Thirteenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

Sporting sanctions have a long history of use in many countries’ diplomatic toolboxes. Examples include the sporting boycott on Apartheid South Africa, approved through the Commonwealth of Nations in 1977; United Nations’ (UN) sports sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1992-1995, and the United States’ (US) Olympic boycott of the Soviet Union, in response to its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. In recent decades, such measures have declined in prominence and are now generally viewed as a controversial field of diplomacy. Nevertheless, the use of various types of sporting sanctions to achieve a number of foreign and security policy objectives appears to be rising again, alongside a more general expansion of sanctions’ use across the world. This study contributes to this understudied field of scholarship intersecting foreign policy, sanctions, and sport management. It is based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of some of the world’s leading sporting bodies, as well as officials designing sanctions in the UN, European Union (EU) and United States. It also examines official discourse on sporting sanctions and explores the role such instruments may play in achieving diverse and novel objectives.