Resilience and unemployment: A case study of East German women

This is the author's PDF version of an article published in German politics ©2005. The definitive version is available at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/gpThis article discusses unemployment in the former East Germany and the impact that exceptionally high unemployment in the new German states has had on East German women since reunification. It reflects, in particular, on the potential influence of their experience of life in the GDR in developing coping strategies to deal with the effects of unemployment, an ongoing resistance to unemployment and, most significantly, to a male-breadwinner ethos

London 2012 and the physical activity legacy: to question legacy claims is to risk being labelled ‘unpatriotic’

Those who ask difficult and critical questions about the participation legacy of the London Games, risk being grouped with anti-Olympic protesters and regarded as pessimistic cynics or simply moaners. However, just as nothing about the staging of the event was left to chance, a meticulous evidence-based approach should be applied to realising a physical activity legacy argue Kathy Armour, Jonathan Grix and Nikos Ntoumanis

The Sochi Winter Olympics and Russia’s unique soft power strategy

According to Joseph Nye, who coined the concept of ‘soft power’, Putin ‘failed to capitalize on the soft-power boost afforded to Russia by hosting the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi’. With political volatility in the region throughout the year, Russia’s ensuing actions–culminating in the secession of Crimea–and its position over the armed conflict in Ukraine, certainly appear to bear this out. The Sochi Olympics were predominantly framed by the Western press as a Russian soft power quest and an attempt to obtain belated recognition as a great power. However, Sochi should be understood as a part of a wider package of ‘spatial governance’ undertaken by Putin’s regime. We argue that the Sochi mega-event is part of a wider soft power strategy–one which is not the same as, for example, the UK’s or Brazil’s use of such events. For Russia, international status means possessing both soft and hard power resources and being able to use them

An analysis of Japan’s soft power strategies through the prism of sports mega-events

This article investigates the use of sports mega-events by nations in East Asia to leverage ‘soft power’. The focus is on Japan and its ‘soft power’ strategies, building on existing work by adding a novel tripartite analysis to understand Japan’s domestic, regional and international rationale for hosting sports mega-events. The empirical data for this study is drawn from government documents and bespoke in-depth interviews (N = 10) with experts involved in sport. This, alongside engagement with the extant literature in the field, allows a more nuanced understanding of Japan’s rationale behind hosting the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the 2019 Rugby World Cup and the city’s second hosting of an Olympics, the 2020(1) summer Games. Key findings include the use of sports mega-events to ‘open up’ Japan’s society and bolster domestic politics, to maintain their regional status competing with China and South Korea and to improve the nation’s global status

The politicisation of sport and the principle of political neutrality: a contradiction in terms?

Recent events have once again shone a spotlight on the principle of political neutrality invoked by many Sports Governing Bodies to justify their inaction in response to political issues in the world of sport. The war in Ukraine and the hosting of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar have tested the political neutrality of both FIFA and the IOC. The consequences of this stance have led to FIFA overlooking a number of human rights issues in Qatar and the IOC ignoring human rights concerns in host states, awarding Russia and China recent versions of the Winter Olympics. This article outlines the most salient examples of the politicization of sport, exposing the myth upon which the principle of political neutrality is based. The aim is to offer a clear understanding of the processes behind the politicization of sport, the attraction of sport to governments of all political hues, and its use in ‘sportswashing’ activities and ‘soft power’ acquisition. Such an analysis of sport politics provides a glimpse behind the veneer of apoliticality enshrined in the principle of political neutrality and hence a better basis for scholars of sports law to understand the politically sensitive cases arising in sport in the present day

Sports Mega-Events as Foreign Policy: Sport Diplomacy, “Soft Power,” and “Sportswashing”

Sports mega-events (SMEs), such as the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, have become a key part of state strategies to achieve a multitude of foreign policy goals. The literature attempting to explain this—often under the broad umbrella term of “sport diplomacy”—has recently been bolstered by the arrival of two very popular concepts in this area of research, “soft power” and “sportswashing,” leading to confusion and a general lack of consensus around the use of sport for non-sporting aims. This article makes two key contributions to the literature: first, it serves to clarify the conceptual relationship between sport diplomacy, soft power, and sportswashing. It does so by arguing that the latter two concepts are strategies at different stages of a similar process, that is, using sport to achieve specific foreign policy goals by states, state actors, and non-state actors. Our second contribution lies in the application of this conceptualization to two relevant, empirical cases of an advanced capitalist country (the United Kingdom) and an autocratic country (Qatar), both of which have hosted an SME. The results show that while a variety of states, state actors, politicians, and non-state actors use the same means (SMEs) to achieve different foreign policy goals, their geopolitics, different histories, regime types, economic systems, and levels of development influence their rationale for doing so and the strategies they choose

Implementing a Sustainability Legacy Strategy: A Case Study of PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games

Given the growing need for hosts of sports mega-events to provide concrete plans for a sustainable sports mega-event at the bidding stage, it is perhaps surprising that there has not been more research on the actual implementation of the legacy plan in terms of sustainability. The main aim of this paper is to do just that: to analyse an empirical example of the implementation of the sustainability legacy plan for the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games. Through an empirical analysis, the research methods used to collect the data are document analysis and semi-structured interviews with stakeholder sampling (16 documents and 10 interviewees). The paper uncovers the difficulties the PyeongChang Games encountered in achieving the sustainable legacy planned in the bid files through an evaluation of the implementation of PyeongChang’s legacy strategy in the context of South Korea. Part of the findings reveal that Gangwon Province and South Korea achieved their strategic goals set out in advance of the PyeongChang Olympics as an effective tool for promoting regional development. One of the main obstacles to the sustainability of the PyeongChang Olympics was the lack of a clear plan for the post-Games use of Olympics venues and conflicts of interest among stakeholders of the PyeongChang Winter Games.</jats:p

Olympians' Attitudes toward Olympic Values: A “Sporting” Life History Approach

The literature on the Olympics has grown exponentially in the last twenty years. What has not received much, if any, attention, however, are the athletes themselves. Given that Olympians are essential to the existence of the Games and that governments worldwide increasingly seek international prestige through the funding of elite sport policy, the lack of research in this regard is, therefore, surprising. The current paper seeks, in part, to redress this imbalance. It does so by focusing on Olympians' attitudes to Olympic values—given that Olympic values are central to the Olympic Movement—gathered through a wider project on the “sporting” life history of fifty-seven British athletes. The study's findings are paradoxical and appear to be at odds with the Olympic values set out in the Olympic Charter. In particular, the study finds British athletes' attitudes toward Olympic values tend to shift dramatically between the period in which they compete and their post-athletic careers