Sports Diplomacy. Michał Marcin Kobierecki

USSR, baseball diplomacy between the United States and Cuba, hockey diplomacy between Canada and the USSR, tennis diplomacy between China and South Korea, sports diplomacy between North and South Korea, and sports diplomacy between Iran and the United States. The first three cases considered situations when sports exchanges were employed to establish contact between political representatives of respective states. Ping-pong diplomacy was described firsthand since its presence in collective awareness as an example of this type of sports diplomacy and has proven to be particularly useful, thus constituting a sort of a model. Other case studies have been sorted chronologically, although some cases referred to an extended period. The case studies were selected with the use of typical case sampling and concerning their representative character. Each of these cases is analyzed concerning the following variables:

      • Sports contact necessary to establish political contact,

      • Improvement or lack of improvement of the state of political relations as a result of sports contact,

      • Correlation between the consistency of sports exchanges and the current state of political relations,

      • Existence of formal agreements sanctioning sports diplomacy,

      • Sports exchanges arranged on purpose or spontaneously occurring,

      • Relevance attributed to sports victories during the exchanges,

      • High-level or grassroots character of the sports exchanges.

      This part of the research allowed for formulation of several generalizations concerning this type of sports diplomacy and proposition of three models of sports diplomacy used to initiate international rapprochement. The models were based on the specific qualities of the use of sports diplomacy by three states that have been particularly active in this field: the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China. chapter 2 also included testing two hypotheses: sport may serve as a useful tool for shaping relations between states by creating favorable circumstances (H1); there is no direct correlation between the type of sport used in sports diplomacy for political rapprochement and its effectiveness in bringing states closer together (H2).

      chapter 3, “Sports Diplomacy as a Tool for Shaping the Desirable Image of States,” undertakes issues related to employing sport within activities directed at shaping the perception of a state by the foreign public. The research included case studies of the United States, China, Russia/the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Norway, Qatar, and Kosovo. The selection of states to be investigated was determined by the fact that they pursued image-building sports diplomacy since not every country is active in this field. Apart from that, the selected countries differ from each other in their wealth, size, and political regime. Accordingly, the research included democratic and nondemocratic countries, superpowers, regional powers, and small states. This selection was connected with the need to answer the research question concerning which methods of image-building sports diplomacy are used by different kinds of states. Doubts may appear concerning the selection of the states mentioned and not taking into consideration countries such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Brazil. These countries belong to democratic regional powers, a category that has been investigated on other examples. The United States, China, and Russia are particularly strong in terms of sports performance and are active players of public diplomacy, therefore not including them in the analysis would be difficult to accept. Great Britain is smaller than the previous three but still relatively big and as a country became much more active concerning image-building sports diplomacy recently.

      The other three countries investigated in the chapter are considered as small states. There are several criteria that may be used to determine small states, but most often they refer to their populations. According to one of the investigations on sports policies, small states have populations lower than ten million,²⁴ and this definition has been adopted in this book. From among small states, three in completely different international situations have been selected, with different foreign policy goals and with different capacity for action. Some of the governments question Kosovo’s statehood, and its financial assets are very limited. Qatar, on the other hand, belongs to very wealthy countries concerning GDP per capita. Both of them regard sports diplomacy as important means of realizing foreign policy goals, although their objectives and possibilities are inherently different. The third small state in the analysis—Norway—has a well-grounded position in international relations and also belongs to very wealthy countries. It has been included in the research because it enjoys a solid nation brand and because in this case, sport plays only a secondary role in building the state’s international image.

      All the selected states were investigated concerning the methods of image-building sports diplomacy they have been using among the following: sports exchanges, hosting sports events, sports achievements, sports development aid, having internationally known athletes, sports investments, and participation in sport. Despite the employment of case-study protocols the structure of parts concerning particular states was not entirely coherent since in each section the use of the most dominating method was described in the first place, and there were methods that were used by some countries but not by others. Some of the methods of image-building sports diplomacy were to some extent related to others, for example, sports development aid was often associated with sports exchanges (apart from the cases of Norway and Qatar). The structure of the respective subchapters was therefore adjusted to a particular case, whereas all cases were uniformly compared in the concluding part.

      The activity of respective states concerning building their international image through sport was analyzed in reference to the following variables: the size of the state (based on population), the wealth of state (based on GDP per capita), and the political regime (democratic or nondemocratic). Apart from that, the research considered the costliness of particular methods and whether sport was regarded as a priority area of general attempts to build the international image. The study also took into consideration whether the analyzed countries experienced an “image loss”—a situation or situations when pursuing image-building sports diplomacy also led to disseminating negative messages, for example, in reference to international criticism, protests, etc. It was also considered which methods were attached priority and whether they were inspired by governments or were initiated on the grassroots level. This allowed for making several generalizations and verification of the following hypotheses: methods employed by states within their branding sports diplomacy are determined by their assets and political regimes (H3); democratic states prefer grassroots activities while nondemocratic countries prefer to act from above (H4); states may benefit from the actions of non-state actors despite their government’s passivity in the context of their international image (H5).

      chapter 4, entitled “The Diplomacy of Organizations Governing International Sport,” has a slightly different character than chapters 2 and 3. It refers to an approach to understanding sports diplomacy that is connected to the activity of international sports organizations—institutions responsible for international competitions in particular sports (International Federations [IFs]) and the IOC—the supreme body of international sport. Considerations undertaken in this chapter go beyond the theoretical frame of public diplomacy and refer to these bodies as participants of international negotiations. Still, states remained as the main subject of analysis since the diplomatic activity of ISOs was analyzed in the context of states’ public diplomacy. Sports bodies were investigated as external stakeholders of states’ public diplomacy, with governments remaining contacts and negotiating with them because of the assets in their possession that countries need.

      The part of the research presented in chapter 4 concerned the IOC in the context of its interactions with states. The analysis included issues such as selecting the hosts of the Olympic Games, negotiations concerning the organization of the Olympics, recognition of National Olympic Committees (NOCs), attempts to exert influence on states by the IOC, and the specificity of contacts between representatives of the committee and of states. Other issues under consideration included the functioning of the IOC as a sort of a diplomatic forum, its cooperation with the United Nations and the pursuing of development and educational programs. All these issues were considered based on indicative situations and processes