Introduction: Establishing the field of play – J. Simon Rofe
Part I: Concepts and History
1. The governance of sport in deeply divided societies: Actors and institutions in Bosnia, Cyprus and Northern Ireland - Laurence Cooley
2. Can sport contribute to the mission success of military Peace Support Operations? - Alexander Cárdenas and Sibylle Lang
3. Diplomatic actors in the world of football (Soccer): Individuals, institutions, ideologies - Alan Tomlinson
4. Mega sports events as political tools: A case study of South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 FIFA Football World Cup - Suzanne Dowse
Part II: Public Diplomacy
5. Contesting independence: Colonial cultures of sport and diplomacy in Afghanistan, 1919-1949 - Maximillian Drephal
6. Friendship is solidarity: The Chinese ping pong team visits Africa in 1962 - Amanda Shuman
7. Barnstorming Frenchmen: The impact of Paris Université Club’s U.S. tours and the individual in sports diplomacy - Lindsay Krasnoff
8. Football, diplomacy and Australia in the Asian century - David Rowe
Part III: ‘No Sport ‘as Diplomacy
9. Boycott and Diplomacy: When the talking stops - Carol Gomez
10. ‘Chinese rings’: The United States, the two Chinas and the 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics - Rachel Vaughan
11. Decentring US sports diplomacy: The 1980 Moscow boycott through contemporary Asian-African perspectives - Joe Eaton
12. They used Americana, all painted and polished, to make the enormous impressions they did: Selling the Reagan Revolution through the 1984 Olympic Games - Umberto Tulli
Conclusion: Post-match recovery and analysis - Aaron Beacom and J. Simon Rofe
Index

This book critically enhances the appreciation of sport and diplomacy in global affairs from the perspective of both practitioners and scholars. It draws on a range of scholarship across history, politics, sociology and international relations. It explores the linkages across these fields particularly in relation to soft power and public diplomacy and is supported by a wide range of sources and methodologies.

Including a contribution from esteemed FIFA scholar Professor Alan Tomlinson which addresses diplomacy within the world’s global game of association football, the collection also includes studies on the rise of mega sport events as sites of diplomacy, new consideration of Chinese ping-pong diplomacy prior to the 1970s and the importance of boycotts in sport – particularly in relation to newly explored dimensions of the boycotts of the 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games. The place of non-state actors is explored throughout; whether individual or institutions they perform a crucial role as conduits of the transactions of sport and diplomacy.

Based on twentieth and twenty-first century evidence, the book acknowledges the antecedents from the ancient Olympics to the contemporary era and in its conclusions offers avenues for further study based on the future sport and diplomacy relationship. The book has strong international basis covering a broad range of countries, their diplomatic relationship with sport and is written by a truly transnational cast of authors. The intense media scrutiny on the Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup and other international sports will also contribute to the global interest in this volume.