Nation Branding, Public Diplomacy, and the Dirty Business of Sportswashing

Abstract

The use of sports for nation branding and public diplomacy goes back to antiquity, not only to the city-states and the athletic competitions in Olympia, in Ancient Greece, but also through the conquests of Alexander the Great. Implementing athletic competitions in newly conquered colonies was a useful Hellenizing tool (Miller, 2004). As modern sports were mostly institutionalized in Western Europe and North America in the second half of the nineteenth century, Great Britain, France, and the United States were among those who shaped the future of international sports (Krechmar et al., 2017). Some implications were the aristocratic nature of the Olympic Movement which relied on amateurism, and having the Olympic Games held only in Europe and the United States until the end of World War II (Boykoff, 2016; Dubinsky, 2019a). After the War, with more countries receiving independence, and the world becoming bipolar, the Olympic Movement became more international, and the Games were spread into more territories and continents. The change was not only semantic, but also meant that non-Western countries had more influence in decision-making positions and the traditional powerhouses started to lose power. Much of the international struggles in sports during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s was caused by direct or by-proxy backlash between the Eastern Bloc led by the Soviet Union and the Western World led by the USA (Dubinsky, 2019a, b; Murray, 2018; Rofe & Scott-Smith, 2018). The clashes of cultures, nationalism, and economic systems, led to an arms race in international sports, including to state-led and private doping systems, political boycotts, and different ways of bypassing amateurism—ultimately leading the Olympic Games to become fully professional (Dubinsky, 2019a).