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Faster, Higher, “Softly” Stronger: The Impact of Soft Power on the Choice of Olympic Host Cities
Abstract
This article statistically estimates the impact of different countries’ soft
power on the results of Olympic Games bidding in the post-Cold War era. All
bid results for the Olympic Summer and Winter Games between 1990 and 2011
are analyzed by panel regression methods. The empirical results reveal that sporting
success, higher transparency, lower CO2 and particle emissions, and faster
economic growth are likely to increase the probability of a bidding country
winning an Olympic bid. These results have several implications regarding the
impact of soft power on choice of Olympic host site. First, if a country has a
high number of Olympic gold medalists, this could attract International Olympic
Committee (IOC) members and influence their decisions. Second, a country’s
ethical reputation is likely to persuade the IOC to choose it as the rightful host
country. Third, the environmental record of a country may also be regarded as a
desirable value by IOC members, who prefer a ‘Green Games’ ecological legacy.
... While the Olympics were politicized by participating countries as a vehicle to demonstrate the superiority of their political regimes during the Cold War, it has been observed that, in the post-Cold War era, a country's social and political advantages, known as "soft power" (Nye, 2004), can affect the results of bidding competitions because the values of Olympism rest on its core elements (Lee, 2017;Lee & Chappelet, 2012). ...
... By contrast, countries were chosen to host such events less often when they had climates with high temperatures or generated a lot of air pollutants, such as CO 2 or tiny particulate matter, in addition to generating little renewable energy. These results suggest that bidding to host international sporting events can be considered a global political arena embedded in a global society in which soft power factors, such as countries' socio-cultural and political characteristics, can affect bidding results via their relationship with Olympism (Lee & Chappelet, 2012). In this context of soft power politics, event owners' choice of host countries can be influenced by non-economic factors or political motives. ...
... However, it is interesting to find that market growth (i.e., the GDP growth rate) has no significant effect on bidding for major international sporting events like world championships. Conversely, faster economic growth, representing an emerging market, is essential for winning sporting mega-events, such as the Olympic Games (Lee & Chappelet, 2012). This result suggests that event owners of relatively smaller world championships choose their host countries regardless of the level of economic growth, whereas mega-events owners, such as the IOC and FIFA, prefer countries with faster economic growth as hosts. ...
A country’s attractiveness is a factor in its success in many areas of international competition, such as encouraging international investment, but its impact on international sporting events remains unexplored. Using various measurements of country attractiveness, statistical tests of the proposition that a country’s economic, social, and environmental attractiveness are correlated with its success in bidding to host international sporting events were conducted using data on the results of competitions to host 54 world championships in Olympic sports/disciplines from 1990 to 2012. The results presented here affirm the impact of country attractiveness on the success of bids to host such events.
... As far as the bidding is concerned, Humphreys and van Egteren (2012) as well as Feddersen and Maennig (2012) discuss the bidding mechanism and critical success factors in the bidding process, focusing on the Olympic Games (see also Lee and Chappelet 2012;Poast 2007;Getz 2004;Westerbeek et al. 2002). According to the authors, the four most important critical success factors in the bidding process are: (1) showing the 'best fit' (i.e. ...
... First, a bid 'technical file' that satisfies a list of requirements (the detailed plans with respect to sites, facilities, calendar, accommodation, transport, etc.) needs to be attractively laid out to the event owner through effective presentation techniques. For instance, for the successful bid of the city of PyeongChang, Yu-Na Kim, the 2010 Winter Olympic gold medalist in figure skating attractively presented the Korean committee's bid file in the final phase of the bid process for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games (Lee & Chappelet, 2012). Second, lobbying tactics are an ever more essential part of bidding strategies and are accepted as an acceptable action of persuasion without bribery or corruption. ...
As bidding for the rights to host sport events has become increasingly competitive, more and more countries, regions and cities have been employing public strategies and policies for promoting attractiveness of their locations to host sport events, which can be termed as ‘sport-event-hosting strategy’ (SEHS). However, from an academic standpoint, minimal effort has been made to conceptualise the notion of SEHS. This paper, thus, attempts to systematically examine such strategy by integrating the main findings of prior theoretical and empirical research. To this end, the paper begins by defining the concept of SEHS and proceeds to examine its constituent elements such as strategic goals, targets, stakeholders, tools, and management process. National variations of SEHS, including the emergence of public hosting policies, are also explored. The conclusion suggests future research directions for SEHS.
The 2016 Summer Olympic Games1 bids were selected as a case study to explore how the focus on social responsibility (CSR) and community development (CD) differs in traditional versus nontraditional bid cities. We employed a media framing methodology to examine how the bids were represented through media and articulated by various stakeholders. Of specific interest was the finding that the discourse surrounding the Rio de Janeiro bid put a greater focus on the capability of sport to reach out to disadvantaged populations and create balance within the global economy. The results from this study will provide insights into how the global media has framed megaevent bids from nontraditional cities, and the social and economic benefits event proponents argue can be accrued from hosting.
The Olympic Winter Games are partly held in mountain resorts and are thus closer to nature, a fact that has frequently led them to encounter strong opposition from environmental organizations. This paper recalls these episodes and explores how the ideas of environmental protection and sustainable development have been slowly incorporated in the Olympic rhetoric. It shows how a set of environmental principles developed through the experiences of local organizers at most Winter Games since the 1970s, and how the International Olympic Committee adopted them in the 1990s and incorporated them in the Olympic ideal. The article also explains why Olympic environmental concerns can be considered as one of the major non-material legacies that the winter games have bequeathed to the Olympic movement.
The paper reports the results of regressions testing hypotheses concerning the medalwinning success of Olympic teams. It is found that while traditional economic and political factors are important, many inherent national characteristics such as geographical, demographic and cultural factors have a significant and pronounced impact. It is concluded that scope for public sports policy exists and the degree to which the inherent characteristics limit it are discussed.
This article examines how Beijing presented an Olympic bid that not only won the city the right to host the Olympic Games, but also served to increase the legitimacy of the IOC. Through discourse analysis, it is shown how Beijing was depicted as a natural choice for the next Olympic host city. Certain notions of time and space were fundamental in this presentation. The meanings of concepts related to time and space were determined by their oppositions – ‘modernity' was defined in relation to ‘underdevelopment', ‘the new' was described in relation to ‘the old', and ‘the West' was opposed to ‘the Orient'. Beijing was constructed as an Olympic city within the context of two strongly modernist ideologies of the Chinese government and the Olympic Movement. ‘Olympism' was portrayed as the driving force behind modernity and associated with universalism, the new and the Western world.
In July 2011, the International Olympic Committee awarded PyeongChang the right to host the 2018 Winter Olympics. This means that within two decades South Korea will have staged three mega sport events: the Summer Olympics in Seoul in 1988, the Soccer World Cup (together with Japan) in 2002 and the Winter Olympics in 2018. Whilst the bidding for the Seoul Olympics was fairly straightforward, the tendering for the FIFA World Cup was much more competitive and ended with a compromise as the most convincing applicants were asked to co-host this mega event. PyeongChang's successful bid is partly the result of considerable stamina, as it was, in fact, the city's third consecutive attempt to secure this event. This paper offers a detailed account of PyeongChang's three consecutive bids, focusing on the underlying local, regional and national policies, the agendas and influence of different stakeholders and the lessons learned from previous bids. The paper will also explore the political significance and future challenges of this decision for the divided Korean peninsula. The wider context of this article is, of course, the increasingly competitive bidding for mega sports events and the murky role of sport's international governing bodies.
The term soft power is entrenched in the theory and practice of American foreign policy, yet scholars have not yet developed, or empirically tested, a theory about the conditions under which governments can use soft power to their advantage—and that makes good policy hard to design. Drawing on research from the fields of communications, social psychology, and international relations theory, we develop a theory about the conditions under which state efforts to employ soft power will be most likely to succeed. We argue that to apply soft power effectively states must communicate to an intended target in a functioning marketplace of ideas, persuade the target to change its attitude on a relevant political issue, and ensure that the target's newly held attitude influences international political outcomes. We probe the plausibility of our theoretical claims through an examination of U.S. attempts to use soft power in the Iraq War, the war on terror, and democracy promotion. In conclusion, we set forth an agenda for future research on soft power and provide insights for policymakers interested in using soft power as a tool of foreign policy.
This article explores the dynamics of competition by means of soft power among two key regional states, China and Japan. It demonstrates that, in their embrace of regionalism, each has concentrated soft power on East Asian neighbors by competitively proposing regional visions that would best position it in the regional leadership stakes. China took the initiative, Japan responded quickly, and China is now striking back. This does not necessarily mean that the liberal claim that East Asia is "ripe for cooperation" is misplaced. Nor does it suggest that the realist claim of "ripe for rivalry" better represents the reality. Rather, this article argues that regional powers compete in order to attract neighbors. Since this contest involves embracing others, it is not necessarily a zero-sum game. This article evaluates the success, or lack thereof, of the two countries` efforts in order to learn what they imply for Korea.
Cet article étudie les déterminants de la probabilité de réussite dans la campagne d’attribution des Jeux Olympiques aux villes organisatrices. A partir des 48 candidatures à l’organisation des Jeux Olympiques d’été entre 1992 et 2012, nous utilisons un modèle dont les variables clefs sont la distance entre les lieux de compétition et le village olympique, les températures locales et les taux de chômage, et nous prédisons correctement la décision pour 100% des offres non fructueuses et 50% des offres réussies.
The almost universal reaction across Australia to the 1993 announcement that Sydney would host the 2000 Olympic Games was one of elation. Since the bid launch in 1990, the city of Sydney and the nation had been urged to ‘Share the Spirit’ and maintain enthusiasm for the possibility of hosting the Millennium Olympics. The bid campaign appeared to be a carefully orchestrated blend of government rhetoric and public relations spin with an emphasis on the important place of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. This article begins by examining events surrounding Sydney's successful bid when in September 1993 it was announced that Sydney had won the right to host the Games of the XXVII Olympiad. The article concludes with assessments made of the games at the Sydney closing ceremony when the city and the organising committee were paid the ultimate compliment when told they had presented to the world the best Olympic Games ever. An examination of how far Australia has progressed in the past 11 years with respect to Indigenous issues is also taken into account.
This article conducts a theoretical and empirical analysis of political protest activity surrounding the modern Olympic Games. Although the Olympics are certainly among the world’s most prominent and recognized events, they have seldom been explored from a political perspective within the mainstream International Relations and transnational protest literatures. We argue, however, that the Olympics provide a theoretically interesting context in which to examine political contention in International Relations in large part because they provide such a unique opportunity structure for a range of actors to exercise power in pursuit of their goals. The article presents an original dataset of all protest occurring between 1896 and 2008 and uses these data to show that not only has Olympic political contention grown substantially over time, but it also has evolved in interesting ways in terms of the particular actors engaged in contention, the tactics they use, and the resistance they face. Furthermore, we suggest that the study of the Olympics has important implications for understanding the power and power limitations of those actors (including transnational advocacy networks, international institutions, and sovereign states) participating in Olympic protest.
Soft power is the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment. A country's soft power rests on its resources of culture, values, and policies. A smart power strategy combines hard and soft power resources. Public diplomacy has a long history as a means of promoting a country's soft power and was essential in winning the cold war. The current struggle against transnational terrorism is a struggle to win hearts and minds, and the current overreliance on hard power alone is not the path to success. Public diplomacy is an important tool in the arsenal of smart power, but smart public diplomacy requires an understanding of the roles of credibility, self-criticism, and civil society in generating soft power.
The study of international relations purports to explain how nation-states and individuals interact around the globe. Yet one major area of such interaction – international sport – remains exceedingly understudied. This in spite of the fact that countries have gone to war over sport, fought for sovereign recognition through sport, and that citizens around the world have it as a daily part of their lives. Indeed it is astounding that a phenomenon that matters so much has been so little studied by a field that purports to explain relations between states and humans around the world. These deficiencies became more apparent in 2008 when we witnessed the world's biggest country hosting the world's biggest sporting event. The Beijing Olympics, though entertaining and exciting, showed how little we have thought about the link between sport and international politics. This article introduces a framework for understanding the link between sport and politics. Its point of entry is to argue that many of the questions about how China portrayed itself during the Olympics and whether the Games marked China's rise as a responsible power cannot be answered without first understanding how sport in general is related to a country's political development, and its sense of nationhood. My arguments do not represent new breakthroughs in political science, rather I attempt merely to offer a systematic way of thinking about how sports and the Olympics matter in world politics through three inter-related causal pathways relating to a country's sense of self, its diplomacy, and its capacity for change.
Previous scholarship has relied on case study analysis and anecdotal evidence to explain the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Olympic host city selection process. This has resulted in several provocative claims regarding why the IOC selects particular cities to host the Olympics. Large-n analysis can dispel some of these assertions by identifying the systematic tendencies in the IOC's host city choices. After reviewing the selection process and the different influences on the IOC's choice of a host city, rank-ordered conditional logit estimation is applied to data proxies of bid candidate characteristics from 1959 through 2005. The IOC shows a statistical tendency to base its decision on the economic vitality of a bid city's home country and on the need to maintain continental diversity.
In five previous studies, the author examined the host selection process for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. The findings from these studies are discussed in this article. Focus has been placed on a comparison between the views of the bidding cities and those of the bid selecting members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) regarding the design of the bids and the way of communicating them.The analysis shows that there is little compatibility between these views. However, the winning bid and the bid which succeeded better than its technical qualities motivated, were most congruent with the IOC members’ views. This finding led to the following statement: ‘The better the fit between the bidder's and the IOC members’ perceptions of the bid offers, the greater the chance the bid has of winning’.
Hosting mega sport events, especially the Olympics, demands an extensive engagement with global civil society given the voluntary, highly mediated exposure of host cities and nations to the world. The philosophy of Olympism requires ethical authority in demonstrating ‘fitness’ to host the Games, so demanding intensive strategic image management. Offensive and defensive mobilization of image-dependent ‘species of power’ in the field of sport (in a Bourdieusian sense) in conducting ‘wars of position and movement’ (following Gramsci) within global civil society are, then, crucial features of competitive manoeuvres around staging major sport events.
Using the result that under the null hypothesis of no misspecification an asymptotically efficient estimator must have zero asymptotic covariance with its difference from a consistent but asymptotically inefficient estimator, specification tests are devised for a number of model specifications in econometrics. Local power is calculated for small departures from the null hypothesis. An instrumental variable test as well as tests for a time series cross section model and the simultaneous equation model are presented. An empirical model provides evidence that unobserved individual factors are present which are not orthogonal to the included right-hand-side variable in a common econometric specification of an individual wage equation.
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