Sport and Diplomacy: A Global Diplomacy Framework

ABSTRACT

The actors, or “players,” involved in the transactions of diplomacy occasioned by sport are manifold. In the case of the world’s “global game”—association football—they include but are not limited to individual footballers, football clubs, national leagues, national associations, football’s international governance structures, multi-national sponsors, and numerous hangers on. Importantly for this analysis, such a panoply of actors creates an architecture, replicated across other sports, which speak to the necessity of furthering the understanding of the relationship between sport and diplomacy. These two phenomena share a long-standing similarity in global affairs; both having been over-looked as means of comprehending relations between different polities otherwise centred on the nation-state. This exegesis advances our understanding in two areas. First, it addresses the parameters of the discussion of “sport and diplomacy” and problematises the discourse between the two with a note on language; and second, it utilises a framework provided by an appreciation of “global diplomacy” to explore concepts of communication, representation, and negotiation in sport and diplomacy.     

The EU–China energy cooperation: toward a reciprocal partnership?

The EU–China energy relationship had long been characterized by the “donor–recipient” paradigm, whereby the EU provided official development assistance to China. The EU’s assistance of China’s energy sector had been driven by normative, political, and commercial considerations. Today, the normative and political momentum in their energy relationship has been undermined, while energy investment and trade remain a difficult issue. Although the EU has been endeavoring to shape an overall “reciprocal” relationship with China, and stressing energy market access and reciprocity, China is not rushing into anything. The EU and China need to make greater efforts to find impetus for their energy cooperation, for which the involvement of business and industry actors is key. Until this is done, their energy partnership would likely remain a commitment to be fulfilled.

     

The Diplomacy of Business

The “new” global capitalism is transforming the ways in which commerce is conducted and organized. Business enterprises have to perform and compete in a largely unregulated global market economy if they are to survive, let alone prosper, and contend with higher levels of financial and political risks. Transnational Corporations (TNCs) have come to occupy a pivotal position in the world economy, commanding immense financial resources and employing tens of thousands throughout the world, and are active participants in global political and economic affairs. TNC executives—the global corporate elite—crisscross the planet as they manage local, national, and international relationships, and represent and advance their global interests in myriad international conferences and meetings. TNCs are now interacting with states and international governmental organizations on a broad array of issues and problems (many far removed from the core business). As global actors with distinct and clear interests, they have had to develop their own representational mechanisms to manage the complex relationships that mark today’s global system.     

“But the UN Said So …”: International Organisations as Discursive Authorities

Many scholars take it as given that international governmental and non-governmental actors play a decisive role in international politics as regulative, moral or epistemic authorities. Hence, a denationalised “multi-centric world” (James Rosenau) is said to be emerging, although empirical evidence for this is incomplete at best. Building on a variety of communication theoretical approaches, I argue for a clear-cut differentiation between authority and the power of the better argument. Moreover, I claim that, by looking at the way actors select and refer to the statements of others (“authority talk”), we can research the reproduction of authority as a specific type of relational power exercised by a variety of political actors, including governments, international agencies and non-state actors. The usefulness of this kind of analytical framework for researching an emerging “world authority structure” (John Boli) is illustrated, using speeches and news pieces on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan/Darfur. Results suggest that the common perception of an existing “non-governmental order” in humanitarian politics is highly exaggerated. Instead, what we see is a high degree of “UN-isation” of debate and a pivotal role of national governments that are widely acknowledged as authoritative sources of meaning.     

New media and strategic narratives: the Dutch referendum on Ukraine – EU Association Agreement in Ukrainian and Russian Internet blogs

ABSTRACT

This article analyses two confronting narratives authored by Ukrainian and Russian bloggers who reported the Dutch referendum held on 6 March 2016, and discussed Dutch citizens’ referendum vote on the Ukraine–EU Association Agreement. The considered narratives, addressed to the Ukrainian and Russian audiences respectively, are viewed as strategic because they specifically portray political actors of the referendum “drama” – the Netherlands, the European Union (EU), Ukraine and Russia. These actors are significant participants of European international relations, and their perceptions of one another are important for European security at the present time of critical diplomacy. In this paper, information about the DUTCH REFERENDUM obtained from the new media texts is regarded as a narrative-based political concept (NBPC). It is argued that this concept has different versions, or images that reflect the narrators’ biased perceptions imposed upon the public. Identification and comparison of such images require a particular methodology. Therefore, the objective of this paper is two-fold: to expose the two confronting versions of a strategically relevant political image, and to develop an authentic, interdisciplinary methodology for its analysis. The proposed methodology is informed by the ontology theory employed in cognitive science and cognitive linguistics.     

Too many enemies: Mobilization,marginalization, and political violence

Over the past decades, a pattern has emerged across the Islamic world of secular actors struggling to build sustainable social movements while Islamists show a higher success rate in doing so—a dynamic often accompanied by high levels of violence and little space for dialogue between actors from across the political spectrum. In this article, we illustrate the utility of social movement theory (SMT) in explaining the ability of some movements to mobilize en masse, while others become marginalized. Furthermore, we suggest that SMT is useful in understanding the processes that produce socio-political dynamics conducive to violent rather than non-violent tactics. Through a case study of Bangladesh, where in 2013 the secular Shahbag mobilization was derailed by a massive Islamist counter-mobilization, this article shows how movements not only capitalize on, but actually contribute to, shifts in cultural discourse through political maneuvering and long-term socialization. By anchoring their ideology in pre-existing religio-cultural imagery, Islamists have been successful in casting themselves as “authentic” defenders of Islam and their secular opponents as “atheists.” In such a socio-political context, the space for dialogue among the various political actors is severely limited and the impetus to employ violent tactics strong.     

Of Mechanisms and Myths: Conceptualising States’ “Soft Power” Strategies through Sports Mega-Events

ABSTRACT

Joseph Nye’s concept of “soft power” has become an increasingly used term to help explain why states—including so-called “emerging states”—are paying greater attention to acquiring various forms of cultural and political attraction. However, within mainstream International Relations, Political Science, and Sport Studies literature, a continuous debate remains as to what actually constitutes soft power, how national leaders go about acquiring it, and how forms of attraction convert into power outcomes in both the short- and long-term. This analysis endeavours to overcome these issues by offering an “ideal type” model that details states’ soft power strategies, the mechanisms they use, and the tangible future outcomes they gain.     

Leaders,Tenure, and the Politics of Sovereign Credit

Sovereign creditworthiness is as much a function of politics as economic fundamentals. Previous research has focused on the relationship between creditworthiness and political factors such as regime type, regional effects, and international organization membership. These factors, while important, often change slowly and do not always capture the more dynamic political determinants of creditworthiness. As an alternative, this study focuses on the role of leaders. We argue that leaders’ tenure reduces uncertainty in the sovereign credit market. Time in power allows leaders to better manage expectations related to sovereign credit policy of both domestic supporters and market actors. As a result, we expect that creditworthiness improves as a leader’s tenure increases. We find supporting evidence for our argument using two distinct empirical approaches: panel data analysis and a natural experiment. Our findings provide a better understanding of the relationship between leaders, politics, and sovereign credit.     

Untangling global-local linkages: The case of the Right to Information Act in India

ABSTRACT

Transparency laws have proliferated worldwide: between 1990 and 2010, 76 countries promulgated laws or ordinances on the freedom or right to information. By examining the domestic and global processes involved in the passage of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTIA) in India, this article locates the global trend within the local context. It argues that the RTIA signifies institutional change because it replaced the norm of secrecy—nested and perpetuated within the Indian state since colonial times—with the norm of openness. But was this change a result of an endogenous process, or did exogenous factors—such as the global policy stimulus toward transparency and accountability or the “good governance” agenda of international financial institutions—play an instrumental role? The existing scholarly literature argues that international influence was “marginal” and the process of institutional change was largely “homegrown.” By considering historical archival material and internal government documents, this article attempts to unravel the process of norm diffusion from the global to the local and to determine how much exogenous factors and global norms affected institutional change in India.     

Online Political Debate,Unbounded Citizenship,and the Problematic Nature of a Transnational Public Sphere

Citizenship has always been a dynamic notion, subject to change and permanent struggle over its precise content and meaning. Recent technological, economic, and political transformations have led to the development of alternative notions of citizenship that go beyond the classic understanding of its relationship to nation states and rights. Civil society actors play an important role in this process by organizing themselves at a transnational level, engaging with issues that transcend the boundaries of the nation state and questioning the democratic legitimacy of other transnational actors such as international and corporate organizations. They also allow citizens to engage with “unbounded” issues and to construct a transnational public sphere where such issues can be debated. It is often assumed that the Internet plays a crucial role in enabling this transnational public sphere to take shape. Empirical analysis of discussion forums and mailing lists developed by transnational civil society actors shows, however, that the construction of such a transnational public sphere is paved with constraints. To speak of a unified transnational public sphere is therefore deemed to be problematic. It cannot be seen or construed without taking into account the local, the national, and enforceable rights in order to materialize the ideas and hopes being voiced through civil society.     

From Warfare to Imagefare: How States Should Manage Asymmetric Conflicts With Extensive Media Coverage

Conflicts in the 21st century differ from past conflicts based on two central factors: the level of asymmetry and disparity between the actors taking part in the conflict and the amount of foreign media coverage that a conflict receives. This article aims to develop a new theoretical perspective on the implications of these two factors on how the involved states manage a conflict. Most actors in current conflicts have vast levels of disparity and receive extensive media coverage; events in those conflicts are referred to as occurrences in the “information space” because a conflict's borders are anywhere people can receive information about it. “Imagefare”—the use of images as a guiding principle or a substitute for traditional military means to achieve political objectives—is argued to be the main tool for better facing adversaries in the information space.     

Immoderation: comparing the Christian Right in the US and pro-Islamic movement-parties in Turkey

This article will discuss the “immoderation” of religious political actors – defined as the continuation of a relatively closed and rigid worldview – through a cross-religious comparison of the Christian Right coalition within the Republican Party in the US with the pro-Islamic movement-parties in Turkey. By adapting a “most different systems approach”, this study will question the similar evolution of two religious political actors in two dissimilar political regimes. In particular, it will question the processes and types of immoderation by looking into (1) “behavioural immoderation”, immoderation for the strategic purpose of forming a small yet ideologically pure supporter base, and into (2) “ideological immoderation”, immoderation as a result of a continued advocacy for a moral role for the state without a full embrace of political pluralism. In this, it will argue that religious political actors are strategic actors who try to guarantee their organizational survival amidst changing costs and benefits of moderation vis-à-vis immoderation. Through its discussion of “immoderation” and through its cross-religious comparison, this study will aim to contribute to the inclusion-moderation literature.     

The tyranny of distance: Redefining relevant dyads

A variety of definitions of “crisis” plague the study of international crisis. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate the reasons for the divergence and a possible solution to the problem.

Definitions of “crisis” tend to incorporate a variety of elements. Some focus on the micro‐level of decisionmakers in particular countries; others look at the macro‐level of international system change; still other definitions are multi‐level, incorporating both micro‐ and macro‐components. A second set of differences is rooted in metaphysical assumptions. Some definitions look at “crisis” as something recognized by the mind of the individual, a perceptual process that is basically mental; other definitions, which tend to equate “crisis” with “stress,” assume that “crisis” is a physical phenomenon that can be measured by information flows, physiological tensions, or other objective observable behavior. A dualist approach insists that “crisis” is simultaneously physical and nonphysical is also evident in the literature. A third aspect of “crisis” definitions is whether the researcher seeks to stipulate an arbitrary meaning for the term on the basis of supposed self‐evident logic or whether data are collected prior to an effort to define the term; this is the familiar distinction between rationalism and empiricism, with facet theory as an approach that combines elements of both approaches.

Various approaches attempt to test theories of “crisis” with definitions determined by their metaphysical foundations. The models identified are as follows: hostile interaction, individual stress, physiological overload, organizational response, and cost calculation. Findings based on various empirical tests of the theories show that there is very little agreement in the literature on variables associated with “crisis”; more often than not, if a variable is linked with “crisis” positively in one study, the same variable is either linked negatively or has no correlation with “crisis” in a second study. The source of the empirical divergence may be that the various studies sample different cases—or differing definitions may account for the lack of consensus in the field.

The paper concludes by urging that research on international crisis should be absorbed into larger theoretical concerns that focus on the objectives motivating the studies, as this appears to be one way to maintain definitional uniformity. Studies on crisis anticipation and crisis management should be viewed as efforts at war prevention. Studies on crisis management, which aim to reduce foreign policy fiascoes should be conceived in terms of foreign policy management. Findings of such studies can then be appraised in terms of the goals they seek.     

The Japanese consumer finance market and its institutional changes since the 1980s

Abstract

We assert, in this article, that the joint transformation of public perception about households’ over-indebtedness and financial deregulation had important implications on the government decision to reform overall consumer credit between 2005 and 2010. On the one hand, the development of collective actions by groups of lawyers to defend borrowers from moneylenders’ abusive practices represents a source of change in the public opinion about over-indebted individuals in the context of long economic stagnation. A systematic press article analysis from 1977 to 2006 shows that the rising number of these collective actions since the early 1990s may have gradually increased the political salience of social issues related to the unsecure loan market. On the other hand, financial deregulation has been a source of change by allowing banks to enter the consumer finance market since the early 2000s. Banks entry into this market transformed the logic of complementarity among traditional consumer credit actors (Shinpan, credit card companies and sarakin) in a general context of legal consumers’ protection reinforcement. Thus, evolution of Japanese consumer finance's regulation is particularly relevant to illustrate the forces of institutional change and its consequences.     

Where We Get Thucydides Wrong: The Fallacies of History’s First “Hegemonic” War

Thucydides’ History remains the basis for numerous claims within International Relations Theory, contributing to defining concepts from the security dilemma to the dynamics of bi-polarity and hegemonic transition theory. But the historical record that underpins Thucydides’ History provides a more complex view of the rivalry between Athens and Sparta. This analysis argues that basing explanations for the Great Peloponnesian War on the premise of Spartan “fear” is incomplete. A bi-polar, hegemonic rivalry did not lock-in the two states; they existed in a complex multi-polar system. This multi-polarity allowed other actors—notably Corinth—to play a key role in the outbreak of war. It was consideration for alliances, empires, and political rivalries within the context of multi-polarity, rather than a prosaic Spartan “fear,” that were at the heart of the war. These unique characteristics combined with the misrepresentation of the historical record, make generalising from the Peloponnesian War dangerous.     

McDonaldisation of Sovereignty: A Foucauldian Analysis of Responsibility to Protect

The importance of the principle of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) has typically been attributed either to its character as a presumed new norm (normative ontology) or to its capacity to influence international politics by mobilising political actors to protect civilians through military interventions and other forms of intervention (causal ontology), as witnessed in the recent cases of Libya and Côte d'Ivoire. This article will argue for an additional model of explanation, according to which the main significance of RtoP might best be understood by reference to its character as a political statement of global policy networks (discursive ontology) calling for the reinterpretation of the sovereignty regime. The article will apply Michel Foucault's theory of discursive fields to demonstrate that RtoP beneficially introduces human security as an additional criterion of state sovereignty, thus contributing to the “humanitarisation of sovereignty”. However, RtoP also engenders “McDonaldisation of sovereignty” and “sovereignty-consumption” mentality in that it attempts to transform and homogenise pluralistic state sovereigns into a universal, seemingly humanitarian mould. As a drawback, this McDonaldisation process excludes some victimised groups from the remit of international concern.     

“Possession is Nine Tenths of the Law”: Britain and the Boundaries of Eastern Europe since 1945

This article argues that British policy on boundaries in Eastern Europe after 1945 was based on hardheaded Realpolitik whereby the justice of any given border was of entirely secondary importance to wider policy imperatives. British disregard for the legal and moral merits (or demerits) of respective cases was justified by British policy makers on two counts: firstly, international relations could not assess boundary disputes on a case-by-case basis as such thinking had undermined international stability to the point of global conflagration after 1918; secondly, British policy makers declared that it was their aim to stabilize the international system by means of détente. In reality, the proclaimed goal of universally beneficial goals by means of a “pragmatic” consolidation of the status quo hid a real desire to institutionalise a system that was seen as the best possible option for Britain given the harsh reality of its relative decline after 1945.

“There is no government on earth which divulges its affairs less than England, or is more punctually informed of those of others.”

—Sagredo, Venetian Ambassador to London in the Sixteenth Century.

     

India and the dialectics of domestic and international “land grabbing”: Historical perspectives,current debates,and the case of Ethiopia

International land “acquisition” or land “grabbing” has become a global phenomenon in which India plays an increasingly important role. While there is a critical domestic debate regarding land deals within India — especially pertaining to the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act of 2014 — there is practically no such debate regarding international land deals by Indian companies in Sub-Saharan Africa. By applying a two-level discourse analysis, this article argues that the land discourse within India can be understood as a strategy of exclusion. By linking land issues with questions of “development,” the discursive strategies of powerful actors lead to the exclusion of the arguments of NGOs and others opposed to the land deals from the discourse within India. This strategy of exclusion is then taken to the extreme with the strategy of securitization outside India: land deals are linked to “food security,” as the example of Ethiopia highlights.     

How terrorism ends – and does not end: the Basque case

ABSTRACT

This article examines the end of ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna “Euskadi and Freedom”) in the light of the literature on “how terrorism ends”. Was it the result of police repression, defeat, negotiation, elimination, tactical success? Was it the result of military failure but not defeat? What role did the rebellion of its own social base play? Was it, in the end, a case of political transformation? The discourse of “unilateralism” developed by the Basque Nationalist Left is examined. The role of international actors and the so-called “virtual diplomacy” is situated in the context of the State and the global order. But did ETA really end? Four years after ETA declared its unconditional ceasefire, and after the international media considered it finished, the Spanish government does not think so. In conclusion, the article considers the lessons that derive from the Basque case regarding the issues of how terrorist groups end.