Geoffrey Allen Pigman

Mapping the relationship between international sport and diplomacy

To date, the relationship between diplomacy and international sport has been relatively under-theorized. This paper seeks to redress the deficiency by proposing an analytical taxonomy of the multiple convergences between international sport and diplomacy. The principal analytical distinction to be drawn is between (1) international sport consciously employed by governments as an instrument of diplomacy and (2) international-sport-as-diplomacy, the diplomatic representation, communication and negotiation between non-state actors that take place as a result of ongoing international sporting competition. By increasing understanding of the rôles of sport in diplomacy and diplomacy in sport, the paper seeks to promote the adoption of best practices to facilitate effective use of sport in diplomacy by governments and effective use of diplomacy by international sporting bodies, and to instigate a debate between theorists and practitioners from both realms.

Sport and diplomacy: an introduction1

ISSN: 1743-0437 (Print) 1743-0445 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fcss20 Sport and diplomacy: an introduction Geoffrey Allen Pigman & J. Simon Rofe To cite this article: Geoffrey Allen Pigman & J. Simon Rofe (2014) Sport and diplomacy: an introduction, Sport in Society, 17:9, 1095-1097, DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2013.856612 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2013.856612This volume of Sport in Society focuses on the interrelationships between international sport and diplomacy. Its genesis came from the establishment in 2011 of the Diplomacy and International Sport research group by directors Stuart Murray (Bond University), Geoffrey Allen Pigman (University of Pretoria) and J. Simon Rofe (SOAS, University of London). Already scholars of diplomacy and interested in the phenomenon of international sport, we each discovered independently that there was a significant lacuna in the literature linking diplomatic studies to international sport. Our endeavours aim to craft a greater understanding of how the two subjects are interrelated, in the first instance to contribute to scholarship in the two fields, but not least in the second because both sport and diplomacy have the capacity to influence the lives of millions of people across the planet. The international dimension of sporting competition has been considered extensively in sociological literature by scholars like David Black and Robert Redeker. A few seminal case studies highlighting the part played by international sport in international relations and diplomacy have also recently been published, including articles by Manzenreiter (2008) and Chehabi (2001). However, the publication of these works highlighted the fact that no systematic attempt to understand international sport and its rôle in diplomacy had yet been undertaken. We decided to establish the research group in an attempt to fill that void. The time for a systematic investigation of sports-diplomacy is ripe for two primary reasons. First, nowhere has the diffusion and redistribution of political and economic power in our globalizing world been more visible to the general public and scholars alike than in international sport. Around the world on any given day, at almost any hour, sporting experiences that once were limited to thousands are now shared by millions. Now, the UEFA Champions League, the National Basketball Association, Formula One motorsports or Master’s Series tennis matches are experiences shared even by people with access to the most rudimentary technologies, particularly across the Global South. Kicked off by the Beijing Summer Olympics, the period since 2008 has witnessed the spread of the world’s largest sporting mega-events, the Olympic Games and the FIFA football (soccer) World Cup, to the BRICS nations, with the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, upcoming Olympiads in Sochi, Russia (2014), and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2016), and the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.

Institutionalization: The Second Transformation

The second major transformation in trade diplomacy was the process through which venues for trade diplomacy have been transformed into institutions at which or within which trade diplomacy is conducted. Formats and structures of institutions and venues affect trade diplomacy and its prospects for success by conditioning who can communicate with whom and under what rules, as well as what sorts of agreements can be reached and how they are enforced. From the explosion of trade diplomacy in the nineteenth century up until the Second World War, bilateral trade agreements between nation-states remained the most common form of trade pact. Yet since the early twentieth century such treaties have been augmented and in some cases supplanted by regional agreements, such as the treaties of the European Union, NAFTA, MERCOSUR, and SACU; by plurilateral pacts, such as the Yaounde/Lome/Cotonou Conventions (between the EU and ACP states); by diplomatic cooperation between groups of large emerging economies in different regions, such as BRICS; and by multilateral trade agreements, such as the GATT/WTO.

Liberalization: The First Transformation

The Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century and the Napoleonic Wars were catalysts for an unprecedented upheaval in how and why international trade was conducted and for the diplomacy that would make its expansion possible. This first significant transformation in trade diplomacy meant that, for the first time, diplomats would negotiate about trade for its own sake, rather than using trade as an instrument of war. The process by which trade diplomacy increasingly became distinct from other diplomatic issues and became driven by its own policy imperatives could only get underway in earnest once demand for imports and incentives to export goods and services (and for the funds to pay for them) reached certain threshold levels. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century economic arguments of Adam Smith and David Ricardo for liberalization of international trade and the political arguments of Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List in favour of protection of the industrial sectors of developing countries all presuppose the necessity of state actors to take trade policy decisions, which itself was a radically new assumption. Scholars and private businesses began to cast governments of states as critical protagonists in much-needed trade-specific diplomacy for the first time: to negotiate trade and tariff treaties, to implement the treaties fairly by collecting duty revenue, to resolve disputes over international trade as and when they arose.

Transforming Trade Diplomacy Anew

It is perhaps more than just coincidence that substantive change in the international trading system and in the European Union have both tended to be precipitated by crisis, or at least by public perceptions of crisis. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, international trade plays a more vital role in driving global economic growth and prosperity than ever. The real ratio of imports to GDP worldwide more than doubled from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s, reaching nearly 30 percent by 2004, indicating more clearly than ever the growing importance of international trade to global economic growth.1 Hence in a period in which the global economic recovery from the severe 2008 recession has been slow and uneven, the need for increased global trade, and for the diplomacy that facilitates it, to stimulate global economic growth and to spread global prosperity more widely amongst all the citizenry of the globe has never been more pressing. The second decade of the twenty-first century, if not necessarily a time of crisis for international trade and economic growth, is at least a time of great uncertainty across many fronts.

International Trade as Diplomacy

International trade is no longer just about buyers and sellers, shipping and marketing, firms and distributors. Nor is it only about customs officials and border inspections, tariffs and quotas, export subsidies and import licences. Over the past three millennia, international trade has moved from being a series of infrequent journeys to meet unknown peoples, to exchange the familiar for the exotic for the benefit of rulers and elites, to being today a primary driver of global economic growth. International trade as a percentage of world economic output has increased from around two percent in the early nineteenth century to nearly 35 percent in the year 2000.1 Trade today is an inescapable, indispensable component of a global economy that enables the world’s billions to work, earn a living, and consume and invest the fruits of their labours. Without international trade, there can be no global economic prosperity. The dramatic increase in trade relative to overall global economic activity is a metaphor for the increasing necessity for people across the world to engage with one another: to deal with each other’s differences and to do business with one another. Alongside this great rise in international trade has been a parallel increase in another fundamental and essential human activity: diplomacy.

Judicialization: The Third Transformation

At the core of the third transformation in international trade diplomacy is the rise to prominence since the 1990s of essentially judicial mechanisms and procedures for resolving trade disputes. As more traditional diplomatic approaches to negotiating and enforcing trade agreements have yielded progressively less fruit over the past two decades, judicial mechanisms increasingly are coming to substitute for traditional diplomacy, perhaps if only by default. Judicial processes have become much more important not just for resolving trade disputes, but in advancing trade cooperation. Judicialization initially appears to focus diplomacy on smaller, narrower objectives: bringing a complaint against another government for depriving one of benefits from trade due under an international agreement, negotiating a resolution, winning the adjudication of a particular dispute. But it is genuinely different diplomacy, in that governments can no longer opt out if they dislike a ruling. Unlike in bilateral or multilateral negotiations, there is not the option of a BATNA, no real choice to withdraw from negotiations. Thus judicialized trade diplomacy, like more traditional types, can be either positive-sum or adversarial, but in a different way. Both sides in a dispute are compelled to negotiate, to accept judgements, to implement rulings. There is an arbitration element present in which the judicial process, whilst not substituting for the essentially diplomatic nature of the interaction between states, has become a permanent part of negotiation.