Global games, local rules: Mega-events in the post-socialist world

Abstract

In the past decade mega-events have entered a new phase of global reach, as post-socialist countries in Eurasia, from Poland to Russia, have or will become host to some of the largest events on earth: the Olympic Games in Sochi (2014), the Football World Cup in Russia (2018), the Football European Championship in Poland and Ukraine (2012), Expo in Astana (2017), the Asian Winter Games in Almaty (2011) and the Universiade in Kazan (2013), as well as a series of high-level political summits including the APEC and the BRICS summits in Russia. Although these mega-events are global, the various institutional, economic and cultural constellations and recombinant forms of rule that have emerged in their post-socialist host countries have shaped fundamentally the planning and organisation of each mega-event in unique ways. In each case, mega-events in post-socialist countries have involved a strong role for the central state and neopatrimonial forms of resource allocation. The events are meant to demonstrate to the rest of the world that the cities and countries once behind the Iron Curtain have at long last arrived in global modernity. While the rhetoric of worldwide competition, nationalist pride and one-upmanship between event organisers may be global, policies, knowledge and ideas connected to the events tend not to move unchanged to the post-socialist world.