Sport, States and Societies: Power Beyond the Domestic-International Divide

Political actors mobilise sport to build authority and to generate wealth. This panel examines how states, transnational institutions and social movements deploy that resource. It asks what becomes of the boundary between domestic society and international order once sport is treated as a political instrument.
States now write sport into national strategy. Hosting rights, stadium investment and sporting diplomacy serve external image management alongside internal legitimation. These strategies address domestic publics and international audiences through the same operations, and their effects on each resist separation. Sporting spaces also host collective identities and contentious repertoires, particularly where conventional channels of political expression are constrained. State projects and social dynamics shape one another.
We invite papers addressing any facet of this relation, from any theoretical or methodological standpoint. Contributions might examine the measurable effects of sporting soft power, or treat sporting investment as an instrument of urban transformation. Others might trace how mega-events reconfigure relations between governments and their publics. Work on transnational sporting institutions and the constraints they impose on domestic actors is welcome, as is work on supporters, athletes and sporting organisations acting politically across borders. The circulation of security governance between national and international arenas offers a further entry point, as does the place of sport in the construction and contestation of legitimacy.
The panel welcomes single-case studies and comparative designs, whether quantitative or qualitative, grounded in any regional context. Proposals examining settings outside Western Europe and North America are particularly encouraged: the empirical base of the field remains geographically uneven.
Selection will turn on the contribution a paper makes to the analytical question. Each proposal should specify how its material illuminates the relation between social dynamics and international configurations, so that the session sustains a collective discussion.