diplomacy which apart from sports diplomacy is the main category of the research. The chapter also included extended conceptualization of sports diplomacy through confronting the most critical approaches in pursuit of developing a possibly consistent way of understanding the term. This chapter also referred to the issue of subjects of sports diplomacy. These considerations allowed for the presentation of three forms of perceiving the term which were described shortly and to which subsequent, more empirical chapters were dedicated.
chapter 2, entitled “Sports Diplomacy as an Activity for Shaping Positive Relations between States,” addresses the means of using sport by states to alter the relations with other countries, with the focus on attempts to improve bilateral relations between hostile or estranged states. The following cases have been included: ping-pong diplomacy between China and the United States, cricket diplomacy between India and Pakistan, football diplomacy between Turkey and Armenia, track and field exchanges between the United States and the USSR, basketball exchanges between the United States and the USSR, baseball diplomacy between the United States and Cuba, hockey diplomacy between Canada and the USSR, tennis diplomacy between China and South Korea, sports diplomacy between North and South Korea, and sports diplomacy between Iran and the United States. The first three cases considered situations when sports exchanges were employed to establish contact between political representatives of respective states. Ping-pong diplomacy was described firsthand since its presence in collective awareness as an example of this type of sports diplomacy and has proven to be particularly useful, thus constituting a sort of a model. Other case studies have been sorted chronologically, although some cases referred to an extended period. The case studies were selected with the use of typical case sampling and concerning their representative character. Each of these cases is analyzed concerning the following variables:
• Sports contact necessary to establish political contact,
• Improvement or lack of improvement of the state 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 on purpose or spontaneously occurring,
• Relevance attributed to sports victories during the exchanges,
• High-level or grassroots character of the sports exchanges.
This part of the research allowed for formulation of several generalizations concerning this type of sports diplomacy and proposition of three models of sports diplomacy used to initiate international rapprochement. The models were based on the specific qualities of the use of sports diplomacy by three states that have been particularly active in this field: the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China. chapter 2 also included testing two hypotheses: sport may serve as a useful tool for shaping relations between states by creating favorable circumstances (H1); there is no direct correlation between the type of sport used in sports diplomacy for political rapprochement and its effectiveness in bringing states closer together (H2).
chapter 3, “Sports Diplomacy as a Tool for Shaping the Desirable Image of States,” undertakes issues related to employing sport within activities directed at shaping the perception of a state by the foreign public. The research included case studies of the United States, China, Russia/the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Norway, Qatar, and Kosovo. The selection of states to be investigated was determined by the fact that they pursued image-building sports diplomacy since not every country is active in this field. Apart from that, the selected countries differ from each other in their wealth, size, and political regime. Accordingly, the research included democratic and nondemocratic countries, superpowers, regional powers, and small states. This selection was connected with the need to answer the research question concerning which methods of image-building sports diplomacy are used by different kinds of states. Doubts may appear concerning the selection of the states mentioned and not taking into consideration countries such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Brazil. These countries belong to democratic regional powers, a category that has been investigated on other examples. The United States, China, and Russia are particularly strong in terms of sports performance and are active players of public diplomacy, therefore not including them in the analysis would be difficult to accept. Great Britain is smaller than the previous three but still relatively big and as a country became much more active concerning image-building sports diplomacy recently.
The other three countries investigated in the chapter are considered as small states. There are several criteria that may be used to determine small states, but most often they refer to their populations. According to one of the investigations on sports policies, small states have populations lower than ten million,24 and this definition has been adopted in this book. From among small states, three in completely different international situations have been selected, with different foreign policy goals and with different capacity for action. Some of the governments question Kosovo’s statehood, and its financial assets are very limited. Qatar, on the other hand, belongs to very wealthy countries concerning GDP per capita. Both of them regard sports diplomacy as important means of realizing foreign policy goals, although their objectives and possibilities are inherently different. The third small state in the analysis—Norway—has a well-grounded position in international relations and also belongs to very wealthy countries. It has been included in the research because it enjoys a solid nation brand and because in this case, sport plays only a secondary role in building the state’s international image.
All the selected states were investigated concerning the methods of image-building sports diplomacy they have been using among the following: sports exchanges, hosting sports events, sports achievements, sports development aid, having internationally known athletes, sports investments, and participation in sport. Despite the employment of case-study protocols the structure of parts concerning particular states was not entirely coherent since in each section the use of the most dominating method was described in the first place, and there were methods that were used by some countries but not by others. Some of the methods of image-building sports diplomacy were to some extent related to others, for example, sports development aid was often associated with sports exchanges (apart from the cases of Norway and Qatar). The structure of the respective subchapters was therefore adjusted to a particular case, whereas all cases were uniformly compared in the concluding part.
The activity of respective states concerning building their international image through sport was analyzed in reference to the following variables: the size of the state (based on population), the wealth of state (based on GDP per capita), and the political regime (democratic or nondemocratic). Apart from that, the research considered the costliness of particular methods and whether sport was regarded as a priority area of general attempts to build the international image. The study also took into consideration whether the analyzed countries experienced an “image loss”—a situation or situations when pursuing image-building sports diplomacy also led to disseminating negative messages, for example, in reference to international criticism, protests, etc. It was also considered which methods were attached priority and whether they were inspired by governments or were initiated on the grassroots level. This allowed for making several generalizations and verification of the following hypotheses: methods employed by states within their branding sports diplomacy are determined by their assets and political regimes (H3); democratic states prefer grassroots activities while nondemocratic countries prefer to act from above (H4); states may benefit from the actions of non-state actors despite their government’s passivity in the context of their international image (H5).
chapter 4, entitled “The Diplomacy of Organizations Governing International Sport,” has a slightly different character than chapters 2
