J. Simon Rofe

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.

“Under the Influence of Mahan”: Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and their Understanding of American National Interest

This article explores links in the grand strategic outlook of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, with particular reference to the influence upon both men of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan. It focuses upon an episode during Franklin Roosevelts tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, when he was in direct correspondence with both Theodore and Mahan on matters of grand strategy and naval policy. The paper argues that Theodore Roosevelt proved a crucial conduit in the formulation of Franklin Roosevelts grand strategic outlook, both through his promulgation of Mahanian thought and his support of Franklins correspondence with the Admiral. This in turn would be important later during Franklin Roosevelts leadership of the United States.

Paragogy and flipped assessment: experience of designing and running a MOOC on research methods

Abstract This study draws on the authors’ first-hand experience of designing, developing and delivering (3Ds) a massive open online course (MOOC) entitled ‘Understanding Research Methods’ since 2014, largely but not exclusively for learners in the humanities and social sciences. The greatest challenge facing us was to design an assessment mechanism that was (i) rigorous yet practicable at scale, vis-à-vis over 60,000 students from highly diverse backgrounds; (ii) compatible with the pedagogical orientation of the MOOC provider; and (iii) meaningful to the nature of the course subject. Based on a network analysis of forum interactions and a qualitative analysis of a random sample of 116 research questions proposed by students, we explore how participants’ understanding of research methods developed through a series of carefully sequenced ‘e-tivities’ and ‘open peer assessments’ over the duration of the course. The aim of this study was to consider a model of ‘flipped’ assessment, drawn from elements of ‘paragogy’ and the IR Model that acknowledges and exploits peer learning opportunities that are not routinely captured by completion statistics.

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.

It is a squad game: Manchester United as a diplomatic non-state actor in international affairs

This article explores Manchester Uniteds role as a diplomatic actor in contemporary international affairs. It explores United as a lens on the role a sporting institution can have in the broader diplomatic milieu of the twenty-first century and the burgeoning understanding of sport diplomacy. The argument is that certain sporting institutions have a capacity to influence the diplomatic process in contemporary diplomacy because of the increasingly multilayered and multi-stakeholder nature of international affairs. The article analyses United across three categories: football, commercial, and business to illustrate their influence. The influence as a diplomatic actor is identified in two main forms: first, Manchester United participating as part of the English Premier League, playing in the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Champions League, and, second, as an international business with a truly global commercial brand, and in what might be considered traditional forms of diplomacy, with engagement with the attributes of Her Majestys Government at home or abroad.

Pre-war Post-war Planning: The Phoney War, the Roosevelt Administration, and the Case of the Advisory Committee on Problems of Foreign Relations

The Advisory Committee on Problems of Foreign Relations (ACPFR) of Franklin D. Roosevelts State Department first met in late December 1939 and operated until early Summer 1940. Its previously overlooked deliberations, chaired by the dynamic Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles, are important in three related areas. First, the ACPFR was an early marker of the Administrations later post-war planning, notably the Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy. Second, a remarkable swath of issues were discussed surrounding the ongoing conflict, prospects for its end, and the shape of the post-war world, particularly regarding Europe and the consequences of a German victory. The third area of ACPFR importance is in illuminating our understanding of the Roosevelt Administrations thinking on the conflict during the complex atmosphere of the Phoney War. The analysis concludes that although the fruits of Committees effort would be indirect, they were nonetheless important in later post-war planning efforts that contemplated a breadth of options for the post-war world before American lives were put in harms way.

Prologue: Diplomacy and Sport

In attending the London Olympic Games of 2012, competitors and visitors at each venue were greeted with four flags; from left to right, they were the International Olympic flag—and the International Paralympic flag subsequently—the flags of the United Nations [UN] and the London Olympic Organising Committee [LOCOG], and the British Union Jack. These flags represent polities with a number of identities, but their most straightforward were as the foremost global sporting body that governs the quadrennial gathering of the “youth of the world,” the pre-eminent international organisation of states, a temporary organisational body, and the flag of a nation-state adopted in 1801. Each of these symbols is itself a form of communication; they represent something, and then signal a capacity for a relationship with other polities, one that requires consistent negotiation. These three characteristics are at the core of diplomacy’s purpose and its practice. The Olympic Games are universally seen as the pinnacle of sporting endeavour for vast swaths of the global audience, for sponsors, and, perhaps most importantly given the spectacle that results, for the athletes. The Olympics, perhaps more than any other sporting event, allow for what Naoko Shimazu considers “diplomacy as theatre.” Shimazu’s approach resonates neatly with sport where symbolic “performances” are undertaken upon particular “stages” set out for sport with perceivable levels of audience and athlete interaction. The sportsman or sportswomen as entertainer expressly allows for performances to surround the sporting endeavour; in tennis, one can think of the stark contrast in fiery John McEnroe and ice-cold Bjorn Borg’s “performance” alongside their sporting talents; in motor-racing, James Hunt and Nikki Lauder in the early 1970s or Aryton Senna and Alain Prost in the 1980s were sporting rivalries where performance as much as skill were at stake. In such performances, elements of those key diplomatic purposes are evident. Examples of the significance of sport to diplomatic practice are plentiful if routinely overlooked. They are overlooked in lieu of headline grabbing “sport and politics”; or the prospect of sport offering humanitarian solutions through the Sport, Development, Peace framework; or, and something that befalls both of these realms, because sport is seen as trivial or peripheral amid the crises that define global affairs. Of course, in many senses it is; as a general rule, contemporary sport does not result in life threatening hardship DIPLOMACY & STATECRAFT 2016, VOL. 27, NO. 2, 207–211 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2016.1169780

‘Internationalists in Isolationist times’ – Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and a Rooseveltian Maxim

This article examines Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt’s approaches to formulating foreign policy within the context of contemporaneous debates about Isolationism and Internationalism. It argues that a ‘Rooseveltian Maxim’ can be identified based on common attributes found in each President’s ideas about US foreign policy and national security interests. This ‘Maxim’ was not dogma for either president, as they were both astute political operators. Instead it is based on their essentially internationalist reading of America’s role in the world. It meant that both were particularly mindful of the state of American public opinion informed by Washington and Jefferson’s notions of isolationism, for it was the mood amongst American people that provided the ‘finite space’ which they as president has to make foreign policy. It concludes that by investigating the approaches both presidents adopted in such circumstances, we gain further insight into both presidents and our understanding of Isolationism and Internationalism.

Bretton Woods: A Global Perspective

The historiography of the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 is dominated by the personal clash between the principal negotiators, Harry Dexter White of the United States and John Maynard Keynes of Britain. Their contest over different blueprints for the structure of post-war economic and financial management was set in the context of American designs to dismantle the protective measures of the British imperial system and pave the way toward a US-led world order. Yet 42 other nations were also present at the conference. This book examines Bretton Woods as a seminal moment in international diplomacy, with new partners and players expressing their demands on the global stage. Six themes are explored: North–South relations, Rooseveltian ideals, policy coalitions, public and private interests, key personalities, and trade.

International diplomacy and the Olympic Movement – the new mediators

Atlantic focus but is surprisingly quietly spoken about the North Atlantic world’s outposts – notably, Australia, New Zealand and Japan – let alone Latin America, the former eastern bloc or much of the Asian (anti-golf politics excepted) and African continents. This gap may be a factor of the authors’ language skills but is more likely, given the scholarly literature available, a sign that sports studies’ engagements with the sport/alterglobalization movement nexus are lacking. Crucially the silences suggest that we need to be much more attentive to the margins; the discussion of the anti-apartheid movement for instance continued a focus of Olympic sport and IOC membership as well as intergovernmental policy-based actions with only passing reference to the sports that mattered most to the power élite in apartheid era South Africa – cricket and rugby union. Second, only the chapter on workers’ sport pays much attention to alternative sport forms, which again seems a fair reflection of the field and a sign that sport scholars may be operating in narrow frames. A more significant element of this scholarly framing question is that only the chapters focusing on workers’ sport and on the environmental movements come close to striking a balance between sport and social movements in their treatments of sport-focused activism. Given the emphasis on issues of identity in sport social research, this balance is ironic given that these are two areas of political struggle that are, in their own ways, most influenced by forms of materialism and in turn suggest limitations of new social movements based on identity politics (in this case most obviously the discussions of the women’s and rights movements) which seem to have presented only limited challenges to the dominant performance sport models. It may be that scholars with an orientation to emancipatory perspectives need to consider more carefully the ideological and banal dominance of performance sport outlooks and with that the tension between oppositional politics and the politics of inclusion. A related implication of this constraint may be a need to more carefully consider the limits of political resistance in and through sport. This book is a significant contribution to our field. It challenges us to look much more carefully at both the links between sport and emancipatory social movements and the issue of sport in and sport and movements. It calls on us to be much more explicit in the articulations of the local and the global in our assessments of sport-based political activism and to consider the global positioning of contemporary sport politics. There is an implicit challenge to sport studies scholars to make clearer the relations between sport-based politics, activism and global networks of solidarity that recent research into anti-colonial and feminist politics is bringing to the light. Most of all, it reminds us that we need to ask, invokingC.L.R. James invokingKipling, what do they knowof sport, who only sport know?