Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Sport and politics have long been linked, but the Olympic Games represent the most political sports event of all. The following article focuses on two of the most important aspects of the Olympics (and sports ‘mega-events’ in general) that students of politics and international relations could make a major contribution towards: the use of the Olympics by states to showcase the host nation and the hoped-for ‘legacies’ that arise from them. Both aspects are, of course, interlinked: the ‘legacies’ are often put forward as the key rationale for the bidding for, and hosting of, the Olympics.

Keywords

sport politics Olympic Games soft power leveraging legacies

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allison

(ed.) (1986) The Politics of Sport. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Allison

(ed.) (1993) The Changing Politics of Sport. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Allison

(ed.) (2005) The Global Politics of Sport. London: Routledge.

Bairner

Molnar

(eds) (2010) The Politics of the Olympics: A Survey. London: Routledge.

Black

(2007) ‘The Symbolic Politics of Sport Mega-events: 2010 in Comparative Perspective’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies, 34 (3), 261–76.

Black

(2008) ‘Dreaming Big: The Pursuit of “Second Order” Games as a Strategic Response to Globalisation’, Sport in Society, 11 (4), 467–80.

Black

Van der Westhuizen

(2004) ‘The Allure of Global Games for “Semi-peripheral” Polities and Spaces: A Research Agenda’, Third World Quarterly, 25 (7), 1195–214.

Blatter

(2011) ‘Russia, Qatar Take World Cup to New Lands’. Available from: http://in.reuters.com/article/2010/12/02/idINIndia-53307220101202 [Accessed 20 July 2012].

Brownell

(2008) Beijing's Games: What the Olympics Mean to China. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

10.

Brownell

(2009) ‘Western-Centrism in Olympic Studies and Its Consequences in the 2008 Beijing Olympics’. Working Paper, Fluminense Federal University. Available from: http://www.uff.br/esportesociedade/pdf/es1203.pdf [Accessed 20 September 2012].

11.

Brownell

(2012) ‘Human Rights and the Beijing Olympics: Imagined Global Community and the Transnational Public Sphere’, British Journal of Sociology, 63 (2), 306–27.

12.

Carter

T. F.

(2012) ‘The Olympics as Sovereign Subject Matter’, in Sugden

Tomlinson

(eds), Watching the Olympics: Politics, Power and Representation. London: Routledge, pp. 55–68.

13.

Cha

V. D.

(2009) Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport in Asia. New York: Columbia University Press.

14.

Chalip

(2004) ‘Beyond Impact: A General Model for Sport Event Leverage’, in Ritchie

B. W.

Adair

(eds), Sport Tourism: Interrelationships, Impacts and Issues. Clevedon: Channel View, pp. 226–52.

15.

Chalip

(2006) ‘Towards Social Leverage of Sport Events’, Journal of Sport and Tourism, 11 (2), 109–27.

16.

Chen

(2010) ‘The Communication Gesture of the Beijing Olympic Games’, Sport in Society, 13 (5), 813–8.

17.

Coeffee

(2012) ‘Policy Transfer, Regeneration Legacy and the Summer Olympic Games: Lessons for London 2012 and Beyond’, International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics. i-First. doi: 10.1080/19406940.2012.693518.

18.

Cornelissen

(2011) ‘Mega Event Securitisation in a Third World Setting: Glocal Processes and Ramifications during the 2010 FIFA World Cup’, Urban Studies, 48 (15), 3221–40.

19.

Cull

N. J.

(2008) ‘The Public Diplomacy of the Modern Olympic Games and China's Soft Power Strategy’, in Price

M. E.

Dayan

(eds), Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New China. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 117–44.

20.

Darby

(2002) Africa, Football, and FIFA: Politics, Colonialism, and Resistance. London: Routledge.

21.

DeLisle

(2008) ‘One World, Different Dreams: The Contest to Define the Beijing Olympics’, in Price

M. E.

Dayan

(eds), Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New China. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 17–66.

22.

Dennis

Grix

(2012) Sport under Communism: Behind the East German ‘Miracle’. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

23.

Espy

(1979) The Politics of the Olympic Games. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.

24.

Fan

(2006) ‘Branding the Nation: What is Being Branded?’, Journal of Vacation Marketing, 12 (1), 5–14.

25.

Federal Government (Germany) (2006) 2006 FWC: Final Report by the Federal Government. Berlin: Federal Ministry of the Interior.

26.

Finlay

C. J.

(2008) ‘Toward the Future: The New Olympic Internationalism’, in Price

M. E.

Dayan

(eds), Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New China. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 375–90.

27.

Finlay

C. J.

Xin

(2010) ‘Public Diplomacy Games: A Comparative Study of American and Japanese Responses to the Interplay of Nationalism, Ideology and Chinese Soft Power Strategies around the 2008 Beijing Olympics’, Sport in Society, 13 (5), 876–900.

28.

Grix

(2012) ‘“Image” Leveraging and Sports Mega-Events: Germany and the 2006 FIFA World Cup’, Journal of Sport and Tourism, 17 (4).

29.

Guttmann

(2002) A History of the Modern Games. Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press.

30.

Hall

C. M.

(2006) ‘Urban Entrepreneurship, Corporate Interests and Sports Mega-events: The Thin Policies of Competitiveness within the Hard Outcomes of Neoliberalism’, Sociological Review, 54 (S2), 59–70.

31.

Hayden

(2012) The Rhetoric of Soft Power: Public Diplomacy in Global Contexts. Lanham MD: Lexington Books.

32.

Hill

(1992) Olympic Politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

33.

Hoberman

J. M.

(1984) Sport and Political Ideology. Austin TX: University of Texas Press.

34.

Horne

(2010) ‘The Politics of Hosting the Olympic Games’, in Bairner

Molnar

(eds), The Politics of the Olympics: A Survey. London: Routledge, pp. 27–40.

35.

Horne

Manzenreiter

(eds) (2006) Sports Mega-events: Social Scientific Analyses of a Global Phenomenon. Oxford: Blackwell.

36.

Horne

Whannel

(2012) Understanding the Olympics. London: Routledge.

37.

Houlihan

(1994) Sport and International Politics. London: Harvester-Wheatsheaf.

38.

Infratest (2006) Infratest Tourist Survey Results. Available from: http://www.reisen-experten.de/reiseinformationen/reisenews/news/newsartikel/fussball-wm-befluegelt-image-des/index.html [Accessed 21 September 2012].

39.

Jefferys

(2012) Sport and Politics in Modern Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

40.

Keech

(2012) ‘Youth Sport and London's 2012 Olympic Legacy’, in Sugden

Tomlinson

(eds), Watching the Olympics: Politics, Power and Representation. London: Routledge, pp. 82–96.

41.

Lenskyj

H. J.

(2000) Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics and Activism. New York: State University of New York Press.

42.

Lenskyj

H. J.

(2010) ‘Olympic Power, Olympic Politics: Behind the Scenes’, in Bairner

Molnar

(eds), The Politics of the Olympics: A Survey. London: Routledge, pp. 15–26.

43.

Levermore

Budd

(eds) (2004) Sport and International Relations. London: Routledge.

44.

McFee

(2012) ‘The Promise of Olympism’, in Sugden

Tomlinson

(eds), Watching the Olympics: Politics, Power and Representation. London: Routledge, pp. 36–54.

45.

Manzenreiter

(2010) ‘The Beijing Games in the Western Imagination of China: The Weak Power of Soft Power’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 34 (1), 29–48.

46.

Markovits

A. S.

Rensmann

(2010) Gaming the World: How Sports are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

47.

Marsh

Stoker

(eds) (2002) Theory and Methods in Political Science, updated and revised edition. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

48.

Melissen

(ed.) (2005) The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

49.

Miah

Garcia

(2012) The Olympics: The Basics. London: Routledge.

50.

Milne

(2012) ‘This is a Corporate Lockdown, Why Not an Olympics for All?’, The Guardian, 11 July, 31.

51.

NHS (2011) ‘Statistics on Obesity, Physical Activity and Diet: England, 2011’. Available from: http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/health-and-lifestyles/obesity/statistics-on-obesity-physical-activity-and-diet-england-2011 [Accessed 20 September 2012].

52.

Nye

J. S.

Jr (1990) ‘Soft Power’, Foreign Policy, 80, 153–71.

53.

Nye

J. S.

Jr (2004) Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs.

54.

Nye

J. S.

Jr (2008) ‘Public Diplomacy and Soft Power’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616, 94–109.

55.

O'Brien

(2007) ‘Points of Leverage: Maximizing Host Community Benefit from a Regional Surfing Festival’, European Sport Management Quarterly, 7 (2), 141–65.

56.

O'Brien

Chalip

(2007) ‘Executive Training Exercise in Sport Event Leverage’, International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 1 (4), 296–304.

57.

Polley

(2012) ‘Book Review of the Politics of the Olympics’, International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, i-First. doi: 10.1080/19406940.2012.719029.

58.

Preuss

(2007) ‘The Conceptualisation of Measurement of Mega Sport Event Legacies’, Journal of Sport and Tourism, 12 (3–4), 207–27.

59.

Preuss

Alfs

(2011) ‘Signaling through the 2008 Beijing Olympics: Using Mega Sport Events to Change the Perception and Image of the Host’, European Sport Management Quarterly, 11 (1), 55–71.

60.

Sala

B. R.

Scott

J. T.

Spriggs

J. F.

(2007) ‘The Cold War on Ice: Constructivism and the Politics of Olympic Figure Skating Judging’, Perspectives on Politics, 5 (1), 17–29.

61.

Senn

A. E.

(1999) Power, Politics and the Olympic Games. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics.

62.

Sugden

Tomlinson

(eds) (2012) Watching the Olympics: Politics, Power and Representation. London: Routledge.

63.

Taylor

(1986) ‘Sport and International Relations: A Case of Mutual Neglect’, in Allison

(ed.), The Politics of Sport. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 27–48.

64.

Tomlinson

(2010) ‘Whose Accolades? An Alternative Perspective on Motivation for Hosting the Olympics’, Urban Forum, 21, 139–52.

65.

Weed

(2009) ‘Progress in Sports Tourism Research? A Meta-review and Exploration of Futures’, Tourism Management, 30 (5), 615–28.

66.

Weed

Coren

Fiore

(2009) A Systematic Review of the Evidence Base for Developing a Physical Activity and Health Legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. London: Department of Health.

67.

(2006) ‘Modernizing China in the Olympic Spotlight: China's National Identity and the 2008 Beijing Olympiad’, in Horne

Manzenreiter

(eds), Sports Mega-events. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 90–107.

68.

Young

(2010) ‘Berlin 1936’, in Bairner

Molnar

(eds), The Politics of the Olympics: A Survey. London: Routledge, pp. 93–105.

Sport Politics and the Olympics

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References