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94. Joseph Nye Jr., “Hard, Soft and Smart Power,” in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, ed. Andrew F. Cooper, Jorge Heine, and Ramesh Thakur (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 570.
95. Laurence Chalip and Carla A. Costa, “Sport Event Tourism and the Destination Brand: Towards a General Theory,” Sport in Society 8, no. 2 (2005): 219.
96. Simon Anholt, Competitive Identity: The New Brand Management for Nations, Cities and Regions (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), 108–109.
97. Palmer, Global Sports, 105.
98. Marijke Taks, “The Rise and Fall of Mega Sport Events: The Future Is in Non-Mega Sport Events,” in Ethics and Governance in Sport: The Future of Sport Imagined, ed. Yves Vanden Auweele, Elaine Cook, and Jim Parry (London: Routledge, 2016), 85.
99. Choong-Ki Lee, Tracy Taylor, Yong-Ki Lee, and Bongkoo Lee, “The Impact of a Sport Mega-Event on Destination Image,” International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration 6, no. 3 (2005): 28–29.
100. Agata Dembek and Renata Włoch, “The Impact of a Sports Mega-Event on the International Image of a Country: The Case of Poland Hosting UEFA Euro 2012,” Perspectives 22, no. 1 (2014): 35.
101. Marcin Widomski, “The Olympic Games in the Creation of the Image of the Host Country and City,” Historia i Polityka, 23, no. 16 (2016): 46.
102. Jonathan Grix, Paul M. Brannagan, and Barrie Houlihan, “Interrogating States’ Soft Power Strategies: A Case Study of Sports Mega-Events in Brazil and the UK,” Global Society 29, no. 3 (2015): 468.
103. Xin Zhong, Shuhua Zhou, Bin Shen, and Chao Huang, “Shining a Spotlight on Public Diplomacy: Chinese Media Coverage on the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 30, no. 4 (2013): 396–397.
104. Holger Preuss, “The Olympic Games: Winners and Losers,” in Sport and Society: A Student Introduction, ed. Barrie Houlihan (Los Angeles: SAGE 2008), 424.
105. Jonathan Grix and Paul M. Brannagan, “Of Mechanisms and Myths: Conceptualising States’ “Soft Power” Strategies through Sports Mega-Events,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 27, no. 2 (2016): 252.
106. Preuss, “The Olympic,” 423–425.
107. Qinqin Dong and Geert Duysters, “Research on the Co-Branding and Match-Up of Mega-Sports Event and Host City,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 32, no. 8 (2015): 1099.
108. Guillaume Bodet and Marie-Françoise Lacassagne, “International Place Branding through Sporting Events: A British Perspective of the 2008 Beijing Olympics,” European Sport Management Quarterly 12, no. 4 (2012): 358–359.
109. Andrew Lepp and Heather Gibson, “Reimaging a Nation: South Africa and the 2010 World Cup,” in Sport, Tourism and National Identities, ed. John Harris (London: Routledge, 2014), 32.
110. Jonathan Grix and Barrie Houlihan, “Sports Mega-Events as Part of a Nation’s Soft Power Strategy: The Cases of Germany (2006) and the UK (2012),” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 16 (2014): 573.
111. Ociepka, Miękka siła, 180.
112. Beatriz Garcia, “One Hundred Years of Cultural Programming within the Olympic Games (1912–2012): Origins, Evolution and Projections,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 14, no. 4 (2008): 365.
113. Chris Arning, “Soft Power, Ideology and Symbolic Manipulation in Summer Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies: A Semiotic Analysis,” Social Semiotics 23, no. 4 (2013): 524.
114. Panagiotopoulou, “Hosting,” 152.
115. Milena M. Parent and Sharon Smith-Swan, Managing Major Sports Events: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2013), 205.
116. Paul M. Brannagan and Richard Giulianotti, “Soft Power and Soft Disempowerment: Qatar, Global Sport and Football’s 2022 World Cup Finals,” Leisure Studies 34 (2015): 706.
117. Nye, “Public Diplomacy,” 95.
118. Houlihan, “Politics and Sport,” 219.
119. Barrie Houlihan and Jinming Zheng, “Small States: Sport and Politics at the Margin,” International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 7, no. 3 (2014): 334.
120. Danyel Reiche, “Investing in Sporting Success as a Domestic and Foreign Policy Tool: The Case of Qatar,” International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 7, no. 4 (2015): 495.
121. Murray, Sports Diplomacy: Origins, 135, 143.
122. Surmacz, Ewolucja, 375.
123. Murray and Pigman, “Mapping,” 1099.
124. Ibid., 1107–1108, 1110.
125. Bárbara S. de Almeida, Wanderley Marchi Júnior, and Elizabeth Pike, “The 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games and Brazil’s Soft Power,” Contemporary Social Science 9, no. 2 (2014): 273.
126. Beacom, International Diplomacy, 36.
127. Ibid.
128. Enric Ordeix-Rigo and João Duarte, “From Public Diplomacy to Corporate Diplomacy: Increasing Corporation’s Legitimacy and Influence,” American Behavioral Scientist 53, no. 4 (2009): 559.
Sports Diplomacy as an Activity for Shaping Positive Relations between States
This chapter aims to review and analyze selected cases of positive sports diplomacy between hostile or estranged countries. Sports diplomacy perceived this way is supposed to serve the state’s interests connected to political rapprochement with other countries. Within the research, two hypotheses were verified. The first one assumes that sport may serve as a useful tool for shaping international relations by creating favorable circumstances. According to the second one, there is no direct correlation between the type of sport used in sports diplomacy for political rapprochement and its effectiveness—it was tested based on quality factors that allow ascertaining whether sports contacts have brought lasting improvement of bilateral relations.
The research included employment of case-study protocols and individual cases have been investigated concerning several variables:
• Sports contact necessary to establish political contact,
• Improvement or lack of improvement of political relations as a result of sports contact,
• Correlation between the consistency of sports exchanges and the current state of political relations,
• Existence of formal agreements sanctioning sports diplomacy,
• Sports exchanges arranged or coincidental,
• The importance attached to sports
