Beck describes as manufactured and transboundary risk. The movement of athletes and staff into Japan created uncertainties that no single organisation could fully control. The IOC therefore had to build regulatory systems that classified individuals, managed exposure, and demonstrated an acceptable level of responsibility. These measures were not only risk-mitigating tools. They were also communicative acts intended to defend the legitimacy of the Games and to reassure the public that the event would not produce unacceptable health consequences.
Tokyo 2020 offers a particularly valuable case for studying how a transnational organisation governs risk. Unlike a state, the IOC cannot rely on sovereign authority. Its rules work through coordination with national governments, international federations, and national Olympic committees. This structure becomes especially visible when the organisation is confronted with a crisis. The pandemic exposed both the limits and flexibility of the IOC’s authority. To proceed with the Games, the organisation needed to persuade not only its institutional partners but also the wider public that international travel could be tightly controlled through testing regimes, restricted movement, and detailed behavioural rules. The process produced an extensive archive of protocols, Playbooks, and public statements that together attempted to stabilise a volatile situation.
The central research question guiding this paper is: How did the International Olympic Committee anticipate, govern, and justify travel-related risks during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games? This question matters for two reasons. First, it helps reveal how mobility, often taken for granted in global sport, becomes a site of governance during periods of crisis. Second, it allows us to examine how a non-state organisation navigates a form of uncertainty that aligns closely with Beck’s account of risk society. By analysing how the IOC responded to disrupted mobility systems and heightened public scrutiny, the paper seeks to illuminate broader shifts in the governance of transboundary risk.
Empirical and Theoretical Context
Travel Risk at Tokyo 2020
International mobility has long been central to the Olympic Games. Large delegations travel from more than two hundred countries, and this movement usually unfolds through stable and predictable systems of visas, flights, and standardised accreditation. Under ordinary conditions, the IOC and host governments treat travel as a logistical matter rather than a site of governance. The COVID-19 pandemic destabilised this foundation. Once borders closed and global travel patterns fractured, mobility became a central source of uncertainty. What had once been routine now required continuous regulation.
The postponement of the Games in March 2020 reflected the severity of mobility disruption. Even after the new date was set, travel remained unstable. Delegations faced different national restrictions, shifting quarantine requirements, and limited flight availability. To manage these conditions, the IOC and the Tokyo Organising Committee created a series of Playbooks that outlined detailed rules for testing, entry, behaviour, and circulation. These documents introduced categorised mobility. Athletes, officials, and media were subject to different requirements. Delegations were instructed to avoid contact with the public, limit movement to essential venues, and comply with repeated testing. The Games therefore operated within a controlled mobility environment that differed sharply from previous editions.
In Japan, these measures unfolded amid significant domestic scepticism. Polling in 2021 indicated that many residents preferred cancellation or further postponement because they feared imported infections (Asahi Shimbun, 2021; Kato, 2021). The Japanese government created exemptions that allowed accredited individuals to enter the country despite general travel restrictions. These exemptions amplified criticism. Residents who were limiting their own movement questioned the fairness of permitting thousands of visitors to travel for a sporting event.
Concerns emerged among healthcare workers and local officials who worried that the arrival of delegations could strain medical resources or introduce new variants. Internationally, national Olympic committees faced their own challenges navigating inconsistent travel rules. The IOC therefore confronted a situation in which mobility had become a political and symbolic issue as much as a health concern. Reports of rule breaches, even when minor, further intensified scrutiny. These tensions reveal how travel governance at Tokyo 2020 was inseparable from questions of legitimacy. The IOC needed to show not only that it could manage risk technically but also that it understood wider public concerns.
Beck’s Theory of Risk and Its Relevance to Tokyo 2020
Ulrich Beck’s theory of risk society provides a useful lens for understanding these developments. Beck argues that modern societies generate new risks through their own systems of connectivity and technological advancement (Beck, 1992). These risks cross borders, shift rapidly, and require institutions to manage uncertainty in ongoing and reflexive ways. Travel during the pandemic reflects these characteristics clearly. The risk of infection followed global mobility flows, and attempts to govern the Games depended on systems that no single organisation could control.
For Beck, modern institutions must continually adjust their practices to changing risk environments. This reflexivity was visible in the IOC’s repeated revisions of the Playbooks. As global infection rates fluctuated and new variants appeared, the IOC increased testing frequency, adjusted behavioural expectations, and altered movement rules. These revisions reflected attempts to respond to a risk that evolved faster than organisational planning cycles.
Beck also emphasises the political nature of risk governance. Institutions must justify their decisions to a sceptical public whose trust is increasingly fragile (Beck, 2009). This dynamic shaped the IOC’s communication strategy. Public concerns in Japan made it necessary for the IOC to demonstrate that exceptional mobility was justified. The organisation emphasised scientific advice, multi-layered protection, and international coordination in an effort to defend its authority. The Playbooks operated as both operational manuals and symbolic displays of control. Their detailed rules conveyed a message of precision and responsibility that went beyond the technicalities of risk mitigation.
Classifying participants into risk categories and regulating their movement reflects what Beck describes as risk classification systems. These systems create distinctions between safe and unsafe behaviour and establish expectations for compliance. At Tokyo 2020, these classifications shaped not only practical arrangements but also the public meaning of mobility. Athletes and officials were framed as individuals whose movement could be contained and monitored, which was essential to the IOC’s claim that the Games could proceed without endangering the broader public.
Beck’s framework also helps explain public resistance. In a risk society, citizens are more aware of institutional limits and are more likely to question official claims. Surveys showing Japanese opposition to the Games suggest that many residents doubted the IOC’s assurances. This scepticism aligns with Beck’s observation that modern risks expose gaps between institutional narratives and public expectations. The controversy surrounding travel exemptions illustrates these tensions. The burden of risk was uneven. Local residents faced potential exposure and healthcare pressures, while accredited personnel were granted special mobility rights. Beck notes that modern risks frequently reveal social inequalities in who bears the consequences of institutional decisions (Beck, 1992).
Contribution to Scholarship
The Tokyo 2020 case contributes to research on mega-events and risk by foregrounding international travel as a domain of governance. Existing Olympic scholarship often focuses on political controversy, media narratives, or long-term impacts (Boykoff, 2013), while studies of mega-event risk tend to examine security and crowd management (Toohey & Taylor, 2008). Far less attention has been paid to how mobility itself becomes a site where uncertainty is produced and regulated. The pandemic created conditions in which travel could not be assumed, which makes Tokyo 2020 a valuable case for analysing how institutions reconstruct mobility in a crisis.
The case also extends Beck’s theory of risk society by applying it to a transnational organisation that lacks sovereign authority. The IOC had to manage manufactured and transboundary risks while persuading both domestic and international audiences that movement could be controlled. This shows how non-state actors use protocols, communication, and symbolic claims to stabilise uncertain conditions. The focus on travel therefore highlights an underexamined aspect of mega-event governance and offers insight into how global institutions defend their legitimacy when foundational systems become unstable.
Methodology
This project is designed as a qualitative document analysis suitable for a master’s-level dissertation. The aim is to examine how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) constructed, governed, and justified travel-related risks in the lead-up to and during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Because the research question focuses on how the organisation framed uncertainty and defended its authority, the study relies on publicly available documents and media texts through which the IOC communicated its decisions. Qualitative document analysis is well suited to this task, since organisational governance is often expressed through written protocols, guidance materials, statements, and press communication rather than through observable internal processes. Similar document-based approaches have been used in studies of Olympic governance (Boykoff, 2013), analyses of mega-event risk management (Toohey & Taylor, 2008), and research on public risk controversies (Hilgartner, 1992). These precedents provide a strong foundation for adopting a qualitative, text-focused method.
Scope and Data Sources
The project limits the temporal scope to March 2020 through August 2021. This period begins with the postponement of the Games and ends shortly after their completion, which allows for the inclusion of protocol development, rule revisions, and reflections during the event itself. The narrower time frame provides both feasibility and analytical clarity.
The corpus will be composed of three categories of documents. The first category includes IOC and Tokyo 2020 materials that outline mobility protocols, testing rules, behavioural expectations, and logistical arrangements. This includes the full set of Playbooks, updates issued in different months, travel protocols, countermeasure briefings, and press releases. These documents are crucial because they reveal how the organisation sought to shape behaviour, articulate risk management strategies, and publicly justify the continuation of the Games.
The second category consists of Japanese government documents that address border control, quarantine procedures, public health guidelines, and exemptions created for Olympic personnel. Host state rules shaped the IOC’s decisions, which means these documents help illuminate points of alignment and tension between institutional logics. English-language statements from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cabinet Office, and Tokyo Metropolitan Government will be included, as well as selected Japanese-language press releases where relevant.
The third category includes media texts that capture public debate, political criticism, and reactions from international sports bodies. Articles from the Associated Press, Reuters, the BBC, the New York Times, Asahi Shimbun, and Mainichi Shimbun will be used to reflect both international and domestic perspectives. Media coverage will not be treated as factual reporting alone, but as an interpretive site that reveals how legitimacy claims and risk narratives circulated among different audiences.
A corpus of approximately eighty to one hundred documents is expected. This range mirrors the scale commonly used in qualitative studies of international sport and risk governance, where researchers rely on a combination of institutional and media texts to build an interpretive account (Boykoff, 2013; Toohey & Taylor, 2008).
Data Management
All collected documents will be stored in a structured digital archive organised by source category and date. They will be imported into NVivo, which is widely used in qualitative research for coding and document management. Using software provides benefits for transparency and replicability, since coding choices can be traced, adjusted, and compared across the corpus. NVivo also allows for the grouping of documents into sets that represent phases of protocol development, such as early 2021 revisions or the final pre-Games instructions. This temporal organisation is useful given the iterative nature of the IOC’s rule-making process.
Analytical Strategy
The analysis will draw on thematic coding. The approach follows the principles outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006), who emphasise a systematic process of identifying, refining, and interpreting patterns across a body of texts. Coding will proceed in several stages. The first stage involves preliminary reading and memo writing. A sample of documents will be read without coding in order to identify tentative themes, surprising elements, and recurring framing devices. Analytic memos will support early reflections and provide a record of emerging ideas.
The second stage will involve developing a coding frame that blends deductive categories drawn from Beck’s theory with inductive categories that arise from the documents themselves. Deductive codes will include concepts such as transboundary risk, uncertainty, institutional reflexivity, and legitimacy claims. Inductive codes will likely include categories such as arrival protocols, behavioural restrictions, testing layers, and references to scientific advice. The coding frame will remain flexible and open to revision as new themes emerge.
The third stage will involve full coding of the corpus. Each document will be read in its entirety, with segments assigned to one or more codes. Coding will focus on three analytic domains that correspond directly to the research question: anticipation of travel risk, mechanisms for governing mobility, and public justifications for the rules. Attention will also be paid to changes across time, particularly as protocols were updated in response to shifting infection rates or public criticism.
The final stage will involve synthesising coded themes into interpretive findings. This will include comparing how the IOC described risk across different audiences, how classifications and exemptions were framed as necessary, and how legitimacy was defended. Triangulation across IOC documents, government materials, and media coverage will help identify points where institutional narratives aligned or diverged. This triangulation is a standard practice in document-based research and strengthens analytical claims (Hilgartner, 1992).
Methodological Challenges
Several methodological challenges are anticipated. The first is the opacity of internal IOC decision-making. Many discussions between the IOC and Japanese authorities occurred behind closed doors. Public documents therefore represent only the finalised or public-facing version of decisions. This limitation is common in organisational research, where internal access is restricted. Triangulation will help mitigate this issue by showing how different actors interpreted and responded to decisions.
A second challenge involves the retrospective rationalisation present in many institutional documents. Playbooks and press releases often present decisions as orderly, even when the actual process may have been more chaotic. To address this, the analysis will examine earlier drafts and track revisions across time in order to identify shifts in framing and tone.
A third challenge concerns media bias. Japanese and international outlets approached the Games from different political and cultural standpoints. Rather than treating media as factual accounts, they will be used as interpretive sources that reflect public sentiment, conflict, and contestation. Comparing multiple outlets will help reduce reliance on any single narrative.
Finally, researcher positionality must be acknowledged. As an external analyst, interpretation is shaped by distance from institutional actors and by reliance on texts produced for public consumption. Maintaining clear analytic memos and reflecting on interpretive decisions throughout the process will increase transparency.
Suitability of the Method
This method is well suited to the research question because the IOC’s governance of risk is primarily expressed through written rules, protocols, and justificatory statements. Document analysis allows for close examination of how risk was constructed, how mobility was categorised, and how legitimacy was defended. The method also aligns with Beck’s theoretical framework, which emphasises the discursive production of risk within institutions. By focusing on the texts through which the IOC sought to stabilise a volatile situation, the study can reveal how a transnational organisation navigated the uncertainties of a global crisis.
Conclusion
This paper has examined how the International Olympic Committee approached the challenge of governing international travel during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic transformed mobility from a routine logistical concern into a central site of public anxiety, political negotiation, and organisational responsibility. The research question guiding the project asked how the IOC anticipated, governed, and justified travel-related risks during a period of heightened uncertainty. By situating the case within Ulrich Beck’s theory of risk society, the analysis highlighted the ways in which mobility became a form of transboundary and manufactured risk that required constant institutional reflexivity (Beck, 1992, 1994).
The empirical and theoretical discussion showed that travel during Tokyo 2020 was managed through layers of rules, testing requirements, behavioural instructions, and controlled movement systems. These measures were not only practical attempts to reduce infection risk. They also served as symbolic tools that aimed to reassure the public that risk had been addressed in a responsible manner. The controversy surrounding the Games illustrated how legitimacy becomes a central concern when institutions operate under uncertain conditions. Public opposition in Japan and international skepticism created pressure on the IOC to justify the exceptional mobility of thousands of accredited individuals. The organisation responded by appealing to scientific advice, demonstrating procedural rigor, and presenting its decisions as the product of extensive coordination.
The methodology proposed in this paper demonstrates how a master’s-level qualitative document analysis could be carried out to examine these dynamics. By constructing a corpus of IOC materials, Japanese government documents, and media texts, and by analysing them through thematic coding, the study would illuminate how the organisation framed uncertainty and defended its authority. The method is grounded in established approaches in risk governance and Olympic research and is well suited to the textual nature of the IOC’s decision-making environment.
Tokyo 2020 offers insight into how global institutions adapt when the foundations of international mobility become unstable. It shows that in times of crisis, travel becomes more than movement. It becomes an arena in which risks are produced, managed, and justified. This project would contribute to understanding these processes and provide a foundation for future research on mobility governance in global sport.
Works Cited
Asahi Shimbun. (2021). Survey: 83% against holding Tokyo Olympics this summer. The Asahi Shimbun.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Toward a new modernity. Sage.
Beck, U. (1994). Reflexive modernization: Politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order. Stanford University Press.
Beck, U. (2009). World at risk. Polity Press.
Boykoff, J. (2013). Celebration capitalism and the Olympic Games. Routledge.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology.
Hilgartner, S. (1992). The social construction of risk objects: Or, how to pry open networks of risk. In J. Short & L. Clarke (Eds.), Organizations, uncertainties, and risk (pp. 39–53).
Kato, T. (2021). Opposition in Japan to the Olympics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Toohey, K., & Taylor, T. (2008). Mega events, fear, and risk: Terrorism at the Olympic Games.