World sporting events have become a recurring part of daily life for billions of people around the world. Through television, live online or more directly in person, enthusiasts and casual observers can experience a variety of sports at the highest professional level. While not all of these events receive extensive media coverage, the largest and most famous world sporting events, such as the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games, reach a significant portion of the world’s population. These high-profile events feature athletes representing their countries. So it’s not just individual athletes or sports teams that compete against each other, but also the countries they represent. As a result, world sporting events capture the imagination of the global public in a very special way. The world, they argue, is made up of competing nations that inevitably compete with each other—but based on common rules.
Because world sporting events have a global impact and because they convey specific images of the world, their importance transcends the realm of sport. More specifically, we argue that they play a decisive role in the stability of the international order (as a specific world order) and the reproduction of international society (as a society of states). Before we elaborate on this perspective, let us illustrate how this perspective complements other analyzes of sport and (international) society.
Recently, sports have received increasing attention in the IR community. For example, Frank and Koch analyze press statements from the International Olympic Committee and FIFA regarding contemporary conflicts. Weiss and Dassler use sports and sport metaphors to discuss policy positions. Chadwick has even called for the establishment of a new research field focused on the geopolitical economy of sport (see also interview with him). This new interest in the relationship between sport and politics adds to the literature on mafia-like practices and corruption scandals in sport, the impact of hosting world sporting events on the sovereignty of host countries, and the lack of fit between sporting events and politics Spend.
Despite growing scholarly interest in sport, the role of world sporting events in stabilizing the international order and reproducing international society has received less attention. Based on an article we published international theoryWe believe that world sporting events with global impact are more than just an enjoyable pastime, a business opportunity, or a spectacle that serves the political power of individual countries. Rather, their role is to conduct large-scale public diplomacy (or propaganda) on behalf of the international community. In particular, they celebrate the idea that the world is empirically composed of nation-states and promote the idea that this is a happy and fascinating world. From this perspective, international society is preferable to alternative world orders such as global empire or a global society of individuals.
In our article, we substantiate the claim that world sporting events contribute to international order by theorizing about world sporting events and empirically analyzing international football. Regarding the former, we draw on the English School, ritual studies, and ludology (the study of games and play) to show how world sporting events can be conceptualized as an institution of international society.
More specifically, world sporting events are a derivative primary institution embedded in the primary institutions of venues and festivals. This institutional environment provides a joyful and cheerful side to the international community. Furthermore, it relies on focal times (festivals) and spaces (places) to display and celebrate a microcosm of international society. Finally, it is particularly open to the participation of non-state (or world society) actors, which explains not only global private mobilization, but also why private organizations like FIFA can act as a second party to international society in this context. level institutions.
Our view of world sporting events helps explain and understand a wide range of phenomena beyond the general contribution of world sporting events to international order. Our perspective highlights the role of nation-states, for example, and clarifies why a country like Qatar can serve as a host despite its human rights record. In the international community, human rights remain less important than key institutions such as sovereignty, territory and nationalism.
At the same time, our approach means that world sporting events also mark important limits on acceptable state behavior. The three key institutions of the international community just mentioned will be severely damaged by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Summer Olympics. As discussed, “peace, coexistence and cooperation are the minimum goals”.
While our primary focus is on the connection between world sporting events and the international order, our approach also helps to reconstruct the rationale behind some states’ use of sport as a means of self-aggrandizement and status politics. World sporting events shape the world in specific ways, and just like other rituals, people always want to shape the performance of international society in a way that benefits their own role in society. At the very least, participation in world sporting events conveys membership in the international community. But individual countries may also use world sporting events to convey their importance. In other words, while world sporting events are a playful stage, performing a microcosm of international society can have an impact on international society itself.
This observation points to the symbiotic relationship between world sporting events and the international community. Were it not for the claim to essentially represent “the whole world” (understood as all nation-states), world sporting events might not mobilize the masses to such an extent. For its part, international society, as noted above, gains legitimacy: the international order becomes more natural and desirable than other world orders. We believe that it is precisely because of this symbiotic relationship that international sports organizations have been able to escape various scandals. They are secondary institutions of the international community. However, this also creates dangers for the international community. Especially in democracies that demand public accountability, corruption and other scandals in world sports could have counterproductive consequences for the international community.
What the international community needs are world sports events that are inspiring and convey positive messages. If world sporting events can be peaceful and entertaining, then there is hope for the world in which they are held. This reasoning became apparent in some of the commentary surrounding this year’s Summer Olympics in Paris. The GuardianFor example, the report said: “Paris bid farewell to the Games with a message about the importance of preserving the spirit of the Games in an uncertain world filled with conflict.”
Under the Olympic Games, the international order can be stable because the main goals of the international community can be guaranteed: violence will be avoided and both individual members and the international community itself will be protected. The Olympics even show that the international community is about cooperation and not just coexistence. Our approach shows why world sporting events are particularly prone to conveying messages of hope for the existing world order in the form of an international order. Although world sporting events are filled with joy, they are also very serious competitions.
Further reading on electronic international relations
