Abstract
This article highlights and analyses a hitherto largely neglected dimension to the growing agency of large developing countries in global affairs: their hosting of international sports mega-events. Why are large developing countries hosting sports mega-events and what does this contemporary phenomenon tell us about the significance of, for example, the Olympics and the World Cup in global affairs? We explore these questions through brief examination of the cases of the three most active sports mega-event hosting states in recent times: Brazil, China and South Africa. The 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and the upcoming 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil provide interesting examples with which to explore developing country agency in the international system and in particular the discursive basis of that agency. We see the hosting of sports mega-events as the practice of public diplomacy by states to both demonstrate existing soft power capability as well as pursue its further enhancement.
Highlights
This article highlights the possibilities hosting a sports mega-event offers China, South Africa, and Brazil to practice public diplomacy in order to both project and boost their soft power in the international system
Why are large developing countries hosting sports mega-events and what does this contemporary phenomenon tell us about the significance of, for example, the Olympics and World Cup in global affairs? We explore these questions through brief examination of the cases of the three most active sport mega-event hosting states in recent times; Brazil, China and South Africa
While it is far too early to confidently assert that hosting sports mega-events has led to the socialisation of others and enhanced soft power, what hosting does do is augment their status as emerging powers and highlights the social and political dimension to their agency, dimensions largely ignored by the emergent market conceptualisation of Brazil, China and South Africa that underpins much of the arguments about their emergent power status
Summary
This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article whose final and definitive form, the Version of Record, has been published in Global Society [copyright Taylor & Francis], DOI 10.1080/13600826.2013.827632 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13600826.2013.827632#.UupOufl_v68
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