The independence of brazilian antidoping as to the ties between the State and sports federations

Abstract

The anti-doping globalization and harmonization processes, led mainly by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), produced a series of interested institutions, which, according to the actors, must act independently, especially from national states and sports federations. In Brazil, however, the Brazilian Doping Control Authority (ABCD) was created in 2009 as a secretariat of the Ministry of Sports. The objective of this paper was to analyze how the actors associate and sustain a discourse of independence in the Brazilian anti-doping fight. Based on an ethnographic insertion, which included interviews and documentary analysis, this study describes, in the ways of pragmatic sociology and with the use of the Eliasian concept of interdependence, the approximations of the national anti-doping agency, especially with government actors as well as with Brazilian football federation. In this sense, we use the concepts of interdependence and harmonization to analyze associations and, thus, we reflect on the discourse of independence when presenting interests in associations between actors.