Mapping the relationship between international sport and diplomacy
Stuart Murray
a
and Geoffrey Allen Pigman
b
*
a
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia;
b
Department
of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
*Corresponding author. Email: gapigman@mindspring.com
To date, the relationship between diplomacy and international sport has been relatively under-
theorized. This paper seeks to redress the deficiency by proposing an
analytical taxonomy of the
multiple convergences between international sport and diplomacy. The principal analytical
distinction to be drawn is between (1) international sport consciously employed by governments as
an instrument of diplomacy and (2) international-sport-as-diplomacy, the diplomatic representation,
communication and negotiation between non-state actors that take place as a result of ongoing
international sporting competition. By increasing understanding of the ro
ˆ
les of sport in diplomacy
and diplomacy in sport, the paper seeks to promote the adoption of best practices to facilitate
effective use of sport in diplomacy by governments and effective use of diplomacy by international
sporting bodies, and to instigate a debate between theorists and practitioners from both realms.
Introduction
For millennia, there has been an association between sport and politics. When sport
provides a function beyond the ‘game’, it is often emb raced by ruling elit
es. The Ancient
Olympiad, for example, begun in 776 BC ‘in a religious setting as one of the activities
during the festival of Zeus’, subsequently morphed into a sporting-competition, a gift to
the people and a way to sublimate conflict, and was abolished in 394 AD by the Roman
Emperor Theodosius I as part of the campaign to abolish Paganism and impose
Christianity as a state religion (Hugh 1998). In the nineteenth century, the strategic rivalry
between Britain and Russia for supremacy in Central Asia was considered the ‘Great
Game’ (or ‘Tournament of Shadows’). For the British, spurred on by Henry Newbolt’s
Vitai Lampada, a stirring homage to sport and war, sport was one of the foundations on
which empire was spread and consolidated. And mor e recently, the twentieth century has
seen a relationship between sport and fascism, apartheid and racism, as well as myriad
partnerships that fall under the broad heading of sport and development. Much has been
written on these and other topics.
Notwithstanding the long-running relationship between sport and international
politics, far less scholarship has been undertaken on the means and instrumentalities for
enacting the relationship: diplomacy. In the theory and practice of diplomacy, the
relationship between international sport and diplomacy is a familiar but relatively under-
explored area. Beyond a collection of anecdotal, sporadic and case-specific articles on
ping-pong, baseball and football diplomacy, no meta-review of the theory and empirical
data relating to ‘sports-diplomacy’ has occurred. This is a deficiency that this paper seeks
to redress.
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In analysing the multifold networks, actors and channels where international sport and
diplomacy converge two distinct categories of sports diplomacy emerge. The first is
comprised of cases in which international sport is consciously employed by governments
as an instrument of diplomacy. The second category – international-sport-as-diplomacy –
concerns the diplomatic representation, communication and negotiation between non-state
actors that take place as a result of ongoing international sporting competition.
The former category, in which sport is employed by governments as an instrument of
diplomacy, is the more familiar form of sports diplomacy. In this traditional sense where
diplomacy is the ‘dialogue betwee n states’, sports diplomacy is often associated with
governments employing sportspeople to amplify a diplomatic message, or with states
exploiting sporting events for public diplomacy opportunities, to cool tensions in flagging
diplomatic relationships or to simply test the ground for a possible policy change.
The latter category, international-sport-as-diplomacy, is less well understood. It
includes the effects of both international sport on diplomacy and the specialized
diplomacy of international sport: the diplomatic activities that occur to make international
sporting competition possible. In the modern, plural diplomatic environment, non-state
actors such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Fe
´
de
´
ration
Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) can be said to practice a disti nct type of
diplomacy. These organizations and individuals consistently engage in representation to
and negotiation with governments, the regional and national organizing bodies of sport,
large global firms that sponsor competition, global media firms and global civil society
organizations (CSOs). Arguably, the impact of this category on diplomacy is grea ter by
virtue of its volume, frequency and ability to engage the hearts, minds and wallets of the
global public.
Of these two categories of sports diplomacy, the first is much smaller than the second,
as most international sport is organized for purposes officially unrelated to diplomacy. The
traditional and non-traditional types of sports diplomacy overlap on important occasions,
as in the creation of the ancient Olympiad expressly for purpos es of promoting peace and
comity and sporting excellence. Yet, at the same time, each raises a distinct set of
analytical and normative questions that are long overdue to be addressed. Considering the
recent interest in sports as a soft power tool, the timing for a systematic investigation of
sports diplomacy is ideal.
This paper aims to establish, critique and evidence both categories. Its purpose is to map
the theoretical and practical terrain of sports dipl omacy and to frame a number of debates
conducive to a regular discussion with theorists and practitioners from both realms. The
paper begins by exploring sport as an instrument of diplomacy and then goes on to
investigate international-sport-as-diplomacy, introducing and substantiating a u nique form
of non-traditional diplomacy: the specialized diplomacy of international sport.
International sport as a diplomatic instrument
In a traditional sense, diplomacy is ‘the conduct of relations between sovereign states with
standing in world politics by
official agents and by peaceful means’ (Bull 1977, 156).
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Where foreign policy concerns a state’s ends, diplomacy is the means to those ends.
Diplomacy is the ‘engine room’ (Cohen 1998, 1) of international relations and the ‘master-
institution of international society’ (Wight and Butterfield 1966, 10–12). The scope of
traditional diplomacy is vast. In addition to negotiation, communication, information
gathering and dissemination, representation and the minimization of friction in
international affairs, traditional diplomacy is not averse to employing unconventional
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means, partners and avenues to amplify its message. On occasion, cultural exchanges such
as the 2008 visit to North Korea by the New York Philharmonic can substitute for more
formal diplomatic interaction, or soft power institutions like the Goethe Institute or the
British Council can create new channels for diplomacy. Sport is no different.
Etymologically speaking, the origins of the English word ‘sport’ lie in the French word
desport, roughly translated as leisure. And for Kyle (1983):
... ‘sport’ is a non-ancient and vague term at best. ‘Athletics’ usually suggests competition,
training, prizes and the goal of victory. ‘Physical education’ implies instruction and the
exercise of the body. ‘Recreation’ or ‘leisure’ applies to non-work, relaxation and
rejuvenation with pleasure or fun as a goal. ‘Sport’ is used as a general rubric for all these
areas as well as hunting, dance and even board games (278).
Sport is a complex phenomenon; however, this section of the paper focuses on
international sport, whose essence – from the Hellenes through to the present – is
unmistakable: being the best you can be, the pursuit of sporting excellence and –
preferably – winning.
Sport, politics and diplomacy have long been compatible. When sport provides a
useful function, it is usually ‘co-opted by
politics’ (Jackson and Haigh 2008). International
sport creates opportunities for governments to demonstrate various types of superiority,
from their athletic prowess to the ideology of a particular system of state. Governments are
well aware of the power of the opiate of the masses and have long been drawn towards
sport and sporting festivals. As Allison (1993, 17) notes, all kinds of governments:
have endorsed international sporting competition as a testing ground for the nation or for a
political ‘system’. German Nazis, Italian Fascists, Soviet and Cuban Communists, Chinese
Maoists, western capitalist democrats, Latin American juntas – all have played the game and
believed in it.
The mixing of sport, diplomacy and politics is part of the milieu of international relations.
Sports diplomacy – a theoretical and practical hybrid of two significant institutions – is
the specialization, exploitation and reification of a familiar aspect of state-qua-state
interaction.
In the contemporary diplomatic environment, conditions are ideal for sports
d
iplomacy. The appearance of ‘new’ diplomatic actors – CSOs, multinational
corporations
2
and intergovernmental organizations, and even influential celebrities –has
consolidated expressions like plural, ‘polylateral’ (Wiseman 1999) or ‘multi-
stakeholder’ (Hocking 2006) to describe the vertical and horizontal networks that
characterize modern diplomacy. In this dynamic environment, international sportspeople
can be employed to augment a foreign policy message; rancorous diplomatic relationships
can be bridged through sport or, as was the case with the ban placed on apartheid Sou th
Africa, sport can be used as a punitive tool. A nation can also express its disdain by simply
saying ‘we’re not playing’, as was the case when the USA boycotted the 1980 Moscow
Olympics, a gesture reciprocated by the Soviet Union and 13 satellite states when they
refused to participate in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. Clearly , sports diplomacy
plays a major part in the international life of governments.
There is a long history of sporting competition being used in diplomacy as a device to
mediate estrangement, in Der Derian’s (1987) terminology, between peoples, nations and
governments. Such mediation can extend from the sublimation or controlled release of
hostility to the avoidance or management of conflict. The ancient Olympiad, an athletic
and religious festival that ran every four years uninterrupt ed from 776 BC to 393 AD, for
example, initiated the idea of a Truce during competition. Travelling fans were afforded
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protection, and the Truce ‘forbade all states participating in the gam es to take up arms, to
pursue legal disputes or to exercise death penalties’ while the Games took place
(Scrambler 2005, 15).
Or, sport between
nations and people can be used to consolidate political
developments, as was the case with the 1520 meeting between King Franc ois I of France
and Henry VIII of England. The summit at the Fields of Clot h of Gold in norther n France,
where the two kings and their retinues wrestled, jousted and competed in archery events
over a period of two weeks, was arranged to strengthen the bond of friendship between the
two monarchs after the Anglo-French treaty of 1514 (Mattingly 1938). The majority of
these pre-Westphalian contests were conscious ly organized by polities for the purpose of
reducing tension and as a means for alienated peoples to view each other as sharing
interests and humanity through sport.
In the modern era, sports diplomacy can be instigated by non-governmental
organizations or competitors and then embraced by government officials for their potential
value as a diplomatic mission. The most famous example of this is the April 1971 visit by
the US Table Tennis team to China. This historic visit was first proposed by the US not-
for-profit National Committee on USA–China relations after an opportune meeting
between the flamboyant Amer ican player Glenn Cowan and the three-time Chinese world
champion Zhuang Zedong at the 31st World Table Tennis Championship in Nagoya,
Japan, in March 1971 (Huang 2008).
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The proposal was then embraced by the Mao and
Nixon governments as a vehicle to test whether the public of the two countries would be
accepting of a more formal diplomatic opening of frozen relations between the two cold
war adversaries. Ping-Pong diplomacy paved the way for US National Security Adviser
Henry Kissinger’s July 1971 visit and the more famous visit by US President Richard
Nixon in February 1972.
Sports diplomacy can also create alternate channels for diplomacy, allowing states to
move beyond entrenched foreign policy positions. The episodic cricket diplomacy
between India and Pakistan, for example, demonstrates that the two nations and peoples
share a common interest in/through sport despite decades of bitterness. After the Kashmir
crisis of 2002 left the two nations on the brink of war, a series of cricket matches were
facilitated by both governments in 2004 to reduce tensions and explore the possibility of
normalizing relations, opening borders and resuming direct security negotiations.
Similarly, after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks froze relations, cricket was once
more employed as a diplomatic tool. In 2011, Pakistani Prime Min ister Gilani accepted an
invitation from his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh to attend the Cricket Worl d
Cup
semi-final match between the South Asian rivals in Mohali, India. The occasion was touted
as ‘an attempt to use sport to create a feel-good atmosp here between the two countries at a
time when the atmosphere of suspicion and hostility towards Pakistan in India is very
strong’ (Rupert 2011). The Singh–Gilani meeting was followed by an assembly of foreign
secretaries in mid-2011 and, once more, a slow normalization of relations.
Whether it is baseball diplomacy between the USA and Cuba or football diplomacy
between Turkey and Armenia, sport can be a powerful diplomatic tool. Sports diplomacy
transcends cultural differences, provides different avenues for increased dialogue and
unites disparate peoples through a mutual affection for sport. More specifically, sports
diplomacy involves representative and diplomatic activities undertaken by sportspeople
on behalf of and in conjunction with their governments. The practice is facilitated by
traditional diplomacy and uses sportspeople and sporting events to engage, inform and
create a favourable image among foreign publics and organizations, to shape their
perceptions in a way that is (more) conducive to the sending government’s foreign policy
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goals.
4
While traditional diplomacy is the means to a state’s foreign policy ends, sports
diplomacy is one of the means to the means of those ends.
In modern diplomacy, there are four obvious benefits for governments using sport as
an instrument of diplomacy. First, radical change s in the modern diplomatic environment
have forced traditional diplomatic institutions to reform, adapt and experiment. Sports
diplomacy embodies a proactive government response to the common argument that
diplomacy is irrelevant, obsolete, ‘dead’ (Ramsay 2006) ‘fossilized’ (Modelski 1972) and
in a general state of deliquescence. By employing sports, the image of a state’s diplomacy
can change from aloof, hermetic and irrelevant to one that is innovative, effective and
public (and even fun). Moreover, in the postmodern information age, foreign publics are
more likely to be engage
d by soft power overtures from nations, such as cultural or
sporting exchanges. Today sport and diplomacy are no longer niche or backwater
institutions but powerful foreign policy tools when working in tandem.
Second, sport and sportspeople can amplify a state’s diplomacy. The US Department
of State, for example, typifies a rallying call ‘to aggressively use sports as a diplomatic
tool’ through programmes like their SportsUnited initiative.
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After 9/11, State used sport
as a way to engage young Muslims across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia – a
demographic that had previously been difficult to reach. As Walters (2007) notes of the
reasons behind this innovation:
Only certain cultures or segments of society show strong interest in speaking English,
travelling to the United States, attending a classical music event, or participating in a
discussion on human rights. On the other hand, virtually all cultures and all citizens have an
interest in and appreciation for sport. This makes it one of the best methods for exchange –
especially for diplomats operating in an age when the opinions of foreign publics are so
crucial for success.
Today, the Department of State regularly employs ‘Sports Envoys’ such as figure skater
Michelle Kwan and baseball star Cal Ripken Jr to engage in sports diplomacy. Since 1961,
the German Federal Foreign Ministry has used sport as a ‘peace policy instrument’ in
developing countries and crisis areas, to ‘break down prejudice, [and to] strengthen
minorities’ (Auswa
¨
rtiges Amt 2010). And similarly, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (MOFA) regularly exploits and mobilizes football and footballers. Football is used
to overcome imperial stereotypes and one intention behind the formation of the J-league in
the 1990s, for example, was to improve the performance of the national team to reflect ‘a
level worthy of its [Japan’s] economic power and overall achievements after 40 years of
post-war peace and prosperity’ (Manzenreiter 2008). In the twenty-first century, MOFA
has employed football to ‘secure a peaceful environment for Japanese troops in Iraq’, to
bridge divides between Balkan states and frequently invites ‘Israeli and Palestinian youth
players to participate in training camps in Japan’ as a way of getting to know the
‘other’ (Manzenreiter 2008, 421–423).
In these respects, sport has a transcendental quality, and governments are keen to tap
in. After all, nobody is opposed to
sports; it has a global, universal quality: ‘who is against
sport? No one, or almost no one. The Inuits are as interested in the World Cup as the
Argentineans, Congolese and Europeans’ (Redeker 2008). Where the USA, Germans and
Japanese lead, other nations will follow. Sports-diplomacy exchanges promote
international understanding and friendship, as well as dispel stereotypes and prejudices.
Not to mention, they are also ‘low-risk, low-cost and high profile’ (Keech and Houlihan
1999).
Third, sporting mega-events can offer significant public diplomacy opportunities.
Approximately 3.9 billion people watched the 2004 Athens Olympics, while a staggering
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