is war minus the shooting. George Orwell, 1945

Sport has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. Nelson Mandela, 2000

Major sporting events and : limitations and opportunities

Sigmund Loland

Professor Department of Sport and Social Sciences Norwegian School of Sciences

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Contents

Summary 3

Introduction 5

PART 1: The distinctive features of sport and major sporting events 6

Play/ Games/ Sport: internal and external values/ The Great Sports Myth/ Value for the individual/ Value for society/ Sport as a moral laboratory/ Conflict of values/ The Olympic idea/ An ideal society in miniature/ Ambitious goals/ IOC as template/ Major sporting events/ Football is fantastic entertainment/ Football actualises identity/ Football actualises existential issues/ A leadership challenge

PART II: Sports politics, sanctions and boycotts 12

Sports politics/ Overlap: grey areas/ Sanctions and boycotts/ The purpose of imposing a boycott/ Sports boycotts: different forms/ Binary boycott/ Triangular boycott/ Boycotts involving four or more parties/ ?/ Do boycotts work?/ Unintended consequences/ Symbolic value: signalling/ Boycotts in extreme situations/ Assessment of objectives and impacts

Part III: The new sports diplomacy – actors and initiatives 20

Objectives/ Types/ Traditional sports diplomacy/ The new sports diplomacy/ Network diplomacy/ Challenges/ Shrewdness and competence/ Actors and initiatives/ Individuals, teams and backroom staff/ Supporters/ International sports organisations/ States and governments/ NGOs/ Multinational commercial enterprises/ Intergovernmental and supranational organisations/ Sport’s international compliance and judicial bodies/ Activist groups

Conclusion 31

References 33

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Summary

Discussion surrounding the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar has become a matter of values and actualises the issue of the opportunities and limitations sport has to promote human dignity and human rights. This report is intended to provide an academic foundation for the NFF’s discussions and decisions.

In Part 1 of the report, I discuss the distinctive features of football and sport and sport’s potential as a vehicle for the communication of moral values. I refer to theories of play and culture and to the intrinsic values of sport. These values are realized in the experiential qualities inherent in the activity itself. Taking part in sport in meaningful ways requires cooperation, not only with regard to jointly agreed rules and norms but also to honest effort and fair play. In cooperation lie opportunities for developing respect and fellowship, as well as respect for human dignity and human rights.

Sport is ambiguous and does not, of necessity, develop moral values. Psychologists point to the motivational climate: a one-sidedly result-oriented climate undermines sport’s value potential and leads to an emphasis on conflict and anti-social behaviour. Social scientists point to the cynical use of sports as a political tool to boost one’s own or harm other’s reputation. Realising sport’s values requires insight into and respect for the distinctive features of sport. This underpins sport’s efforts to protect and develop its values.

I point to the idea of sport as a humanitarian force. The idea was conceived towards the end of the 19th century as the foundation for the Olympic movement. The idea is that international sporting events can contribute to mutual understanding between peoples and peace. International sporting organisations, like FIFA, are inspired by Olympism when legitimising their activities.

Major sporting events, like the and the FIFA World Cup, attract billions of spectators. These events have extensive entertainment qualities in addition to being important spheres for the construction of collective identity and for general and even existential questions of who we are, of what characterise ‘us’ in relation to ‘them’. Major sporting events can be effective arenas for ethical messages and can promote respect for human dignity and human rights. What is needed?

Part II of the report gives some answers. Here, I address sports politics, sanctions, and boycotts. I distinguish between politics in sport (distribution of power and resources within the sports movement) and politics and sport (distribution of power and resources at the interface between sport and the world around it). Politics relating to major tournaments falls mainly in the latter category.

Traditionally, sport has been used as a political tool by states. I provide a number of examples of when states have wished to promote their own political objectives and when they have attempted to punish others. I discuss radical tools like boycotts, including the boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 and in Los Angeles in 1984, as well as the long-lasting boycott of the regime in .

Boycott is an issue under discussion with regard to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. I review general research findings concerning goal-achievement in political and economic boycotts, whose efficacy rate is estimated at around 30 percent, and list the characteristics needed for success:

• Broad, multilateral support from both government authorities and other actors – multilateral boycotts, preferably initiated by the UN Security Council. • The boycotted party is dependent in some way on the boycotting parties, primarily politically

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and economically, or, with respect to sport, in relation to the benefit deriving from inclusion in a sporting community. • With respect to human rights, it is more effective to bind an actor to commitments than to try and reduce rights violations. • The goals of a boycott should be limited and clear-cut. It is easier to apply a sanction in order to free a political prisoner than to achieve system change. • It is easier to achieve objectives in democratic than in authoritarian or theocratic regimes.

I provide examples of boycotts having unintended consequences, such as costs to an innocent third party (often the civilian population, and in sport: athletes) and strengthened resistance to the boycotting party on the part of the boycotted. Strict sanctions like boycotts must rest on a thorough assessment of the potential consequences.

I provide an example from Norwegian history, where a boycott was mounted on moral grounds: the Norwegian sports strike during WW2. The boycott was initiated primarily by actors who would themselves have been active in the events. This was a boycott in an extreme situation, where the possibility of dialogue and negotiation is blocked.

In Part III, I proceed with political initiatives in sport that do not involve abandoning communication and dialogue, with the emphasis on sports diplomacy. Typical goals are to strengthen a reputation, create a platform for dialogue, build trust, and contribute to reconciliation and integration. I distinguish between traditional sports diplomacy led by states and a ‘new’, network-based diplomacy involving far more actors. The new diplomacy is flexible, fluid, innovative, transparent, and activist.

I examine important actors in sport’s network diplomacy and provide examples of various tools to promote human dignity and human rights at large sporting events. The actors I discuss are: • Well-known individuals/athletes alone or in conjunction with other actors • In football, particularly: supporters • International sports organisations • States and government authorities • NGOs: human rights, environment, equality, peace, health, urban development • Multinational commercial enterprises • Supranational/intergovernmental organisations such as the EU and FN • Sports’ own compliance and judicial institutions such as WADA and CAS • Activist groups

A successful international sporting event requires a high level of diplomatic competence. I discuss challenges in international organisations’ encounters with other powerful actors.

I conclude by underlining the following: Competent sports politics rests on rights-based ethics and a well-reasoned ethical platform, combined with thorough consequence and impact assessments and the wise choice of actions that can best realise political objectives.

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Introduction

In this report, I discuss the opportunities and limitations of sport, in particular football, when it comes to promoting values such as human dignity and human rights in connection with major sporting events. The report, originally written in Norwegian, is prepared at the behest of a Commission established by the governing board of the Norwegian Football Association (NFF). The aim is to provide a research-based background for decisions regarding both the forthcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and other major sporting events in the future.

The report is written within a limited framework of time and resources. The ambition is not an in- depth and complete overview of research in these areas, but rather, with the help of selected perspectives and examples and an easily accessible format, to point at some core issues.1

In Part I: The distinctive features of sport and major sporting events, I provide a general description of the values and influence of sport (and football), with particular emphasis on major events. This is linked to the following points in the Commission’s mandate: To assess 1) Sport’s independent role in efforts to promote human rights (sport, including sporting events, has an intrinsic value in the work for human rights), and 2) Sport as a useful tool in the effort to promote human rights (sport’s visibility is primary/the sport itself is secondary).

In Part II: Sports politics, sanctions and boycotts, I give an overview of political conditions and tensions relating to major events and examine tools to promote value-based messages. This is linked to the points in the Commission’s mandate that require an assessment of the historic experience of the various initiatives and the most important lessons learned from them.

In Part III: The new sports diplomacy: actors and initiatives, I discuss the development of network diplomacy and all the players involved in it. This corresponds to the point in the Commission’s mandate: Which actors are involved in the different initiatives and what roles do they play?

As requested in the mandate, I discuss both major sporting events and other international contexts.

I also make assessments relating to the following point in the Commission’s mandate: Which tools to promote human dignity and human rights are relevant with respect to international sporting events? Here, I restrict myself to the present situation and the discussions concerning the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

I do not discuss the terms human dignity and human rights separately, but apply the understanding laid down in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the UN definitions based on the premise that every person has inherent dignity and value and is entitled to fundamental rights irrespective of gender, age, sexual orientation, , nationality or place of domicile, and FIFA’s own Human Rights Policy.2

1 Thanks to the NFF Commission and good colleagues for their input on this report. The contents are naturally wholly my responsibility. 2 See https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/1a876c66a3f0498d/original/kr05dqyhwr1uhqy2lh6r-pdf.pdf (24.6.2021)

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PART 1: The distinctive features of sport and major sporting events

What characterises football? In ordinary language we refer to ‘playing’ football and to ‘the game’ of football. What do these terms refer to, and what is the connection between play, games, and sport?

Play If we adopt the classic definition elaborated by the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens (1949), play is: • a voluntary, ordered activity • that is limited in time and space by rules, and • where the activity exists for its own sake.

Most people will have heard football sceptics express the view that the game is a meaningless activity, where 22 people run around after a ball in a field. What is the point? At the other end of the scale, we find people who are devoted to the sport. Examples include the English football legend Bill Shankly, who asserted: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.”

Why do we play? Huizinga talks about play as “non-serious seriousness”. Participants engage fully in it, but without the rules having any meaning outside of the game itself. Play has intrinsic value, that is, values inherent in the game itself: experience-related values, such as excitement about the outcome, joy and disappointment, a sense of fellowship and opposition, and of mastery and failure.

For Huizinga, play is a crucial aspect of human culture. In a bold hypothesis, he asserts that all culture, art, politics, science, legal systems, even war, are related to play. Play exceeds the bounds of the everyday, it provides multifaceted and powerful experiences, and it can challenge in creative ways our notions of who we are and where we belong. Play has an existential side. Through play, we explore ourselves and our relationships with others.

There are many different types of play. We can distinguish between spontaneous and non-regulated play, like children playing tag and changing the rules as they go along, and regulated forms of play, such as organised sport from grassroots to elite level.

Games The Canadian philosopher Bernard Suits (1978) takes Huizinga’s insights a step further. He argues that all games, including all branches of sport, are characterised by a special logic. All games have rules that prohibit the most effective method for achieving the game’s objectives.

To play a game, says Suits, means voluntarily accepting unnecessary obstacles to achieving a goal. The football team wants to get the ball over the goal-line, but is not allowed to use their hands, cannot go offside and cannot resort to violence. A hurdler must run the fastest from A to B but accepts that she must jump over the hurdles placed in the middle of the track.

Like Huizinga, Suits says that games are an expression of a universal, playful human attitude. All people at all times, even in difficult circumstances like war and conflict, have felt the need to step outside the everyday and engage in activities which only have value in and of themselves. Football was played in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during WW2, and by prisoners on Robben Island during South Africa’s apartheid regime. Football is played during conflicts, in refugee camps and in places plagued by want and war every single day (Goksøyr 2014).

In other words, we are not talking about play as a superficial activity, but as activities in which people

6 engage fully and completely and in which they find meaning and value. What kind of meaning and value are found? And what are the potential values of play, games, and sport in the larger scheme of things, for example, in the promotion of human dignity and human rights?

Sport: internal and external values Philosopher Alastair MacIntyre (2007) discusses the values in what he calls social practices which are defined as coherent, complex, cooperative human activities in a social setting and with well- established standards of excellence. Examples can be a craft, research, or games like and football. In the analyses of such practices, MacIntyre draws a line between internal and external goods, or values.

To realise internal values in football, participants must abide by football’s standards for the quality of the game’s physical, technical and tactical requirements. At its best, football involves intense interaction, outstanding technical skills and tactical flow in a contest between evenly matched teams. The realisation of the relevant standards of excellence constitutes football’s internal values: the special experiential qualities that lie in good football, both for active participants, backroom staff and supporters.

Understanding sport in this way has an interesting consequence. To be realised, sport requires a minimum of cooperation. An initial agreement concerns rules. It is impossible to compete without a shared understanding of the framework for the activity. Competitors must be able to perform on similar terms. Sport must be fair. Moreover, sporting games are tests and comparisons of specific abilities and skills. Another agreement lies in doing one’s best, in honest endeavour, in giving the game one’s best efforts. Good sport is created when participants engage fully in it, in an open and embodied dialogue about the limits to endeavour (Loland and McNamee, 2000). Fair play is not merely about greeting opposing players and referees with courtesy, but is the very foundation that gives a competition meaning (Loland, 2002).

This is precisely where the possibility for developing qualities and values that are meaningful outside the sport lie: external goods or values. Depending on the historic, social, and cultural context, sport has been accorded many external ideal values: physical training of young men to become good soldiers, the development of moral virtues and character, the development of local, regional, and national identities, the strengthening of civil society and grassroots democracy, the improvement of public health, and the strengthening of human dignity and human rights (Donnelly, 2008; Kid, 2008; Hasselgård, 2015).

External values are important for the sports organisations in justifying their activities and their existence. They are of interest, too, to the systems surrounding sport, such as political interests, government authorities and commercial enterprises. And, upon closer inspection, we see that this is not simply a matter of ideal values. Sport also has problematic sides to it.

The Great Sports Myth Sociologist Jay Coakley (2015) criticises what he calls the Great Sports Myth (GSM). The myth rests on the idea that sport is inherently pure, moral and apolitical, and that everyone who takes part in it is of necessity positively influenced by these qualities.

According to Coakley, the GSM is surprisingly tenacious and shines through the mission statements of the majority of sports organisations and national sports policies. At the same time, most reasonably enlightened people will take the GSM with a substantial pinch of salt.

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Criticism of sport has a long history. Some, like author Alfie Kohn (1992), see competition as the root of all social evil. Competitive sport destroys self-esteem, fellowship and hinders social development. Others, like the Marxist-leaning critic Bero Rigauer (1969), see professional sport as a clear expression of capitalism’s destructive force. The market’s mechanisms create few winners and many losers, and power and money corrupt. Still others, like Tomlinson (2018), recognise the value of sport, but forcefully assert that sports organisations, particularly the international associations, and especially the IOC and FIFA, corrupt its values.

A broader review of the research provides a more nuanced picture. Sport is not uniformly valuable, but it does have a special value-related potential.

Value for the individual Psychological research takes as its starting point the distinctive features of sport. Sports psychologists refer to motivational climates. In mastery-oriented climates, internal values are realized. Sporting games can offer powerful and valuable experiences of joy and disappointment, fellowship and opposition, fairness and injustice, mastery and failure. With competent facilitation, sport can contribute to individual growth and progress (Ntoumanis and Standage, 2009). In result- oriented and cynical motivational climates or with incompetent facilitation, on the other hand, sport can promote anti-social behaviour, with a lack of respect for rules and fellow human beings (Shields and Bredemaier, 2014).

Value for society Sport, at least organised as a voluntary activity and part of what we call civil society, can be an important arena for inclusion and integration, and for the development of democratic attitudes and practices (Murray, 2018). At the same time, social science research shows how sport can be an effective tool for indoctrination and totalitarian thinking and has been used effectively and destructively by oppressive political regimes (Girginov, 2004).

Sport as a moral laboratory In other words: From the point of view of values, sport is ambiguous. Sport has a value-related potential. Morgan (1994) talks about sport’s gratuitous logic, by which he means that the branches of sport are games that exist primarily because of the activities’ intrinsic value. Sport invites agreement and shared rules and honest endeavour. And due to sport’s direct and embodied language and whole-hearted engagement, it has power.

But that power can also be destructive. Those in charge can refuse the invitation. Sport can be a weapon in a cynical battle for prestige and profit. McFee (2004) points to sport as a moral laboratory. We can set up “the sporting experiment” in many ways and get many different outcomes.

Conflict of values How are we to respond to the tensions between internal and external values? What do we do when they are in conflict?

MacIntyre (2007) sees such tensions as a characteristic of social practices. His diagnosis is clear. Internal values are under constant threat from external values. Traditional craftsmanship is threatened by commercialisation and banalisation, voluntary organisations by politicisation and the constant pursuit of money and resources. The criticism of competitive sport is familiar. When everything boils down to victory or prestige and profit, the role of internal standards of excellence, like skills and fair play, is diminished. Football provides many examples of the sport’s qualities being put under pressure by powerful external interests (Gammelsæter, 2019).

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The cure is also clear. Internal values are primary, external values are secondary. Institutions that do not nurture sport’s internal values responsibly can easily corrupt their practice. The day craftsmanship abandons quality standards in favour of a quick profit, it loses its value and sustainability. The day football organisations cease to defend the game’s distinctive features, the possibility for external values starts to gradually wither away.

The Olympic idea The international sports movement is characterised by global ambitions. Organisations such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Fédération International de Football Association (FIFA) seek to expand their activities across the globe. At the same time, the organisations justify their scope as a form of universalism. In their mission statements, we find phrases about universal ethical principles and universal human rights. Where do these ideas come from?

International competitive sport came into being in the latter part of the 19th century. An important event was the formation of the IOC in 1894. The French baron Pierre de Coubertin gathered a group of prestigious men at the Sorbonne University in Paris, and established a movement that, in his view, would cultivate the ideal citizen and the ideal society.

An ideal society in miniature Competitive sport, developed at English boarding schools through the 19th century and spread to all corners of the world via British colonialism, formed the movement’s core. For Coubertin, competition, with clear rules applicable to all and where the best emerged the victor, was the future’s ideal society in miniature. Here, you were rewarded according to your performance, and not according to your status or condition. Sport was an ideal meritocracy. Furthermore, sport allowed a person to show the best version of themselves. To train, to prepare and to compete cultivated the individual. The Olympian was the ideal for the person of the future, physically, socially and morally (MacAloon, 1984; Loland, 1995).

The aristocrat Coubertin also had social policy goals. Class conflict was intensifying in many European countries, and, as many of his class, Coubertin feared revolution. The latter part of the 19th century also saw the emergence of a growing, and in some cases aggressive, nationalism, something Coubertin himself had experienced in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, when Prussian forces had actually seized Paris.

Coubertin sympathised with the growth of an “impartial” and humanistic internationalism, which found expression in the International Red Cross, founded in 1864, the invention of the language Esperanto, which was meant to become a shared tool for communication in a new and peaceful world, and the international peace movement that had its headquarters in Coubertin’s home city of Paris (Hoberman, 1995).

Ambitious goals The Olympic movement was supposed not only to offer an international sporting event, but also to tone down class conflict and international tensions and contribute to peace. Olympic Games were not supposed to be an arena for politics, but for “universal fundamental ethical principles”, as it says in the Olympic Charter.3

These ideas manifested themselves in many ways. In the beginning, participants represented only themselves (and humanity) and not nations. National medal tallies are still not official IOC material,

3 https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/General/EN-Olympic- Charter.pdf?_ga=2.238493895.654889682.1624969149-944960750.1619972600 (24.6.2021)

9 and to this day, IOC members represent the Olympic movements in their home countries; they are not national representatives on the IOC (the principle of reverse representation).

IOC as template The Olympic movement has formed a template, at least in part, for other international sports organisations, particularly with regard to the idea that the sport is a politically impartial zone, with an ethical content of great value for the individual and society (Black and Peacock, 2013). FIFA was founded in Paris in 1904, and was initially sports-oriented, although it eventually adopted the Olympic rhetoric on the game’s universal value and the significance of international peace and harmony.

Examples are manifold. In 2021, with 211 affiliated associations, and after 117 years of immense growth and progress but also of turbulence and numerous scandals, current FIFA President Gianni Infantino is clear: “FIFA’s vision is to make football truly global, diverse and inclusive, for the benefit of the entire world.”4 The vision is followed up with ambitious social impact initiatives and programmes “…working with governments, global and regional development agencies, human rights groups, international and local non-profit organisations and former players to promote a fairer, more equal society through football.”5

Major sporting events In our context, the values manifested in major championships are of particular interest. Let me look more closely at the ethical potential of an event like the football World Cup. Why has this become an interesting arena for the communication of values of various sorts?

An obvious answer is the immense interest it generates. According to FIFA, over 1.1 billion people watched the World Cup final between and Croatia in 2018. In both countries, almost 90 per cent of registered television sets were turned on. The question is why a football World Cup is so popular. Let me point to three characteristics of the fascination with elite sports (Loland, 2011).

Football is high-quality entertainment Good matches offer tension and uncertainty at all levels. Will the feint succeed? Will the attack end in a goal? Who is in the lead at half-time? Who will win the match? Who will go forward in the tournament? Who will win the final? Excitement is combined with strong, experiential qualities: joy and disappointment, laughter and tears, frustration and fellowship, and humour and seriousness. Football has the distinctive qualities of play, both on the pitch and in the stands. A further quality is inclusiveness. A contest between the two teams is direct, embodied and concrete. The plot is easy to understand.

At the same time, football is a complex game. Experienced football fans never tire of analysing and discussing it. Football combines simplicity for the beginner and complexity for the expert. Moreover, unlike other types of entertainment, where a script has been prepared beforehand (films, plays, music), live football offers real uncertainty and tension – in the moment. It is about people putting in their maximum efforts to win.

Football actualises identity A football team represents a community: locally, regionally, nationally. Football offers an opportunity to unite around a shared project, relatively independently of many other differences in a diverse population (age and gender, socioeconomic background, ethnicity, political affiliation). Inside the

4 https://www.fifa.com/about-fifa (24.6.2021) 5 https://www.fifa.com/social-impact (24.6.2021)

10 ground, people stand shoulder to shoulder to support their team. In many ways, a football World Cup is a celebration of national identity and (imprecise) national stereotypes: the well-oiled German machine, the playfulness of the Brazilians, the Scandinavians’ reliance on physicality and tactical systems. The sport offers a clear fellowship in a complex social structure, as well as an informal test of our fellowship in relation to “the other”. Goksøyr (2014) talks about a harmless form of nationalism: 2x45 minutes nationalism.

Football’s supporter culture constitutes a special force when it comes to the construction of identities (Hognestad and Hjelseth, 2012; Garcia and Zheng, 2017; Giulianotti, 2010). Loyal and enthusiastic spectators have been part of football since the very beginning in the mid-1800s. The legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly had another saying. He was critical of the bureaucratisation of the game in the 1960s, and asserted forcefully: “At a football club, there’s a holy trinity – the players, the managers and the supporters.” Directors were only needed to sign the payslips (Goksøyr, 2014). Posterity shows that Shankly hit the mark with regard to supporters, but probably underestimated the directors. I will return to the supporters as an actor in sports politics in Part III.

It is also worth noting that identity processes in sport in general, and football in particular, can go beyond positive patriotism. Some supporters are associated with aggressive nationalism mixed with racism. The Swedish philosopher Torbjörn Tännsjö (1998) goes even further in his radical thesis on our fascination with elite-level sports: It cultivates contempt for weakness and is fascist at its core. Tännsjö has been criticised and rebutted, but puts his finger on a possibility. Elite-level sports can exert destructive, normative impact in society.

Football actualises existential issues Football can also offer tangible and almost corporeal answers to existential questions, often in the form of personal narratives: Pele’s and Maradona’s road from the slums to the pinnacle of success, women’s football celebrities like Marta and Hegeberg in their struggle for recognition, Haaland’s trajectory from boys’ club player on the windswept southwest coast of Norway to one of the world’s most sought-after strikers. And the narratives do not only foster idolisation. Football actualises human liberty and opportunity, but also human error and falls from grace.

A leadership challenge Elite-level sports are an area of ethical and moral tension. Extracting sport’s value potential demands good leadership, which builds on competence and respect for sport’s distinctive features. This is the fundamental idea behind the use of sport in ethics and development work, and to promote human dignity and human rights. In the following, I will discuss how sports politics and sports diplomacy that can promote, but also obstruct, the realisation of sport’s values.

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PART II: Sports politics, sanctions and boycotts

Major sporting events involve a great many actors with diverse interests, from the sport itself, from politics, voluntary and charitable organisations, business enterprises, supporters and activist groups of many kinds. The histories of sporting events involve cooperation and conflict (Horne, 2016; Kilcline, 2017). Sport is politics.

But sport is politics in a special way. In the following, I will say more about forms of sports politics and point in particular to the growth of what is often called the new sports diplomacy.

Sports politics Houlihan (2014) distinguishes between politics in sport and politics and sport.

Politics in sport is about sports organisations’ goals and guidelines for the sport, and the distribution of power and resources internally. The organisations must find answers to questions such as: What goals and ambitions are relevant for us? How shall positions and resources be distributed within the organisation? What should be the relative weighting of our focus on the elite level, recruitment and grassroots participation? How should we position ourselves in relation to other sports organisations nationally and internationally?

Politics and sport is about sport in collaboration with or opposition to external political systems locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Examples can be sport used to promote democracy, human dignity and human rights, like the highly symbolic Rugby World Cup in South Africa in 1995, which took place in the name of reconciliation after the abolition of apartheid; or activities like those where NFF is involved in the expansion of grassroots sport, improving living conditions and strengthening civil society in vulnerable parts of the world. Problematic examples include sportswashing – the cynical use of sport to overshadow and “clear” organisers of violating international law and committing human rights abuses (Chadwick, 2018).

Overlap: grey areas These two categories simplify the picture somewhat. International organisations like the IOC and FIFA distribute not only power and resources internally in the sporting community but interact to a large extent with state and non-state actors. Sometimes, the political dimension is particularly evident, not least where the organisations award major events. For example, the IOC awarded the Summer Olympics to Rome in 1960, Tokyo in 1964 and Munich in 1972. The awards were clear expressions of an attempt to reconcile the world after WW2. And the award of the FIFA World Cup in 2002 to both Japan and was an exercise in cooperation between two nations with a long history of conflict.

International sports organisations also engage in politics when they decide to include or not include national committees and associations. The contentious relations between China and Taiwan regularly lead to diplomatic crises. With respect to the Olympic Games, though, they have reached an agreement. Taiwan takes part under the name Chinese Taipei and marches in under an Olympic flag. A challenge of major political format during the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang in 2018 was to include participants from both the Korean states, North and South. Whether these symbolic acts have any lasting political impact is another question. The likelihood of them contributing to a de- escalation of tension is probably higher than the opposite.

This report is intended to discuss the normative conflicts surrounding the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, with the emphasis on labour rights abuses. Among other things, NFF must address the issue of sanctions and boycotts.

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Sanctions and boycotts Sanctions that dramatically reduce interaction, and boycotts that cut off all interaction in a field can be powerful weapons in sports politics. Let me first discuss sanctions and boycotts in general politics and then take a specific look at sports boycotts.

Sanctions or complete boycotts of states often spring from some demand for compliance with international law, for example, demands to respect human rights. Boycotts are a clear signal from one party to another that their behaviour and practices are so unacceptable that interaction is precluded (Gomez, 2018).

In international politics, the application of political and economic sanctions is not unusual. For example, the UN Security Council has passed 30 resolutions imposing sanctions on 24 different countries since 1966. Since 2000, the USA alone has imposed sanctions and boycotts on 25 countries and alleged terrorist organisations (Peksen, 2019). The EU is currently involved in around 30 sanctions, some of which are in the nature of a boycott.6

The purpose of imposing a boycott Sanctions and boycotts involve denying one party access to a good. For example, economic boycotts deny access to aid or a market. Boycotts can also shut parties out of prestigious arenas for international interaction, such as the complete refusal since 1970 to allow the apartheid regime in South Africa to participate in any Olympic sporting events.

Sanctions and boycotts are implemented for the purpose of forcing the boycotted party to implement real changes, and/or to change their reputation (Gomez, 2018; Peksen, 2019). In other words, the objective may be to change a behaviour, such as strengthening workers’ rights in Qatar, or to take a stand without any realistic expectation of achieving change (signalling). “We do not accept the Qatar regime’s labour policies.” The point then is to weaken the reputation of the sanctioned party and/or enhance the reputation of the sanctioning party, both at home and in front of an international audience. By sanctioning, parties intend to demonstrate their values and who they are.

Typical examples of such signalling include sports boycotts, such as when western democracies, including Norway, boycotted the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980 to protest against the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan, and the East Block’s tit-for-tat boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.

Sports boycotts: different forms There are some examples of sports boycotts forming part of a larger and broader regime of sanctions. Examples include the UN-initiated sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa from the early 1960s, and the boycott of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in 1992. There are further examples of purely sporting boycotts, particularly in the period. Olympic boycott actions in Montreal (1976), Moscow (1980) and Los Angeles (1984) are the most well-known.

The possibility of such boycotts exists today, too. During the UEFA European Football Championship in 2012, , Sweden and Germany, among others, refused to play matches in Ukraine due to the imprisonment of the opposition leader Yulia Timoshenko. Boycott actions have been discussed in relation to Olympic Games in Beijing (2008 and 2022), Sochi (2014), and the FIFA World Cup in Russia (2018) and now in Qatar (2022). However, coordination of boycott actions seems far more complex in the multiplicity of actors that constitute sports politics today. I will come back to the actors under my discussion of sports diplomacy in Part III.

6 https://www.sanctionsmap.eu/#/main. (2.5.2021)

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But first, Gomez (2018) provides a detailed typology of sports boycotts, explained in more detail below.

Binary boycott The first type is the binary, or two-fold boycott. Part A boycotts Part B to harm Part B.

Part A Part B

Fig. 1. Modified from Gomez (2018).

Familiar boycotts are clear examples: Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984 were battles between two states with associated blocs, the USA vs. the USSR, the Western Bloc vs. the . The battle lines were clear-cut, but the consequences rather less so. The World Athletics Championships competition was launched in 1983 as an attempt to establish an alternative for the best athletes in this period. The USSR established the so-called as an alternative Olympics, with participants from 49 nations, primarily in the Eastern Bloc.

Triangular boycott Another type of boycott is triangular. Part A wants to harm Part B by boycotting Part C.

Part A Part B Part C

Fig. 2. Modified from Gomez (2018).

A typical example is the boycott of the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956. Various political tensions and conflicts, such as the USSR’s aggression in Poland and Hungary, the so-called Suez Crisis which pitted France and Britain against Egypt, and ’s expansion into the Sinai Peninsula, led to a number of boycott actions. Egypt (A), along with Lebanon and Iraq, boycotted the Olympics in Melbourne (C) to harm Israel, Britain and France (B). Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland

14 boycotted the Games because they did not want to compete against Soviet Russians. China boycotted the Games in protest against the delegation from Taiwan. This type of boycott also has another name: the ricochet boycott. Multiple events throw a confusion of consequences in many directions.

Boycotts involving four or more parties A third type of boycott involves four or more parties. Part A boycotts Part B due to the behaviour of Part C towards Part D.

Part A Part B Part C Part D

Fig. 3. Modified from Gomez (2018).

An example is the boycott by African nations (A) of the Olympic Games in Montreal (C) in 1976. The boycott came about because New Zealand (C) had played international rugby matches against South Africa (D), at that time an apartheid regime, thereby breaching an international sports embargo.

Qatar? What type of boycott are being discussed with regard to Qatar? The models above and the examples given concern conflicts and solidarity between states and ideological blocs. In recent decades, international organisations like the IOC and FIFA have increasingly been held to account for their leadership and resource management. As such, the Qatar issue fits into the modified form of the triangular model. Part A (NFF) boycotts Part B (the 2022 World Cup in Qatar) to impact both Part B (the 2022 World Cup in Qatar/Qatar’s lack of labour rights) and also Part C (FIFA, or FIFA’s award of the World Cup to Qatar).

The Qatar discussion shows that modern sports diplomacy, to a greater extent than traditional, state- driven diplomacy, is a complex and dynamic affair, involving many actors.

Do boycotts work? The million-dollar question is whether sports boycotts actually work. And if they do, under what circumstances. Political and economic boycott actions are generally controversial. Most international sanctions are economic but are often justified with reference to violations of international law and human rights abuses.

Meta-studies of various types of political and economic sanctions and boycotts show an average level of efficacy, understood as realization of sanction and boycott goals, varying from down towards 5 per cent to upwards of 37 per cent.7 In a broad review of international sanctions and boycotts in the

7 There is ample literature on political and economic sanctions, boycotts and their efficacy. For example, see

15 period 1950 to 2016, Felbermayr et al (2020) point to an average success rate of 30 per cent. I have included two excerpts from this review. The first (see below) shows the yearly policy outcome registered for declared policy objectives.

The second excerpt shows the average success rate (the outcomes across the declared policy objectives in sanctions) of the different types of sanction.

Hufbauer et al (2009); Portela (2014); Morgan, Bapat and Kobayashi (2014); Biersteker et al (2018) and Peksen (2019).

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According to this overview, sanctions relating to are largely ineffective, with less than 10 per cent success rate. Sanctions relating to democracy are slightly more successful, with full realisation of policy objectives in over 50 per cent of cases. Sanctions relating to human rights lie between these two categories, at well below 30 per cent.

There is a relatively high degree of consensus in the literature regarding some key success criteria:

• Broad, multilateral support from both government authorities and other actors – multilateral boycotts, preferably initiated by the UN Security Council. Sanctions should also be followed up with diplomatic initiatives and attempts at negotiation, and sometimes the threat of force. • The boycotted party is dependent in some way on the boycotting parties, primarily politically and economically. Or in sport: dependent on participating in international sport, with the prestige and goodwill that brings. The paradox is that boycotts often take place between parties that have no close relations (Drezner’s paradox). • With respect to human rights, it is more effective to bind an actor to commitments than to try and reduce rights violations. • The goals of a boycott should be limited and clear-cut. It is easier to apply a sanction in order to free a political prisoner than to achieve systemic and political change. It also seems easier to achieve objectives in democratic than in authoritarian or theocratic regimes.

If the objective of the boycott is real policy change, it is also important to have sympathisers inside the system that is being boycotted. During the UN-initiated sanctions against South Africa, collaboration with domestic anti-apartheid groups was important. The sanctions were crowned with success when Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa’s president in 1994 and a new non-racist constitution was adopted in 1995. The South-African victory in subsequent Rugby World Cup in 1995, with the Springboks team made up of both black and white players, is one of the strongest images of

17 sport’s power as a unifying and reconciling force.

Gomez (2018) underlines that the first criterion, concerning broad, multilateral support and a united front, is the most important.

In a situation with many actors engaged in sports politics, the challenge is obvious. When discussing a boycott of the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, there were many issues: a totalitarian regime and suppression of human rights, the lack of environmental policies, the Chinese authorities’ behaviour towards Tibet, the treatment of minorities, etc. Proposals for a joint boycott fell apart because there were too many and too divergent interests and views on both goals and methods (Murray, 2018).

Unintended consequences The Norwegian peace studies pioneer, Johan Galtung was one of the first to study how sanctions and boycott actions could have unintended and counterproductive consequences (Galtung, 1967). One horrendous example is the suffering of the Iraqi civilian population under the years long boycott of Saddam Hussein’s regime (Sponeck, 2006). The boycott of through the entire post-war period has produced few results other than the suffering of an innocent third party – the civilian population, and probably North Korean athletes. And a counterproductive consequence is that North Korea has developed trade with other partners and a black-market economy in arms and narcotics.

Galtung studied the economic boycott of the Rhodesian apartheid regime in the 1960s and found an effect that can be called “rallying around the flag”. Due to external pressure, the country’s power elite formed a united front in support of its own regime. The intention of the boycott was to break apartheid. The result was that the regime was strengthened, though it is worth noting that this was a short-term effect. The regime fell collapsed years later.

Sanctions against Russia on the grounds of systematic doping in sport seem to have produced many of the same reactions. This is clearly evident in the threats against Russian whistle-blowers. State- controlled and sympathetic media frame sanctions as prejudiced and malicious and build up counterreactions. The politics of boycotts are therefore challenging.

Symbolic value: signalling A boycott does not always have quantifiable objectives and impacts. As previously mentioned, the symbolic value can be the objective. A boycott is a clear expression that one party views the behaviour and practices of one or more other parties as unacceptable. Every boycott action that attracts attention, has an impact on the parties’ reputations.

However, as in the discussion above, the symbolic value of a boycott can have unintended consequences. The UN’s boycott of Yugoslavia in 1992 led to the national team being ejected from the European Football Championships and replaced by Denmark, which went on to win the entire competition. This outcome gave rise to a certain level of sympathy with the boycotted party.

It can also be debated whether the very discussion of a boycott can send an equally clear signal as a boycott itself (Hovi, Huseby and Sprinz, 2005). The international discussion about labour rights and the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, led by the well-reputed newspaper The Guardian, clearly impacts the reputations of both Qatar and FIFA, and could create change.

Boycotts in extreme situations Boycotts also have another measure of success. Regardless of the boycott’s implications, an actor may boycott a political regime, or a sporting event, quite simply because it is perceived as the only politically and morally correct action.

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We have two clear examples of such boycotts from Norwegian history. The sports strike in Norway during Nazi occupation in WW2, and the Workers’ Sports Association’s boycott of the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936 (Goksøyr, 2002 and 2017). The sports strike meant that the vast majority of Norwegian sportsmen and women refused to take part in Nazified sports from November 1940. The Workers’ Sports Association (AIF) was a powerful force in Norway during the interwar period. Potential Olympic athletes among the AIF’s members boycotted the Berlin Olympics in 1936 due to Germany’s Nazi regime. The international labour movement organised an alternative event in Barcelona which was eventually held in Amsterdam due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

These boycotts, and the sports strike in particular, are powerful narratives for posterity. The Norwegian politician and sports official Rolf Hofmo called the strike the greatest Norwegian sporting achievement in history. The sports strike had two characteristics: • Faced with totalitarian Nazism, all possibility of dialogue had broken down. This was a boycott in an extreme situation. • The sports strike was primarily the result of a collective action by leaders/coaches/athletes and was not organised by groups that were not themselves active in sport.

Chan (2018) has analysed the rhetoric of US politicians concerning sanctions based on human rights and finds that moral arguments are given more weight than impact assessments. Chan problematises the situation since inadequate analyses easily result in unintended consequences and occasionally counterproductive outcomes.

The moral justification for boycotting Qatar is an expression of a clear ethical commitment. From a human rights point of view, workers’ conditions in Qatar are censurable. Seen from a sports politics and reputational point of view, FIFA’s award of the tournament is deeply problematic, to put it mildly.

At the same time, a responsible organisation like NFF must choose its weapons on the basis of a thorough assessment of objectives and consequences.

Assessment of objectives and impacts The first task is to clarify objectives. Are the potential actions intended to signal values and express opposition to Qatar’s treatment of guest workers? Are they further intended to signal discontent with FIFA’s award of the tournament, and also FIFA’s policies more broadly, or with FIFA’s management of football in general? Are potential actions intended to be something more than just signals, in other words tools for real change? Is the most important objective to strengthen the rights of guest workers in Qatar? Is the objective also to change FIFA’s method of awarding championships, perhaps also to change FIFA as an organisation?

The next task is to clarify which tools will serve the objective best. Efficacy assessments are crucial for responsible politics. In some situations, a full boycott can be the only alternative. In other situations, there may be other actions which can better serve the objectives. These range from lighter sanctions and protests to dialogue. Potential unintended consequences are also an important consideration. For example, signalling may not be perceived in the way intended, or sanctions intended to force change may not do so, or that the effect is counterproductive, and change goes in the wrong direction.

Research on sanctions and their efficacy provides an important basis for such assessments.

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Part III: The new sports diplomacy – actors and initiatives

The 21st century has so far been characterised by clear undercurrents of anti-globalism, protectionism and polarisation in nation states that have traditionally not been riven by tension. The Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced some of these tensions. Sports organisations, government authorities, non-government organisations (NGOs) and other actors are looking with greater interest at sport as an arena for diplomacy (Murray, 2018).

Diplomacy is an alternative to confrontation and the use of force and armed conflict. Broadly defined, diplomacy covers all international relations that are not in the nature of armed conflict and open warfare. In this connection, I define sports diplomacy as the area for dialogue and negotiation that has sports as its framework. Both diplomacy in general and sports diplomacy belong to the political sphere of ‘soft power’ (Murray, 2018; Merkel, 2016).

Objectives Diplomatic objectives come in many different guises. One type is about promoting one’s own interests (one’s own international reputation, for example), or concluding favourable resource- related agreements with other partners. Another objective, which can really also be linked to enlightened self-interest, is about strengthening universal values: peace and security, human rights, environmental protection.

Nygård and Gates (2013) provide the following list of objectives for sports diplomacy:

• Strengthening one’s reputation through sport (Qatar is working hard to secure major sporting events). • Creating a platform for dialogue (the most famous example is perhaps the “ping-pong diplomacy” of the 1970s that facilitated the first rapprochement between China and the USA. • Building trust (such as the football matches between Israeli and Palestinian teams at the Norway Cup youth football tournament). • Contributing to peace and reconciliation (exemplified by both major events and grassroots activities in post-apartheid South Africa (Cornelissen, 2011)).

Types Murray (2018) points to three types of sports diplomacy.

• Traditional sports diplomacy defined by state use of international sport as a diplomatic tool. There are many examples, some have already been discussed above. States want to build their reputations with good sporting results and create platforms for dialogue through encounters at major events. • The new sports diplomacy. This is a post-Cold War development, i.e., since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This kind of diplomacy is network-based, flexible and diverse. It is engaged in by multiple actors, and amateurs rather than professional diplomats. In addition to activities during major sporting events, it also encompasses a number of grassroots activities intended to promote health, socioeconomic development, multicultural understanding and dialogue, environmental protection and human rights (Hasselgaard, 2015; Garamvölgyi et al., 2020). • Sports diplomacy among non-state actors. The major sports associations, such as FIFA and the IOC, are at the heart of this activity, along with NGOs and with intergovernmental and supranational organisations such as the UN and EU. Powerful commercial actors, such as sponsors and media companies, are also involved.

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Murray (2018) points to a fourth kind which is not really a form of diplomacy but rather anti- diplomacy. Sport is struggling with numerous challenges that represent the opposite of openness and dialogue and the use of soft power. These include doping, match-fixing, violence, corruption, and even terrorism.

In the following, I will primarily discuss traditional sports diplomacy and the so-called new sports diplomacy, this latter being the most relevant in relation to the discussion on the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

Traditional sports diplomacy In this type of diplomacy, the interaction between government authorities and sport’s representatives is intended to open the way for broader political objectives. Sport is a diplomatic door-opener, particularly for states and governments.

Sportswashing means the efforts of problematic political regimes to enhance their international image with the help of mega sporting events (Chadwick, 2018). The Berlin Olympics in 1936 is a powerful example of sport as political propaganda. Russia invested record amounts in the Sochi Olympics in 2014, at the same time as the Russian sport system breached the anti-doping rules, new Russian laws challenged the rights of LGBT people, and there were preparations to invade the Crimean Peninsula.

More often, however, states’ use of mega-events for political purposes is unproblematic and constructive. There is relatively widespread agreement, at least in the eyes of Norwegians, that the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer in 1994 strengthened Norway’s reputation as an environmentally conscious and powerful winter sports nation. A more recent example is the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, one of whose objectives was to strengthen the country’s international reputation (Grix, 2012). And indeed, the world did get to see a playful and smiling Germany.

The “ping-pong diplomacy” of 1971–1972 is a classic example of sport being used to open a platform for dialogue. The USA sent table-tennis players to the People’s Republic of China as a first step in rapprochement between two opposing political poles. The diplomatic moves continued with matches and led to being the first US president to visit the People’s Republic of China, where he held talks with Chairman Mao Zedong.

Cricket matches between India and Pakistan, in 2002 during the Kashmir conflict and after the terror attack in 2018, or the so-called diplomacy between the USA and in the 1970s, or the football diplomacy between Turkey and Armenia, are other examples of rapprochement, dialogue and attempts to achieve reconciliation (Murray, 2018). Indeed, baseball diplomacy was revitalised to a certain extent in 2016. After political talks with Cuban dissidents, Barack Obama met Cuba’s president Raul Castro informally at a baseball stadium in Havana.

The new sports diplomacy In recent decades, power relations in sports diplomacy have changed. Merkel (2016) describes three phases. In the first phase, the post-war period, states competed and sought status and recognition through sporting achievements. In the next phase, during the Cold War, sport became purely a tool for exerting pressure, partly through the use of boycott actions. In the third and current phase, following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the picture has become more complex. Among other things, more attention is being paid to sport’s distinctive features and sport’s potential for promoting universal values, such as human rights.

In the so-called new sports diplomacy, the role of the state has changed. In an open and democratic

21 society, where sport is voluntary and non-party political in its organisation, state control is difficult to defend. The obvious state use and exploitation of sport for political purposes is not well received. Fr similar reasons multi-state agreement in boycott actions has become more difficult.

In terms of active sports politics, states give priority to sports diplomacy. In 2015, Australia was the first country to establish its own unit for sports diplomacy and its own strategy. Shortly afterwards, the USA launched its SportsUnited initiative. One of several overarching goals is a deliberate, strategic and systematic realisation of the diplomatic potential of elite athletes and major events in order to develop long-term and reciprocally useful international relations (Murray, 2018).

The centre of gravity is in many cases pivoting from states to the international sports organisations. They engage in sports diplomacy on a daily basis. Any international event is an exercise in diplomacy. To have any chance of successfully staging an event, there must be agreement on how to proceed at many different levels and between many, and to some extent conflicting, interests.

Network diplomacy Modern sports diplomacy is network diplomacy. Murray and Pigman (2014) point to the development of a diplomacy that can engage ‘the hearts, minds, and wallets of the global public’. Network diplomacy is open, fluid, innovative, transparent and activist.

Murray (2018) lists several benefits deriving from this development.

• Sport gives ossified and conservative diplomatic relations a new and dynamic dimension, involving both formal and informal dialogue and negotiation. It is ‘low-risk, low-cost and high-profile’ diplomacy, to quote Keech and Houlihan (1999). • Athletes and celebrities can front the work, preferably individuals with strong international reputations and backgrounds from those parts of the world one wishes to open up. • Sports diplomacy reaches a vast audience. Over 1 billion people watch the most important competitions, such as the FIFA World Cup. If actors wish to highlight their own distinctiveness or seek a platform for dialogue with large groups of people, there are few better places to do so. • The ideals of diplomacy and sport coincide. Diplomacy is an arena for dialogue and détente, with the aim of creating peaceful solutions. Sport seeks to front the same values. Sport and diplomacy can be mutually reinforcing.

Challenges But sport’s ambiguity can be seen here, too. Murray (2018) points to several challenges.

• Despite similarities between diplomacy and sport, there are also considerable differences. Sport is about physical capabilities and immediate movement. Traditional diplomacy is about well-dressed men (and women) and well-prepared words. Sport is public, diplomacy often takes place behind closed doors. Sport is about winning and losing, diplomacy is about compromise in pursuit of agreement. • It is difficult to control the outcome of sports diplomacy processes. During the Olympic Games in in 1988, those controlling the authoritarian regime wanted to strengthen their position. Instead, the event strengthened the push towards liberal democracy (Black and Bezanson, 2004). Russia’s enormous investments in the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014 have subsequently acquired a dubious international reputation. Due to intense scrutiny, the loss of reputation is greater than in connection with traditional, behind-the-scenes diplomacy. • Not all attempts at rapprochement are successful. In an attempt to boost dialogue between

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European countries and Canada in the mid-1960s, the national Canadian ice hockey team embarked on a tour of Europe. In an official report from the Canadian Foreign Ministry, the attempt was deemed a failure due to the Canadians’ physical and brutal playing style (Black and Peacock, 2013).

Shrewdness and competence In other words, diplomacy must be exercised shrewdly. In connection with the “ping-pong diplomacy” between the USA and China, the sports were selected with considerable care. The Americans did not mind losing at table-tennis. There would be no loss of face, the Chinese were the best in the world. Correspondingly, the Chinese could lose at basketball, where the USA ruled supreme (Kropke, 1974). It is important that neither party emerges as the clear loser.

Tournaments like the FIFA World Cup have a huge potential. They are, a priori, inclusive competitions, with qualifying rounds and subsequent group games, which lead to a knock-out tournament and end in a final match. Other events, like the Olympic Games, with many sports that require advanced technology and know-how, more obviously reflect general differences in the international community.

Polarisation and aggressive nationalism are perhaps football’s biggest challenges. A textbook example of its destructive force is the “football war”, the World Cup qualifying match between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969, which was the final straw that ignited a hot war resulting in 2,000 deaths and 100,000 refugees (Kapuscinski, 1990). Other contemporary examples are club and international matches that must be played in empty stadiums for fear of riots.

Sports diplomacy is, like sport, an activity with an uncertain outcome. But as in sport, with good preparation, competence, and good judgement, it can produce great rewards.

Actors and initiatives The new sports diplomacy is a closely woven network of actors. International sports associations and national governments still have key roles. At the same time, and irrespective of the situation and the event, individuals and teams, supporters, NGOs, multinational enterprises, organisations like the EU and UN, compliance and judicial bodies like WADA and CAS, and various groups of activists can have a significant influence.

In the following, I will describe the actors in more detail and provide examples of initiatives and experiences, with the emphasis on human rights.8

To be clear: this is no in-depth organisational analysis, with detailed accounts of organisational structures and areas of responsibility. Instead, I provide a rough sketch of the relevant actors and some of their opportunities and limitations. I conclude the presentation of each actor with a paragraph in italics with special relevance for this report’s mandate.

Individuals, teams, and backroom staff I begin with the athletes/players, teams, and backroom staff who, due to being regarded as representatives of their systems, have been diplomatic actors from the birth of sport. They constitute a kind of uniformed and diplomatic corps who, for a limited period, attract enormous attention. The majority consider it an honour. The feeling of performing in their national colours means something.

Athletes/players, teams and backroom staff can score sports-related political and diplomatic points

8 Unless otherwise specified, the examples are drawn from Murray (2018).

23 in various ways, through peaceful protest and promotion, often with inspiration from or in collaboration with other actors.

Protest: • At a medal ceremony at the Olympic Games in in 1968, 200-metre medal winners and raised a fist clad in a black glove in sympathy with the American movement and the struggle for civil rights. • During the opening ceremony at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, the leaders of delegations from 15 countries walked alone and without the athletes. The countries did not boycott the Games but signalled their protest against the USSR’s occupation of Afghanistan. • In 2016, the American NFL star Colin Kaepernick knelt during the American national anthem to protest against racism and police brutality in the USA. • In 2016, and with the support of the NGO Free to Run, Mahsa Torabi broke with gender stereotypes. As the first woman, she took part in a marathon race in Iran and challenged the regime’s restrictions.

Promotion: • Multi-ethnic national teams, like the French team that won the FIFA World Cup on home turf in 1998, can have a symbolic value that signals equality and anti-racism. The same goes for teams playing in the major football leagues. Over 60 per cent of all players in the English Premier League were not born in England. Both UEFA and FIFA know how to play on symbolic values. • At the same time, there are athletes who raise particular issues. Cathy Freeman, Australian 400-metre gold medallist at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, used the opportunity to highlight the plight of Australia’s aboriginal people. • In 2015, the then PSG player Zlatan Ibrahimovic “tattooed” the names of 50 people suffering from want and hunger on his body. The action was coordinated with the UN’s World Food Programme and marked solidarity with the world’s poor. • Tom Wadell, an Olympic decathlete who experienced intense homophobia during his career in the late 1960s and early 1970s, launched the so-called Gay Games, to promote respect for and strengthen the rights of the LGBT community.

Individual athletes/players and teams have freedom of expression. Sanctions against Carlos and Smith, who were thrown out of the Mexico Olympics, and an initially hard line taken by the NFL against protests like Kaepernick’s, are problematic. The IOC’s rigid treatment of the Norwegian women skiers’ use of mourning bands at the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014 is a sign that the rules are in need of critical review. At the same time, political protests can distract from the sport and lead to increased polarisation. Of course, there must be limits to expression during major competitions, not least out of consideration for the athletes/players themselves, who would otherwise come under undue pressure to front messages of all types. Developing optimal rules and regulations, and not at least communicating them in acceptable ways, require competence, insights, and good judgment in the responsible organizations.

In the spring of 2021, the Norwegian national football team communicated a clear message of respect for human dignity in its World Cup qualifying matches. The demonstration probably sits in a grey area between protest and promotion, but obviously falls within the rules. Could we envisage further types of demonstration in future matches?

Supporters An overview of the actors engaged in sports diplomacy in football must include the supporters. They have been a force to be reckoned with throughout the history of modern football (Hognestad and

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Hjelseth, 2012; Garcia and Zheng, 2017).

Goksøyr (2014) talks about supporters as “organised passion”. Let me give a few examples from Norway. Manchester United’s supporters club has round 44,000 members, Liverpool’s has 36,000, and these clubs have similar supporter clubs worldwide. The supporter clubs of Norwegian clubs are organised in an alliance called the Norsk Supporterallianse. Supporter organisations operate in an area of tension, where sporting values are challenged by hard, commercial logic (Gammensæter and Walters, 2020). In connection with the award of the FIFA World Cup to Qatar (Brannagan and Rookwood, 2016) and, not least, in connection with plans for a new European Super League in the commercialised, American mould, supporters have drawn together both nationally and internationally.

As one part of what legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly called football’s holy trinity (players, managers, and supporters), supporters have significant power. There are many examples of how supporters force team managers and club directors and owners to be replaced. And supporter representatives have been brought into club boardrooms. Supporter powers have been formalized, too. Many supporter clubs also engage in good causes, such as the promotion of inclusivity and efforts to combat racism.

Engagement in the Super League and Qatar issues is a clear indication of a moral sense and a desire to take social responsibility. At the same time, some of that engagement appears to be polarising. Nick Dixon (2013) provides an interesting discussion of two supporter stereotypes: the partisan and the purist. The partisan is in love and gives their all for their team out of blind and uncritical devotion. The purist is searching for the best football and behaves like a critical and faithless lover in constant pursuit of a better alternative. Dixon argues in favour of a halfway position: the moderate partisan, who supports their team but also has the capacity for critical reflection.

Supporters are an integral part of football and represent a powerful resource in the promotion of ideals such as human dignity and human rights. With that power to influence comes responsibility and duty, not least the responsibility to engage in informed sports politics and the duty to contribute to effective sports diplomacy where possible.

International sports organisations Sports organisations like the IOC and FIFA exist primarily to facilitate, coordinate, control, and expand their sports. At the same time, most abide by the Olympian idea of promoting universal values, such as human rights, reconciliation, and peace.

These organisations have long seen themselves as diplomatic actors. IOC members represent the Olympic ideal in their homelands, they are not national representatives in the IOC. At the same time, the organisations seem to have been behindhand with respect to diplomatic expertise, particularly in the face of authoritarian regimes and powerful commercial forces. In some situations, they have appeared feeble, in others corrupt.

Tomlinson (2018) argues that FIFA’s decision-making structure, where each of the 211 member associations has one vote, and where the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has as much power as Germany and Brazil, creates individual spaces for misrepresentation, double-communication, and fictitious and corrupt negotiations. The system appears democratic but is vulnerable. The clearest examples of this, according to Tomlinson, are the award of the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.

The reputations of these organisations have suffered severe damage in public trust. At the same

25 time, there are numerous and positive indications of structural change, such as FIFA’s reform efforts after the Qatar 2022 award.

Nevertheless, the IOC and FIFA are a long way from the strategies of the International Table-Tennis Federation (ITTF) (Black and Peacock, 2013; Murray, 2018).9 The ITTF’s leadership was the co- architect behind the “ping-pong diplomacy” between the USA and China in the early 1970s. The ITTF was also a pioneer in the sporting boycott of South Africa and was an early supporter of the first non- apartheid associations. At present, the ITTF has an extensive programme and goodwill fund that provides disaster relief. The ITTF may act as a template for a stable and, in many ways, successful and forward-looking engagement in sports diplomacy.

The future belongs to national and international sports organisations that can combine sports-related activities with active sports diplomacy, and that can exploit their networks. The most powerful ones like the IOC and FIFA need further development in these respects. What is the status in Norwegian sport and Norwegian football?

States and governments I have pointed to many examples of states’ engagement in sports politics and sports diplomacy, and I have also pointed out how countries like Australia and the USA have acquired additional expertise in response to the new network diplomacy.

In the open, democratic part of the world, the promotion and glorification of states’ distinctive national qualities appear to be both simple and partisan. Moreover, as the discussions concerning the Olympic Games in Sochi and Beijing (twice), and the FIFA World Cup in Qatar have shown – in a critical and international public domain, sportswashing has become more difficult. As previously mentioned, positive promotion with real relevance, such as during the World Cup in Germany in 2006, can be successfully achieved. In another example, the opening ceremony at the London Olympics in 2012 played on popular culture and had a playful and self-deprecating tone, in striking contrast to the massed lines and perfect choreography on display in Beijing four years before.

Modern state-sponsored sports diplomacy emphasises the promotion of universal values, such as human dignity and human rights, often in collaboration with NGOs with expertise in various fields. At the same time, governments can use the opportunity for peaceful protest. One example is the official US delegation at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, which contained three openly gay athletes: Billy Jean King, Brian Bontano and Caitlin Cahow. The signal about respecting LGBT rights was clear.

Do we have clear enough ambitions for state-sponsored, sports diplomacy in Norway? Inspired by the US delegation in Sochi, could we envisage Norway’s official representatives to the FIFA World Cup in Qatar including campaigners for workers’ rights?

NGOs The importance of NGOs, both national and international, sports-related and generally oriented, in sports politics has grown (Melissen, 2005; Murray, 2018). Of the approximately 20,000 NGOs that are internationally active, 90 per cent were established after 1975 (Riordan, quoted in Tomlinson, 2018).

NGOs have been active in earlier boycott debates, including discussions on the FIFA World Cup in Argentina in 1978. A military junta seized power in a coup in 1976, two years before the event. Argentine activists and opposition leaders, as well as human rights organisations, challenged states and the footballing community. To take part in Argentine could be interpreted as supporting the military junta.

9 See https://ittffoundation.org/home (03.05.2021).

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However, no unified front was established, in part due to the fact that the USA supported the event. In the end, Argentina won the trophy – which has been described as ‘the beautiful game’s ugliest moment’. Here we have a good example of a bread-and-circus strategy. The junta, headed by President Videla, suffered considerable damage to their international reputation, but scored a short- term home win.

Today’s NGOs work with many topics: human rights, the environment, equality, peace, health, education, urban development, and the strengthening of civil society, to name a few.10 NGOs can have many sources of finance. Right to Play, an initiative launched by Johann Olav Koss in 2000, is an example that combines sport with charitable objectives and is financed by governments, banks, other NGOs (Save the Children) and Liverpool Football Club.

Another example is Play the Game, an international forum and home for the homeless questions in sport, which is run by the Danish Institute for Sports Studies (IDAN) and is lottery funded. Through 11 international conferences, online forums, and activities in 30 countries, Play the Game has been a meeting place for sports researchers, leaders, and journalists since 1997. Play the Game is one of international sport’s leading think-tanks.

In connection with major events, NGOs operate with a broader set of objectives. Since the early 1990s, the environmental movement has persuaded the IOC to develop the environment as a third pillar in Olympism (in addition to education and culture). However, in the past two decades, human rights organisations have probably played the most important role.

Once again, the discussion about the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014 is illustrative. From a non- Russian perspective and from the very beginning, the 2007 decision to award the Games to Sochi sparked controversy, with accusations of sportswashing, among others. The protests intensified in 2013 in connection with Russia’s controversial legislation on homosexual “propaganda” to minors. Organisations like Amnesty International and LGBT rights groups became involved. Reports of corruption and staggering costs and environmental challenges prompted further negative reactions, as did the detention of Russian opposition figures, like the Pussy Riot group. Debate about the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar primarily concerns labour rights in the country.

Any organiser of an international sporting event and any actor with sports diplomacy potential and ambition can draw strength and competence from alliances with NGOs. At the same time, sports actors must balance and protect the distinctive features of sport, and sport’s goals and meaning. If the ambition is the promotion of human dignity and human rights, the distinctive features of sport should be the starting point. This demands confident and competent sports leadership.

Multinational commercial enterprises Multinational commercial enterprises are highly relevant with respect to sports politics, irrespective of whether they have a direct link to sport, like Nike, or figure among FIFA’s “partners”, like , Coca-Cola, Visa and Qatar Airways. The companies seek to bask in reflected glory. At the same time, they have substantial influence.

A study of Nike is interesting. In the mid-1990s, Nike was accused of producing its products with the help of slave labour. Through a radical clean-up process, combined with aggressive marketing campaigns relating to sustainability and human rights, Nike is nowadays associated – at least to some extent – with social responsibility (Murray, 2018). Among other things, Nike stands shoulder-to- shoulder with Colin Kaepernick in the struggle to end police violence and racial inequality in the USA

10 See Hasselgaard and Selliaas (2014) for a Norwegian example.

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(and has probably earned a significant profit in doing so).

The major media corporations like ESPN and Sky Sports represent another important multinational commercial actor. The media companies are part of the negotiations around how major events are organised. International sports associations are put under pressure. Should competitions be scheduled in prime time for the most important viewing segments, or at a time that best meets sporting requirements? The media conglomerates supply sporting actors with spectators and offer a global platform for communication. But they do not do so without getting payback for their efforts.

Commercial sports organisers, like the American National Football League (NFL), which travelled to England and Wembley Stadium to play matches, or Manchester United, which through intensive and well-planned global promotional campaigns claims to have over 1 billion fans, constitute yet another group. Here, sport is the primary product. And again, sports ideals are played on, often in conjunction with non-profit organisations.

In 2006, Barcelona Football Club took the lead in an interesting partnership with UNICEF, which became the sole advertiser on the official Barcelona football strip. The partnership was a strategic move, which has given UNICEF a high public profile and the football club a great deal of goodwill.

The Barcelona example illustrates an important point. Collaboration between charitable and commercial actors can be a win-win situation if the two parties communicate the same values.

However, national and international sports organisations must choose their partners carefully. For example, FIFA’s partnership with Qatar Airways might emerge as problematic in terms of the sensitive discussions concerning the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. It is particularly important to maintain clear lines on matters relating to human rights. For an organization with the ambition of standing up for moral values, the message has to be clear: Human rights are not for sale.

Intergovernmental and supranational organisations In addition to NGOs, intergovernmental and supranational organisations like the UN and EU, as well as sub-national actors (cities competing to host major international events like the Olympic Games) are also actors in the field of sports politics.

As long ago as 1978, UNESCO adopted an international charter based on a vision of sport for all. In 1989, this was included as a right in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 2013, the UN recognised sport as an arena for the promotion of health, education, development, and peace. In 2004, the UN appointed a special group to coordinate and implement member states’ projects. Of particular interest with respect to the Qatar issue is the International Labor Organization (ILO), a UN agency which works globally to promote fundamental labour rights.

In Europe, it is primarily the Council of Europe that has addressed issues in the sports politics field. Sport has been part of the Council’s cooperative activities since 1976 and is linked to the promotion of the Council’s fundamental values: human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Today, 34 European countries are working together within this framework, in collaboration with 23 sports organisations. The Council of Europe also administers legally binding agreements: the European Convention of Spectator Violence (1985) and the Anti-Doping Convention (1990).

The EU is also on its way into the field of sports politics, not least after the 2007 White Paper on Sport.11 The EU’s increasing engagement in supporting and coordinating member states’ activities in the field of sports politics is an expression of faith in sport’s value-related potential.

11 See https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmcumeds/347/347.pdf. (03.05.2021)

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For national and international actors, the UN, Council of Europe, and the EU appear to be important sports politics resources. On matters relating to human rights, actors can coordinate and reinforce their initiatives. In the area of diplomacy, one initiative stands out as more important than most: multilateral cooperation.

Sport’s international compliance and judicial bodies The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), established in 1999, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which gained greater autonomy with respect to the IOC from 1994, must be included in the complex network of actors and interests that constitutes international sport. They represent expectations of fair competition, transparency, and respect for fundamental values, such as human rights.

Both actors have played important roles in decisive situations: WADA with regard to athletes’ right to compete on equal terms (and taking an important position in the political and diplomatic crisis surrounding Russian competitors),12 and CAS in many contexts, including the issue of the right of women with so-called DSD (Differences of Sexual Development) to compete in women’s competitions (Loland 2020).

Here, too, there are tensions. CAS has twice concluded that Gibraltar can be a member of FIFA, despite protests from Spain, which does not recognise Gibraltar’s status as sufficient. WADA has also met challenges and has been criticised by the Council of Europe in connection with individual athletes’ right to due process in doping cases.

However, CAS and WADA’s reason for being is to promote fairness and clean sports. Any actor engaged in sports diplomacy must relate to CAS and WADA in a constructive manner.

Activist groups Another category of actors which may occasionally have significant influence comprises more or less time-limited activist groups that engage in the sporting arena.

Boycoff (2019) gives several examples.

• In June 2013, while Brazil was hosting FIFA’s Confederation Cup, over two million people marched through the streets of 350 cities to protest against the country’s political leadership and a lack of welfare benefits. The use of significant financial resources on sporting mega- events was strongly criticised. • A so-called NOlympia action was set up in Hamburg in 2015 to protest against the city’s potential application to host the summer Olympics in 2024. The action brought together social scientists, urban planners, and geographers, who published a manifesto one month before a referendum on the matter. In November 2015, 51.5 per cent of Hamburg’s population voted against an application to host the Games, and the project was shelved. • Similar activism was seen in connection with the applications for Chicago 2020 and Boston 2024, and there are still around 30 Los Angeles-based activist groups working to problematise the event in 2028 (Andranovich and Burbank, 2018).

States and sports organisations have underestimated the power of activism. The Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports was probably also guilty of such underestimation in relation a potential candidacy for the . There has also been

12 See for example International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, Volume II, 2019, Issue 2: WADA at 20: Progress and Challenges, which is entirely devoted to WADA’s policies and significance.

29 a certain amount of scepticism about meeting such groups for open and reasoned debate. Future competence in the field of sports diplomacy must include the capacity of open dialogue and respectful debate with activist groups.

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Conclusion

The ambition of this report has been to provide a knowledge-based foundation for assessing policies and initiatives, primarily relating to major sporting events, which can promote human dignity and human rights in sport. Its background is the debate about a potential boycott of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and NFF’s desire for a broader foundation on which to make good decisions.

In the report’s Part I, I emphasised the distinctive features of sport and sport’s ethical potential. Participation in sport requires mutual agreement on certain rules and norms, and that everyone taking part does their best. Meaningful sport requires cooperation and respect: fair play. It is precisely here that opportunities for respect and fellowship lie. The distinctive features of sport are the cornerstones for sport’s engagement for human dignity and human rights.

I have underlined that sport does not of necessity develop respect and fellowship. Sport is ethically ambiguous. Scholars point to its “gratuitous logic”: Sport invites cooperation and fellowship, but it can also be cynical and exclusionary. And it can be used politically in problematic ways, not least in connection with major events. Realising sport’s values demands clear and competent leadership.

I have explained the idea of sport as a humanitarian force, and major events as arenas for building international cohesion and peace. The idea derives from the Olympic movement and has formed a norm for many international associations, including FIFA.

Major events attract billions of viewers and offer a powerful potential for the dissemination of clear moral messages. In Part II of the report, I have given a number of historic and contemporary examples of initiatives.

Boycotts, understood as the cessation of dialogue and cooperation, are discussed as a tool in connection with the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. A review of the research shows that international political and economic sanctions and boycotts have a relatively low rate of goal-achievement, around 30 per cent on average. Success requires, among other things:

• Broad, multilateral support from both government authorities and other actors – multilateral boycotts, preferably initiated by the UN Security Council. Sanctions should also be followed up with diplomatic initiatives and attempts at negotiation, and sometimes the threat of force. • The boycotted party is dependent in some way on the boycotting parties, primarily politically and economically. Or in sport: dependent on participating in international sport, with the prestige and goodwill that brings. The paradox is that boycotts often take place between parties that have no close relations (Drezner’s paradox). • With respect to human rights, it is more effective to bind an actor to commitments than to try and reduce rights violations. • The goals of a boycott should be limited and clear-cut. It is easier to apply a sanction in order to free a political prisoner than to achieve systemic and political change. • It also seems easier to achieve objectives in democratic than in authoritarian or theocratic regimes. Perhaps theocratic regimes are the most difficult. Authoritarian leaders can be impacted more easily.

Research also shows that sanctions prompted by human rights abuses are ethically charged and often rest on weaker impact assessments. This can lead to unintended consequences. External pressure can sometime unite internal forces and strengthen the actor (or regime) that is being

31 boycotted, or end in negative consequences for an innocent third party: the civilian population (or in our context, players and teams).

This is not to say that a powerful sanction like a boycott is always wrong. Boycotts appear to be relevant primarily in extreme situations, where dialogue and diplomacy are practically impossible or blocked. Perhaps the foremost example of this from the realm of sport is the Norwegian sports strike during WW2.

In Part III, I discussed actors and initiatives in the “new” sports diplomacy, a flexible, open, fluid, innovative, transparent, and activist field comprising many actors. Major sporting events are complex interactions between athletes/players and teams, supporters, international sports organisations, states and governments, NGOs of many types, multinational commercial enterprises, intergovernmental and supranational organisations like the UN and EU, compliance and judicial bodies like WADA and CAS, and activist groups.

A successful sporting event requires a high level of diplomatic competence. I have discussed challenges in the sports organisations’ encounters with strong political and commercial actors and argued for an upgrading of sports politics competence. Sport’s own leadership must protect sport’s distinctive features and ethical potential. This is a prerequisite for sustainable sport.

I conclude by underlining that value-based sports politics and sports diplomacy rest on rights-based ethics and consequentialist ethics. In situations of tension with respect to human rights: human value is inviolable. At the same time, a thorough assessment of the consequences is required when choosing effective tools.

To be more specific: Any actions that NFF may take with respect to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar must build on clear objectives and on choosing actions that can achieve those objectives. This report is intended as a knowledge-based foundation for good decisions in this respect.

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