Leiden University Student Repository

Beld, Claudia van den (2023)

Who's winning? Authoritarian soft power through Sports Mega-Events

Executive master thesis | International Relations and Diplomacy (MSc)

Following the controversy surrounding Qatar’s winning bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, this thesis sets out to investigate the extent to which Qatar was able to harness soft power through its hosting of this global competition. The research gap from which this research stems is that of authoritarians’ struggle in wielding soft power. Sports, being a field that is frequently instrumentalized for political purposes, is argued to be an attractive venue for authoritarians to overcome this struggle. Taking the fields of soft power, sports diplomacy, and Sports Mega-Event hosting as its theoretical foundations and the Sports Diplomacy Model by Abdi et al. (2018) as its design, this research uncovers observable implications of successful soft power wielding by Qatar. These implications are linked to state visits undertaken and received by Qatar, bilateral investment treaties Qatar has signed, and Qatari participation in international fora. The timeline spans from 2012 to 2022 and...Show moreFollowing the controversy surrounding Qatar’s winning bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, this thesis sets out to investigate the extent to which Qatar was able to harness soft power through its hosting of this global competition. The research gap from which this research stems is that of authoritarians’ struggle in wielding soft power. Sports, being a field that is frequently instrumentalized for political purposes, is argued to be an attractive venue for authoritarians to overcome this struggle. Taking the fields of soft power, sports diplomacy, and Sports Mega-Event hosting as its theoretical foundations and the Sports Diplomacy Model by Abdi et al. (2018) as its design, this research uncovers observable implications of successful soft power wielding by Qatar. These implications are linked to state visits undertaken and received by Qatar, bilateral investment treaties Qatar has signed, and Qatari participation in international fora. The timeline spans from 2012 to 2022 and within the relatively small sample yielded by this research, slight increases in all three variables indicate that some degree of soft power was successfully harnessed by Qatar through its hosting of the World Cup.Show less

Author

Beld, Claudia van den

Faculty

Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs

Supervisors

Klein, G.R.E.

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en