Sport and international relations : a study of their interplay in the twentieth century

Abstract

When one takes sport and international relations at face value one might envisage two distinct and unrelated entities. The end of the Cold War has brought a shift towards a post-positivistic frame of thought which thus enabled sport to be viewed as a potential playground for international relations. This was further enhanced by the dramatic shifts in world politics and the acceleration in the endemic trends in the development of sport itself and in the part it plays in society. Nowadays sport has become inseparable from politics and commerce and is deeply entrenched in today's globalised world. As the vision of the world has become increasingly encompassing, it has become ever so evident, as shall be seen in the first chapter, how much the two disciplines have impinged upon each other throughout the course of years. If one could consider play as the most basic and most liberal form of sport then it comes as no surprise that sporting roots go deeper than that of culture and are to be found in elements which compose nations and at times divides them. The second chapter shall offer insight how as play developed into games, which in turn evolved into sports, sport was utilised as a means to attain a multiplicity of ends. The numerous ways sports and international relations have impacted upon each other shall be dealt with in the third and fourth chapters. After revisiting a number of case studies it could be concluded that the two could affect each other in both positive and negative a manner. Meanwhile it could be determined that whist sport's influence on international relations was more of an event-specific nature, international relations affected sports mostly as a movement (best exemplified by the disarray the Olympic movement found itself in between 1976 and 1984 to the extent that its very own survival was highly questionable. This study shall conclude by exploring whether sport does bring people together or actually push them further apart. We shall also see how sport has at times appeared as an alternative to war and the fact that sport is paradoxical in its own essence could leave certain doubts un-clarified.