The 37-year-old Ukrainian, who only stopped competing last year after dominating his event since the mid-1980s, is expected to win a place on the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) 's ruling council at meetings starting on Monday before the world championships begin on Friday.
Bubka, one of the first athletes from Eastern Europe to make a lucrative career in the West, was one of a handful of candidates for two vacant positions on the council which will be decided in votes at a three-day congress opening on Tuesday, IAAF spokesman Giorgio Reineri confirmed.
Track and field's governing body is set to elect acting president Lamine Diack of Senegal for two years at the congress.
Diack, who took over the running of track and field at the end of 1999 after the death of longtime chief Primo Nebiolo, is the only candidate who has put his name forward for the position.
But some tip Bubka as a possible future president.
The master pole vaulter has already made a name for himself by reaching high positions in the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
He enjoyed a fantastic career, setting a record 17 world marks between 1984 and 1994 after bursting on to the scene with a gold medal at the 1983 world championships.
Bubka, who lives in Monaco where the IAAF is based, is the athletes' representative on the IOC's ruling executive board and was a member of the evaluation commission which produced a key report on the cities bidding to host the 2008 Summer Games earlier this year.
Beijing won the right to stage the Games at an IOC meeting in Moscow earlier this month.
The IOC elected a new, younger president in Belgium's former Olympic yachtsman Jacques Rogge to take over from octogenerian Juan Antonio Samaranch at the Moscow meeting.
Some suggest Bubka, who has won friends with his modest approach in sports politics and with his ability to speak English well, could be a key figure in a fresh generation of leaders in a Rogge era where the IOC is looking to include more former competitors.
Britain's former middle-distance athlete Seb Coe, who entered politics in his homeland after his athletics career finished, was often regarded as a possible future IAAF chief.
But Bubka may have overtaken the Briton in the minds of some observers of sports politics.
The elections are the most high-profile decisions expected at the congress.
But the IAAF's council was expected to discuss a rule change at its opening meeting on Monday which could have an important impact on the way track and field authorities deal with doping offenders in the future.
The council is expected to propose to the congress that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) - like the IOC, based in the Swiss city of Lausanne - should decide on disputes between the IAAF and athletes or federations in the future, instead of its own arbitration panel.
The change hardly seems a major development to the outside world, especially since the CAS already rules on disputes in other sports and on disagreements during the Olympics.
But interestingly the arbitration body is controlled by Swiss civil law, rather than Monaco law.
This could influence the IAAF's rules on strict liability - the regulation which says an athlete is guilty of a drug offence if found to have a banned substance in the body, regardless of how it got there.
In their defence, some athletes have claimed in the past that they did not willingly take a banned substance, claiming a third party was involved.
The IAAF has been adamant about punishing athletes who are found to have banned substances in their body. But Reineri said the CAS had ruled in the past in favour of athletes who could prove that they had not willingly taken drugs.
This is not likely to open the floodgate to athletes winning cases involving the controversial steroid nandrolone, which some athletes have said they took by accident in food supplements.
But it may influence cases where an athlete can prove beyond reasonable doubt that another person caused a positive test.
"Nandrolone would not be an exception because everyone now knows enough about the danger of some supplements," Reineri said. "It would be about cases where there was no will to cheat. That law exists in most countries."
The IAAF is keen to change the procedure to quash suggestions that it makes the final ruling on cases rather than an independent body. It also believes cases may be cleared up more quickly through the CAS.
