Naming,Shaming,and International Sporting Events

Abstract

Recently, the Winter Olympic Games in Russia and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in Brazil have drawn attention as much for politics as the excitement of the competitions. Russia’s pursuance of discriminatory homosexual policies made it the target of international rights groups; Brazil’s exploitation of the poor for the sake of hosting the World Cup led to several high-profile protests ahead of the event. These large-scale international sporting competitions provide a ready-made platform for naming and shaming states that may have dubious human rights records. The question remains as to whether or not the shaming of these host states by international groups effectively changes a state’s behavior. This paper argues that states facing increased global media attention while hosting an event are likely to substitute repression of physical integrity rights with repression of civil and political rights in an effort to maintain favorable appearances internationally. However, I find support for both physical and expressive rights improving in states when shaming is conditioned on the selection to host an international sporting event.

Keywords

human rights empowerment rights international sporting events

Introduction

Prior to the opening of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach asked world leaders not to use the Olympic athletes to advance their political aims (Whiteside 2014). Russia had been at the center of a human rights debate after it passed a series of discriminatory laws aimed at homosexuals, and despite Bach’s pleas, there was a great deal of discourse on the matter that included some athletes directly. For instance, when Canadian speed skater Brittany Schussler posted a “selfie” of herself and Russian President Vladimir Putin to her Twitter account, there was an immediate response from Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) community supporters (Levy 2014). This included references to the prosecutorial nature of Russia’s new laws and to Putin himself being a “dictator.”

Bach, the IOC, and other mega-event sponsors (such as the Fédération Internationale de Football Association [FIFA] and its World Cup) walk a fine line between categories as we understand international organizations (IOs). They wish to be viewed as nonpolitical entities, regulating an international commercial good, with normative, internationalist aspirations. At the same time, they also wish to be free of the international political and diplomatic responsibilities that would naturally attend these aspirations. These organizations are unique among IOs in that they have what amounts to a monopoly on that which they regulate, even if it is only sport. If we were to consider the rules of these games international norms or laws, an argument could be made that these organizations encourage compliance like no other IO. After all, North Korea, Iran, the United States, and the United Kingdom all abide by FIFA’s authority in matters related to football; it would be difficult to find another example of so many diverse states adhering to an IO’s authority.

Yet, not all host nations of the Olympics or FIFA World Cup are compliant when it comes to international human rights norms. In fact, since 2008 and including the most recent host decision (the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, China), there is a trend away from full democracies and states with better respect for human rights.¹ This will, hypothetically, increase the opportunity to focus attention on poor domestic behaviors via the visiting event media. While the host government would presumably rather not be seen, at what should be one of its finest moments, in the dim light of norm defection, the organizing international sporting organization (ISO) also has an incentive to push back against negative appearances.

This paper provides evidence for the effect these mega-sporting events have on the host nation’s human rights behavior. As hosts seek to improve their image through the increased media presence of these events, so too do domestic human rights organizations seek to increase attention on poor state behavior. I examine the statistical record, from 1985 to 2000, and find that shaming, conditioned on the selection as a mega-event host, does in fact have a positive impact on a state’s respect for physical integrity and expressive rights. These findings contradict others regarding naming and shaming that suggest this tactic’s effect is only superficial and limited to civil and political rights (Hafner-Burton 2008).

The paper continues in four sections, starting with a review of the relevant literature regarding both human rights and the scholarly work on these sporting events. I then introduce my theory and hypotheses before presenting my models and findings. I conclude with some comments on the need for increased study of ISOs in the international rights and organization literatures.

Literature Review

Mega-events are typically short term but can result in substantial economic and profile windfalls (Hall 1992; Ritchie 1984). These draw large numbers of tourists or participants, and often transcend their tangential foci (Hiller 1998). The most familiar mega-events are the Olympics, the World Cup, and (although of diminishing stature) the World’s Fair. The size and scope of these events far exceeds the professional association convention to the point that they often require the use of public funds. Winning the title of “host” in and of itself requires an often long and expensive bidding process that can align typically adverse political and economic interests with a sense of civic and/or national pride (Hiller 1995, 2000). The location of these events is arguably inconsequential to the games themselves; if the World Cup is held in Brazil or Qatar, the dimensions of the field, size and measure of the ball, and game clock should all work the same.

Host nations and cities are keenly sensitive to appearances when it comes to these mega-events. Rhamey and Early (2013) find that hosting the Olympics and performance within the games act toward legitimizing a leader’s administration, as well as answering for any ambiguity that surrounds its international status. Hiller (2000) describes how Cape Town’s 1997 bid for the 2004 Games brought business elites and social justice advocates together. Yet at the same time it brings various groups together, the bid also encourages the diminution of dissent so as to present a unified front to organizations like the IOC and FIFA (Hiller 2000, 449).

Because the product these organizations offer is highly sought after by sponsors and state leaders, the IOC and FIFA command a great deal of influence. The IOC’s sponsorship program, The Olympic Program (TOP), has grown an astonishing 900 percent over twenty years (Preuss, Gemeinder, and Seguin 2008). Having your brand attached to these events is coveted by large corporations who can pay, and those that cannot pay tend to try and ambush the event with their brand (Piatkowska and Zysko 2010). Politically, these organizations command just as much capital. The most telling anecdote was relayed by C. R. Hill (1996): former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch altered a trip to North Korea so that he could dine at Buckingham Palace. Finding another IO that could allow for such a casual travel itinerary between two disparate states would certainly be difficult if not impossible.

Sometimes referred to as “shaming and blaming,” naming and shaming is the act of publicly criticizing a government for its human rights record with the goal of ultimately changing this behavior (Risse and Sikkink 1999; Ron, Ramos, and Rodgers 2005). This is a popular tactic of domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who seek their international counterparts’ (INGOs) assistance in pressuring their governments from the outside. This is the boomerang pattern of advocacy, best described by Keck and Sikkink (1999), which results in pressure from “below” and “above” the norm defecting regime.

While superficially logical, the empirics have not delivered consistent findings. Hafner-Burton (2008) describes the positive effects brought on by naming and shaming as largely anecdotal. She finds that while political rights improve for appearance’s sake, physical integrity rights (those related to freedom from torture, extra-judicial killings, disappearance, etc.) worsen after naming and shaming (Hafner-Burton 2008, 690–91). This seems to be in line with a great deal of human rights literature that finds states seek to appear as norm congruent when in fact they are norm defective (see, for example, Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui 2005; Smith-Cannoy 2012).

Murdie and Davis (2012), in contrast, find that naming and shaming alone is not enough to change the behavior of norm defectors. Unlike Hafner-Burton (2008), these authors look at the full boomerang pattern as described by Keck and Sikkink (1999) that would predict an international response from above to amplify the domestic NGO pressure from below. They find that the positive effects of naming and shaming on state behavior are conditioned on the existence of domestic human rights organizations (HROs) to interact with international HRO or third-party pressure. There is further research that lends support to transnational advocacy’s efficacy in reducing the severity of atrocities in norm defecting states as well (Krain 2012).

The presence of sporting mega-events provides an opportunity for domestic activists to get their message out to INGOs and international audiences, often at little cost. As Bob (2005) describes, the fight for international attention by domestic advocates can be highly competitive, and the presence of a mega-event should give a host nation’s groups a head start in that battle. Furthermore, these mega-events can give NGOs in the global South a better opportunity to join in, and then take advantage of, the largely Western, established advocacy networks. Murdie (2014, 23) writes that the organizations who find themselves left out of these networks can be “sidelined from the larger human rights movement.” Taking advantage of the increased media can then be a way for NGOs to first raise state violations to the attention of international advocates, but then also insert themselves into active advocacy networks.

This is largely indicative of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) experience in 2008, prior to the Summer Olympics. Leading up to the event itself, the Chinese government encountered increased protests and disturbances in Tibet, including widely covered riots in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa (Makley 2009; Watts 2008). The increased protest was very likely meant to correlate with the greater media freedom that Beijing had promised in 2001 to coincide with the games (Jinxia and Mangan 2010, 147). The resulting crackdown led to an international response that included some in the U.S. Congress to seek a prohibition of federal officials from the Games, and others to issue calls for an all-out U.S. boycott (Dumbaugh 2008, 20).

The domestic incidents were mirrored by international human rights activists, most apparent during the Olympic torch relay, which was met with confrontational protests (Burns 2008). Students for a Free Tibet, a Western-based advocacy group, actively disseminated materials regarding these events. The group established a website meant to coincide with the Olympics and increase awareness of the Tibet situation (freetibet2008.org), but maybe more effectively posted videos of the protests and responses to them online.

One might expect that the IOC or FIFA would be likely to encourage states to improve their behavior, after all, their legitimacy is tied to the event. Yet, in 2008, the IOC canceled the torch relay and actively sought to have protest videos removed from the online site YouTube (Condon 2008). Nor can organizations like the IOC or FIFA be necessarily expected to favor bids from states that are better rights observers. ISOs like the IOC and FIFA are made up of individual, self-interested members, whose actions are largely independent of a shared mission (Forster and Pope 2004, 112–13; Tomlinson, 2014).

That voting members of FIFA were found in 2015 to have accepted bribes from bid states in exchange for their respective votes is certainly the most extreme example of self-interests shaping an ISO’s outputs (Masters 2014). FIFA President Sepp Blatter has commented about having been caught off-guard by the results of the vote that gave the 2022 World Cup to Qatar when there was an understanding the vote was meant to support a U.S. bid² (Chappell 2015). A consequence of the vote was FIFA actively defending its choice on one hand and “encouraging” labor reforms on the other (Sinnott and Masters 2015). This duality effectively negates the greatest source of leverage the ISO and international community have over the host: the threat of taking an event away.

There is a remarkable retention rate for selected hosts³ with a near certainty that ISOs are locked in to their choices. To change a host is costly and can only get more so as the event nears. It is likely that even if IOC President Jacques Rogge were serious in 2002 when he said the Olympics would be moved from Beijing if human rights issues emerged (Agence France-Presse 2002), by March 2008, when the Tibetan protests and crackdown occurred, the cost of change was too high. Similarly, the IOC ahead of the Brazil 2016 Games was critical of its preparations in 2014 and raised concerns of the site’s readiness (Hearst 2014). Only a year later did it determine preparations were “on track” at the same time critiques of water safety in Guanabara Bay (the site of Olympic sailing events) were increasing (Flueckiger 2015; Kirkpatrick 2015). These ISOs can then take on the appearance of accomplice rather than norm entrepreneur as they seek to address international criticism of hosts and themselves for not removing an event from a shamed host.

If the IOC’s actions in 2008 and FIFA’s 2015 bribe scandal illustrate the worst of ISO self-interest, scholars like Bridges (2010, 64–65) detail how the Chun regime of South Korea hastened democratization as the IOC was likely to move the 1988 games from Seoul otherwise. This likely had more to do with the Chun regime’s imposition of martial law than anything else. At the very least, the ISO needs a site where the event can function, and visitors are free to visit. As long as this baseline is met, then whatever effects naming and shaming are likely to produce on a host should be considered independent of the ISO, and solely dependent on the state’s desire to rebrand or promote itself as a desirable location through the increased attention.

The above literature presents a duality of these mega-events. First, they can be seen as a positive marker of the host’s international status. They draw attention and a ready-made audience that can experience the rebranding of the locality. Conversely, they can be seen as negatively impacting marginalized groups by passively addressing (if not outright ignoring) grievances in favor of a “polished” event. Yet, as the case of the 2008 games demonstrates, local advocates also have a ready-made audience to whom they may get their message out.

Are host governments sensitive to this naming and shaming? In line with the above literature, I predict that states will be responsive to naming and shaming, but expect that, in relation to the increased media that attends the event, this responsiveness should be strategic. That is,

Hypothesis 1: A state’s respect for physical integrity rights will improve when shaming is conditioned on selection to host a mega-sporting event.

Physical integrity violations tend to be considered the more egregious of rights violations when contrasted with their political and civil rights counterparts (Dreher, Gassebner, and Siemers 2012). Physical acts of violence by the state against dissenters, while under the increased scrutiny of the international eye, would be more difficult to conceal. In some instances, we might expect that physical repression would lead to an image of the host counter that which they intend to cultivate through event media. Instead, we might expect that the state would substitute repression tactics. This substitution tactic, as most recently addressed by Fariss and Schnakenberg (2013), is a noticeable increase in the use of one tactic as the use of another is reduced. In this case, the reduced use of physical repression would likely lead to increases in the repression of empowerment and expressive rights so the host nation could manage its event appearance. In other words,

Hypothesis 2: A state’s respect for empowerment rights will suffer when shaming is conditioned on selection to host a mega-sporting event.

By clamping down on dissent, a state has greater control over the wider appearance of the event. More so, this should also be beneficial to the associated ISO that also has an incentive in the event’s appearance. Indeed, the IOC was sensitive to online dissent regarding the 2016 Games in Brazil and their negative effects on the urban poor years ahead of the Games themselves (Millington and Darnell 2014). If there were any implicit support for repression from an ISO, it would likely be located in the battery of empowerment and expressive rights that are often treated as derogable by states.

Method

My dependent variable for testing Hypotheses 1 and 2 is a country-year measure of physical integrity rights and empowerment rights, respectively. These are from the Cingranelli and Richards (CIRI) human rights database (Cingranelli, Richards, and Clay 2014).⁴ The CIRI index compiles separate, coded scores for physical and political (or empowerment) rights based on U.S. Department of State and Amnesty International (AI) reports (Cingranelli and Richards 2010). The former score is an additive index that includes scores for torture, extra-judicial killing, political imprisonment, and disappearance indicators, running from 0 to 8. The latter empowerment score is an additive index of freedom of movement (foreign and domestic), worker’s rights, expressive rights (speech, participation, and assembly), electoral freedom, women’s rights, and religious freedom, running from 0 to 15 (Cingranelli, Richards, and Clay 2014).

There is a superficial assumption that these events are only hosted by wealthy, Western nations, and if this were the case, then variation on the dependent variable may be nil. Yet, an examination of Figure 4 in the online appendix (http://prq.sagepub.com/supplemental/) shows that, while the majority of hosts are at the higher end of the physical integrity index, there does exist great variance across cases. As mentioned at the outset, there is a recent trend away from more democratic, rights abiding states, but the perceived “domination” of these events by the West was really only a product of the 1990s. Table 5 in the online appendix (http://prq.sagepub.com/supplemental/) lists those cases that appear during this study’s time frame, that is, their selection as a host occurs between 1985 and 2000.

The key explanatory variable for these models is the interaction of a temporal proximity measure from host selection to the event and the yearly count of AI reports. The latter variable comes from Ron, Ramos, and Rodgers (2005) and is typical of naming and shaming studies (e.g., Hafner-Burton 2008). Concerns regarding biases in AI’s reports have been an issue as noted by Ron, Ramos, and Rodgers and Hendrix and Wong (2014). D. Hill, Moore, and Mukherjee (2013, 231) find that while the organizational incentives (funding, attention, etc.) to exaggerate certain cases as opposed to others exist for AI, “the probability of an exaggeration is quite low in most cases.” This would indicate that whatever biases might exist in the estimates should be minimal.

That AI reports exist on both sides of the equation should be addressed. The two values correlate at a −.37 (physical integrity) and a −.13 (empowerment rights); neither approaches parity. It would be incorrect, though, to think of the AI variables being one and the same as CIRI codes based on the content of the reports; the Ron, Ramos, and Rodgers (2005) measure is a country-year count (representative of the intensity of shaming) of AI reports.

The proximity variable was constructed for the Olympics using histories of both the Summer and Winter Games from the IOC’s own reports on each game within the time period, and also the Encyclopedia Britannica entries on the Olympics; all are freely available online. Typically, a decision on who will host a Summer or Winter Game is made seven years prior to the event. Some selection periods have been cut short, though, due to the bounded time frame of the analysis. A similar measure was made for the World Cup using FIFA’s history of these events. Where dates for selection were not reported, the coding was matched to a similar data set created by Rose and Spiegel (2011). After coding the years selected as host, a ratio (0–100) representing time till the event was created and interacted on the yearly count of AI reports.

This ratio, representing temporal proximity to the event, is better able to address the expected intensity of the event on all parties involved than a simple count of raw years until the event would be able to. For instance, the 1999 and 2003 women’s World Cup were each held in the United States. This was because China, the chosen host of the 2003 event, was at the epicenter of SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome) fears (Jones 2003). The decision to move the event from China to the United States did not happen until May of 2003, severely cutting short the preparatory time the U.S. host had. Alternately, China, which was automatically awarded the 2007 women’s World Cup, had a greatly extended preparatory time. A raw, yearly countdown would treat years till the event for these two hosts as the same, basically indicating that one year out for the United States (which in reality had months, not years, to prepare) would have the same effect as China’s ten plus years of having been selected as host (including the years running up to the 2003 event). The intensity of planning, fund-raising, activism, shaming, and so on, is likely to be heightened in a truncated preparatory phase to an international sporting event.⁵

Controls are fairly familiar to the human rights literature. Certain state characteristics tend to be positively related to a state’s respect for human rights; many of these have been standard controls since Poe and Tate (1994). I control for gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, trade, and population (from the World Bank’s Development Index, 2009). I control for executive constraints as well as for regime type via the Polity IV measure (Marshall and Jaggers. 2002). These latter controls address the human rights aspect of democracy, which tends to show that full democracies, and states with strong executive constraints, are better rights observers than autocracies (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005; Davenport 2007; Davenport and Armstrong 2004). Furthermore, I include a country-year count of the presence of human rights organizations in a state to control for its overall shaming capacity (Smith and Weist 2005).⁶

There are also two measures to further control for a state’s level of capacity, both formally and materially, when it comes to the enforcement of rights. First, states that allow for greater independence of their judiciary are better observers of human rights (Conrad and Moore 2010; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999). These states are better able to ensure the recognition of empowerment rights and the defense of physical integrity rights. However, states that lack material capability may not be able to enforce rights, particularly if they do not have the capacity to control state agents and prevent violations (Englehart 2009). I use the ICRG (International country risk guide) quality of government measure, which captures bureaucratic capacity and corruption (Teorell et al. 2015, 297).

Finally, all models include a lagged dependent variable to address issues of nonstationarity as well as yearly fixed effects to address time trends.⁷

Analysis

Table 1 shows the ordinary least squares (OLS) results of the interaction of AI reports on Olympic selection and FIFA World Cup selection, respectively, regressed against a state’s respect for physical integrity rights. Both interactions are significant and positively signed, lending support to Hypothesis 1.

Table 1.

OLS Model of Mega-Event Selection on Physical Integrity Rights, 1985–2000.

	Physical integrity rights
Olympic Proximity × AI Reports	0.001*** (3.80)
World Cup Proximity × AI Reports		0.001** (2.71)
Olympic proximity	0.001 (0.28)
World Cup proximity		0.002 (0.58)
AI reports	−0.033*** (−6.76)	−0.030*** (−6.28)
Log of GDP per capita	0.004 (0.10)	0.002 (0.06)
Log of population	−0.186*** (−5.73)	−0.188*** (−5.77)
Polity IV	0.018** (3.20)	0.018** (3.22)
Log of trade	0.021 (0.28)	0.010 (0.15)
Independent judiciary	−0.001 (−1.41)	−0.001 (−1.41)
Executive constraints	0.005 (1.72)	0.005 (1.69)
Quality of government	1.371*** (5.90)	1.402*** (6.03)
Human rights IGOs	0.023*** (3.85)	0.022*** (3.58)
Physical Integrity at t − 1	0.616*** (30.48)	0.623*** (30.93)
Constant	1.002* (2.23)	1.019* (2.26)
Adjusted R²	.72	.72
n	1,546	1,546

T statistic in parentheses. OLS = ordinary least squares; AI = Amnesty International; GDP = gross domestic product; IGOs = intergovernmental organizations.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

The results demonstrate that states are responsive to (at the very least) AI reports when they have been selected as host to a mega-event, and suggest that states are likely to improve their respect for the battery of corporeal rights. Table 9 in the online appendix (http://prq.sagepub.com/supplemental/) shows the results of the key explanatory variables regressed against the constituent parts of the physical integrity rights measure. In every instance, the coefficient is positively signed and significant.

Examining the marginal effects of these findings in Figures 1a and 1b, we can see that the positive effects take on significance at very similar points; both Olympic and World Cup selection see positive changes to their physical integrity rights at above the average 5.014 AI reports per country-year.

Figure 1.

Marginal effects of temporal proximity to mega-events on physical integrity rights as AI reports change.

The slight difference in these effects between Olympic and World Cup selection is not great, but is noticeable. This may be reflective of the differing characteristics of the events and the ISO that put them on. For instance, the Olympics will be attended by more than 200 polities recognized by the IOC. During the event itself, the Olympic flag replaces the national flag over the host city, and more recently, it has been joined with the UN flag (Beacom 2012, 46–47). Conversely, when considering the World Cup, far fewer nations will see their teams compete, nor will FIFA enact a “truce” such as the Olympics opening ceremony invokes. This would suggest that Olympic hosts would be more sensitive to shaming than World Cup hosts, or at the very least, would respond more quickly.

Focusing on civil and political rights, the explanatory variables return null results when regressed against the full CIRI empowerment rights measure (Table 2). The full empowerment rights measure includes things like freedom of foreign and domestic movement, worker’s rights, and scores for a state’s performance on women’s social, political, and economic rights. These are not necessarily expressive rights of the sort freedoms of speech, association, religion, and political participation are considered. I add these disaggregated pieces to form a measure of just these expressive rights and perform the tests once more (Table 3).

Table 2.

OLS Model of Mega-Event Selection on Empowerment Rights, 1985–2000.

	Empowerment rights
Olympic Proximity × AI Reports	0.000 (1.73)
World Cup Proximity × AI Reports		0.000 (1.02)
Olympic proximity	0.000 (0.21)
World Cup proximity		0.005 (1.14)
AI reports	−0.024*** (−4.33)	−0.023*** (−4.19)
Log of GDP per capita	−0.059 (−1.06)	−0.064 (−1.17)
Log of population	−0.157*** (−4.19)	−0.162*** (−4.32)
Polity IV	0.147** (15.07)	0.148*** (15.12)
Log of trade	−0.294** (−3.29)	−0.293** (−3.29)
Independent judiciary	−0.004** (−2.86)	−0.004** (−2.87)
Executive constraints	−0.008* (−2.44)	−0.008* (−2.43)
Quality of government	0.194 (0.76)	0.226 (0.89)
Human rights IGOs	0.010 (1.44)	0.009 (1.28)
Empowerment rights at t − 1	0.701*** (42.68)	0.701*** (42.63)
Constant	3.999*** (7.13)	4.055*** (7.21)
Adjusted R²	.87	.87
n	1,552	1,552

T statistics in parentheses. OLS = ordinary least squares; AI = Amnesty International; GDP = gross domestic product; IGOs = intergovernmental organizations.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 3.

OLS Models of Mega-Event Selection on Expressive Rights, 1985–2000.

	Expressive rights
Olympic Proximity × AI Reports	0.001*** (4.95)
World Cup Proximity × AI Reports		0.001** (3.02)
Olympic proximity	0.003 (0.82)
World Cup proximity		0.017* (2.45)
AI shaming	−0.051*** (−9.70)	−0.047*** (−9.08)
Log of GDP per capita	−0.063 (−1.16)	−0.075 (−1.36)
Log of population	−0.242*** (−6.76)	−0.253*** (−7.07)
Polity IV	0.288*** (44.17)	0.289*** (44.24)
Log of trade	−0.513*** (−6.00)	−0.520*** (−6.09)
Independent judiciary	−0.001 (−0.62)	−0.001 (−0.63)
Executive constraints	−0.002 (−0.78)	−0.002 (−0.78)
Quality of government	0.284 (1.14)	0.380 (1.54)
Human rights IGOs	0.015* (2.28)	0.012 (1.86)
Expressive rights at t − 1	0.005* (2.07)	0.005* (2.04)
Constant	7.252*** (14.32)	7.361*** (14.49)
Adjusted R²	.70	.70
n	1,556	1,556

T statistics in parentheses. OLS = ordinary least squares; AI = Amnesty International; GDP = gross domestic product; IGOs = intergovernmental organizations.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

The models return significant coefficients in the positive direction counter to Hypothesis 2. This hypothesis had predicted that states would increase repression of protests and on expression of dissent in place of physical repression. Furthermore, an examination of Figure 2 shows that the positive influence these events have over expressive rights occurs with fewer reports than physical integrity rights.

Figure 2.

Marginal effects of temporal proximity to mega-events on expressive rights as AI reports change.

These findings raise the question then as to whether these events encourage the use of expressive rights, particularly the freedom of association in the form of protest. It could be that a state does not have the opportunity to increase repression during these events. Nationalist sentiments produced by being selected as a mega-event host could quell the most obtrusive acts of expressive dissent. Yet, when we look at the independent effects of selection on incidence of protest,⁸ as AI reports change in Figure 3, there is a rather strong, visible indication that these events increase protest as compared with states with similar levels of AI reports who do not host them.

Figure 3.

Protest marginal effects graphs, 1992–2000.

That an increased use in repressive tactics does not register on the CIRI scores might have something to do with the severity (or, rather, lack thereof) of these tactics. For instance, deleting posts from an Internet discussion board might not be raised to the attention of AI or the U.S. Department of State. As aforementioned, it is not uncommon for an effect similar to the “rally-round-the-flag” effect that can increase nationalistic sentiment and leadership popularity (Chapman and Reiter 2004; Mueller 1973). It could be that a multitude of actors, beyond the state and IOC or FIFA, are acting to defend the event from dissidents.

Table 10 in the online appendix (http://prq.sagepub.com/supplemental/) shows model results for the key explanatory variables on the disaggregated expressive indices. In each case, the coefficients are positive and significant save for the World Cup freedom of speech and political participation measures. Again, this could be related to the differences in state characteristics between Olympic and World Cup hosts.

Conclusion

Prior to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany hosted the Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. A New York Times editorial suggested that Nazi Germany should host the Games in perpetuity as the treatment of Jews was much improved with the increased attention this event brought (Hilton 2006, 45). Just as Adolf Hitler was sensitive to this attention and what it could do for Germany’s image, so too were activists who distributed leaflets to the attending athletes; each documenting the condition of life under, and crimes committed by, the Nazi regime (Walters 2006, 163–64).

The findings presented here are consistent with the arguments laid out by scholars such as Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink (1999); Keck and Sikkink (1999); and Murdie and Davis (2012) in that international attention (proxied here by the temporal proximity to the event) is a necessary condition for shaming to be effective.⁹ It also suggests that increased protests are a commonality, and therefore so too the opportunity to repress. Indeed, Japan has already seen increased demonstrations in opposition to some of the building plans for the 2020 Summer Games (USA Today 2014). It is not uncommon for the infrastructure and facility construction to drive up housing prices in an Olympic host city, causing many residents to speak out against the event. In nearly every case study of recent Olympics, the increase in housing costs plays a prominent role (see Mangan and Dyreson’s 2010 edited volume).

While the social and environmental record of these events are checkered, the international implications go understudied. Outside of Rhamey and Early (2013), no one, to the best of my knowledge, has looked at how these ISO’s decisions may implicitly legitimize regimes that are otherwise at odds with international norms and expectations. Certainly Russia’s domestic policy was aggravating to many social justice activists, but its involvement in the Ukraine (also in February of 2014) touched off diplomatic hostilities (McMahon 2014). At this point, it is still too early to close the book on the Russian Olympic experience, but we may certainly examine South Korea’s experience to find a presumably counterbalancing story. That nation used the 1988 Games as its reintroduction to the world, and, at least anecdotally, forwarded economic openness and democracy so as to appear like a favorable host.

States do, of course, self-select into the role of host, and this would suggest that they are aware of certain aspects that title brings with it. Any sort of liberalizing or normative changes that would have been required of South Korea were likely known by the regime going into the bidding process. Again, research has shown, though, that it is often hard to reconcile the positive goals and normative claims of bids with reality. The 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, Georgia, are an example of a fully democratic state falling short on its attempt to advance a normative set of goals as described in its bid (Minnaert 2012, 366). Furthermore, whatever changes a state does commit to, or whatever behaviors it refrains from, during an international sporting event need not be permanent; the global attention is extinguished with the Olympic flame itself. Although, now with increased advocacy from sponsors in relation to the Qatar World Cup (B. Wilson 2015), lasting and deeper reforms may be possible.

Where a state falls on the continuum of voluntarily self-selecting into these changes and begrudgingly acquiescing to the pressure from above and below will likely be better gotten at by qualitative studies of these regimes and their decisions. Furthermore, the division between city and state politics need be better highlighted as well; it could be that the state’s idea of a successful game clashes with the realities of hosting a mega-event at the city level. On the ground, realities may make the actual implemented games vary from their initial design. Similar to the findings of policy implementation studies, immediate tasks the bureaucrat faces can alter policy at the point of implementation from their original intentions (J. Q. Wilson 1989).

ISOs are, I would argue, vastly understudied in relation to the influence they carry. There are great examples in the IO literature that take advantage of principal–agent models to explain the relationship between states (principals) and IOs (agents) (see Hawkins et al. 2006). In comparison with these organizations and certainly NGOs, ISOs have an almost reversed principal–agent relationship with states: they are able to extract concessions from states in exchange for the privilege of hosting a mega-event. This relationship is greatly counter to many of the dominant theories regarding international cooperation and organization. Although it may be said that these sports organizations are of the low-politics sort, it would be short-sighted to dismiss them, and the alterations to state behavior, they may be associated with.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the advice and guidance provided by Amanda Murdie, Laron Wiliams, and A. Cooper Drury, as well as the disccusant and panelists who commented on an earlier draft at the International Studies Association’s Midwest Conference, 2014.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental Material

Replication data for this article can be viewed at prq.sagepub.com/supplemental/ or .

Notes

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