Sports in International Politics : Between Power and Peacebuilding

Sport has historically been part of a broader quest of regimes for power and prestige on the world stage, and that success in global sport was a function of a country’s projection of hegemony and place in an anarchic international system. While such historical trends of politicization of sport continue—witness the nationalism on display at each Olympic games—today sport is equally seen as a strategically key approach for advancing human rights, building peace, strengthening social cohesion, and fostering development. In practical terms, international sport resides between a “realist” world of power and profit while at the same time has become an instrument of liberal internationalism that sees the advancement of individual values of rights, gender equality, and empowerment of often marginalized groups such as indigenous peoples, traumatized war victims, and those with disabilities.

How does international politics affect the world of global sport, and, how -- if at all – can sport contribute to the pursuit of sustainable peace? Sports in International Politics: Between Power and Peacebuilding explores the complex linkages between power politics of the international arena, the profit-seeking, often elitist and at-times corrupt world of professional international sport, and the promise for harnessing sport to promote human rights, inclusive development, and sustainable peace in a violent world.

Timothy D. Sisk presents the case that sport’s direct relationship to peace is found not in the fanfare of the Olympic Games (without reform), but in sport- and play-related contributions to humanitarian action, expanding the right to access sport and the rights of athletes of all ages and abilities, and in the well-designed employment of sport in youth-based development and peacebuilding programs and projects. Sport’s contribution to peace is found not principally in the nation-state ensnared Olympic Games, but instead step-by-step, from the bottom up through sport’s contribution to positive youth development, empathy and fairness, and through engendering trust and social cohesion at community and national levels.