There is a growing demand, from host city populations in particular, that basic democratic principles and procedures in decision‐making are upheld in planning and delivering MSEs so that hosts can be held accountable by their primary stakeholders. Thus, formalising institutional commitments to transparency and engagement provides an advantage to ensuring the democratization of the MSE planning process and improving levels of public participation in the decision-making process. Public participation can take myriad forms, but includes providing information to the public, allowing the public to comment on decisions, or allowing the public to have a say in the decision itself. The nature and types of stakeholder participation in the formalized process is important to understanding the mechanisms by which public participation facilitates positive social outcomes. Host organizing stakeholders that resist or even ignore the democratization of decision-making processes open the planning and delivery of MSEs to public resistance. This pathway will explore the effectiveness of civic participation, through the lens of oppositional movements formed, or brought together, around the bidding or delivery of MSEs. Research enquiries, focused on targeted MSEs will explore the formation of oppositional groups at the bid stage, the importance of the local political, economic and social context, their tactics, techniques and, crucially, continuation beyond their initial purpose. Enquiries will consider the relationship between advocacy and oppositional groups and the host organizers. The research will also include a focus on event bidding processes, looking at the approach to the ‘activism of prevention’ taking place for future event bids, ‘failed’ bids and the oppositional legacy for the groups and organisations that campaigned (but failed) to prevent MSE bids from going ahead.
Current blogs- Pathway 2: Practices of democratization and opposition