The International Spectator, Vol. 58, No. 2, June 2023

Special Core: Olympic Diplomacy as Contestation: The Legacy of the Beijing Olympics
Guest Editors: Emidio Diodato and Veronica Strina

Olympic Diplomacy as Contestation: The Legacy of the Beijing Olympics
Emidio Diodato and Veronica Strina
What Stuart Murray defines as “the dark side” of the relationship between sport and International Relations (IR) – that is, boycotts and protests over Olympic venues, human rights abuses and environmental issues – has often characterised the Olympic Games. Yet, in the last decades, the geopolitics of the Olympics has moved towards the East and different forms of contestation have emerged, becoming both a norm and a tool of contemporary Olympic Diplomacy. Therefore, contestation is not just a potential negative feature of Olympic Diplomacy or its ‘dark side’. Instead, it represents a relevant component of its architecture. The label ‘Olympic Diplomacy as Contestation’ captures the complex mechanisms of the new era of this kind of Sports Diplomacy, which is characterised by non-democratic host countries and clashes between different cultural and political values.
Keywords: Olympics; contestation; sports diplomacy; Olympic diplomacy
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Emerging Negative Soft Power: The Evolution of China’s Identity in the 2008 and 2022 Beijing Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies
Michelle Cabula and Stefano Pochettino
By hosting the Olympics in 2008 and 2022, Beijing became the first city to organise both the Summer and Winter Games. These events offered the People’s Republic of China (PRC) an opportunity to present itself to the world and enhance its attractiveness. However, between the two editions, Chinese self-perception has experienced significant transformations, as has its vision of the world, resulting in the national attitude shifting from adaptation to, to contestation of pre-established norms and paradigms. The symbols, images, scenes and discourses exhibited during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing 2008 and 2022 Olympics mirror the broader international communication strategies deployed by the PRC under the Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping presidencies as part of their implementation of negative soft power.
Keywords: China; Olympics; soft power; contestation
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The European Contestation of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics: A Media Perspective
Veronica Strina and Michael Göbbel
Although the Olympics were meant to play a crucial role in pushing forward the growth of winter sports in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and bolster domestic and international support for its management of COVID-19, they also served as an arena for contesting the selection of Beijing as an Olympic host. The media analysis of the European coverage of the Games suggests that the United States (US) diplomatic boycott and the contestation of Beijing’s approach toward human rights penetrated the European narrative of the 2022 Olympics. However, the decline in the coverage of these issues during sports performances shows that this contestation had a short lifespan.
Keywords: 2022 Olympics; soft power; contestation; boycott; media analysis
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The People’s Republic of China’s ‘Green Medal Strategy’: Environmental Discourse during the 2008 and 2022 Beijing Olympic Games within the Soft Power Arena
Francesca Vomeri and Maurizio Gregori
Addressing environmental concerns and hosting ‘green’ Olympic Games played a major role in shaping the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) soft power strategy for both the 2008 and 2022 Olympics, although in significantly different ways. Critical discourse analysis suggests a number of tensions and changes in the narratives related to environmental matters built around the two events. Firstly, an analysis of the narratives related to air pollution and artificial snow demonstrates strong differences between the Chinese and Anglophone media discourse. Secondly, the political shift that occurred between 2008 and 2022 – from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping – is reflected in the different environmental discourse and practices developed by the PRC during the two Olympics: from compliance with international standards to the (self-) elevation as a global leader in environmental sustainability.
Keywords: China; Olympic Games; environmental sustainability; soft power; green medal; discourse analysis
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Football and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa

The Rebellious Game: The Power of Football in the Middle East and North Africa between the Global and the Local
Jan Busse and René Wildangel
By the end of the 19th century, British colonisers, in particular, not only played football as a pastime, they also made use of it to consolidate the political, economic and military interests of the motherland. But while the so-called ‘beautiful game’ served as an instrument of colonial control, both ‘civilising’ and ‘disciplining’ the colonial subjects, it also evolved into a transnational beacon for independence movements, with stadiums becoming important social spaces on the local and national levels. Overall, from a longue durée perspective, the interplay of local and global factors relating to football has triggered both emancipatory and repressive dynamics throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Indeed, the emancipatory power of football has been a consistent feature across the region since the colonial age. However, more recently, the massive wealth of the Arab Gulf States and their decision to invest in football’s ‘soft power’ has again changed the equation.
Keywords: football; colonialism; MENA; globalisation
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More than a Game: Football and Soft Power in the Gulf
Cinzia Bianco and Sebastian Sons
By hosting spectacular international mega-events such as the 2022 World Cup and investing in the heavyweights of global football such as Paris St. Germain, Newcastle United or Manchester City, the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – in particular Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – are heavily engaged in ‘football diplomacy’ to gain more leverage in terms of regional and international politics, bolster their global reputation, consolidate power on an internal and external level and promote economic diversification. In doing so, these GCC monarchies instrumentalise football for the projection of soft power with the aim of preserving geostrategic interests, consolidating legitimacy and promoting a respective national ‘football identity’. As such, they are competing for ‘beauty’, ‘brilliance’ and ‘benignity’. In addition, sports (particularly football) are drivers of domestic and international human development, as GCC states such as Qatar are increasingly investing in Sports for Development (S4D) efforts. As sport diplomacy is also at risk of ‘soft disempowerment’, S4D provides an instrument to counter international criticism and promote social cohesion and national identity politics.
Keywords: Gulf monarchies; sport diplomacy; football; World Cup
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Articles

A Game of Politics? International Sport Organisations and the Role of Sport in International Politics
Francesco Belcastro
Recent events such as the exclusion of Russian teams from international competitions following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as the debate on Qatar hosting the 2022 World Cup, have once again reignited the debate over the relationship between sport and politics. From athletes displaying political symbols to states vying to exclude their rivals from major tournaments, the strong connection between sport and politics in the international arena is evident. International Sport Organisations (ISOs) play a central role in connecting the global sport arena and the international system. Larger international organisations (and particularly mega international sports organisations such as the International Olympic Committee and FIFA), despite their claim to neutrality, are important political actors that frequently use their influence and leverage in the international arena. In particular, the significant role played by FIFA in the politics of World Cup bids and its recent involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian issue demonstrates the impossibility of being politically neutral as an ISO.
Keywords: sport and politics; International Sport Organisations; global system; FIFA; World Cup
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The Geopolitics of Culture: Museum Proliferation in Qatar and Abu Dhabi
Serena Giusti and Alessandro Giovanni Lamonica
In recent years, Qatar and Abu Dhabi have experienced a proliferation of museums symbolically embedded in a trilateral dialogue between the ruling families, the population, and international audiences and partners. This proliferation brings together the local and the global, the physical and the virtual, the tangible facets of politics, economics and security, and the immaterial and ideational ambitions of identity-building and country branding. By analysing the proliferation of museums in the two Emirates from an International Relations perspective and through the lens of critical geopolitics, we show that this phenomenon is an exercise in geocultural power, as ruling families use museums to make sense of the world, to define and defend their place within it, and to transform themselves.
Keywords: museum proliferation; Qatar; United Arab Emirates; spatialisation; geopolitics; geo-politicisation; geocultural power
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Hybrid Security Provision in African Post-colonial Settings: The Cases of Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone
Kwesi Aning and Ilana Zelmanovitz Axelrod
The Weberian paradigm’s ascription of a legitimate state’s provision of security and justice overlooks the role played by non-state actors in the post-colonial world. Adopting a hybridity framework enables scholars and practitioners to re-centre the focus from a state-centric view of states as fragile or failed to recognise the strength and resilience of alternative socio-political formations of order. Existing evidence on hybrid political orders demonstrates that community resilience and customary institutions should not be perceived as spoilers but understood as assets for constructive engagements between the customary and modern states. The cases of Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone highlight how the complex and interdependent interaction between modern and traditional systems of governance, through a combination of conflict and cooperation, can explain state resilience.
Keywords: hybridity; post-coloniality; Burkina Faso; Sierra Leone; security; governance
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Book Reviews

New Perspectives on the Political Economy of Palestine
René Wildangel
Review of: Political economy of Palestine : critical, interdisciplinary, and decolonial perspectives / Alaa Tartir, Tariq Dana, Timothy Seidel, eds. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, [2021]. - xxvii, 335 p. - (Middle East today). - ISBN 978-3-030-68642-0 ; 978-3-030-68645-1 (pbk) ; 978-3-030-68643-7 (ebk)
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An Essential Tool of American Foreign Policy: US Covert Action since 1947
Magda Long
Review of: The third option : covert action and American foreign policy / Loch K. Johnson. - New York : Oxford University Press, 2022. - xvi, 388 p. - ISBN 978-0-19-760441-0 ; 978-0-19-760443-4 (ebk) ; DOI 10.1093/oso/9780197604410.001.0001
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