Sport as a political instrument in global politics: analysis of contemporary state strategies beyond the sportswashing framework

This thesis examines the strategic deployment of sport as a political instrument in contemporary global politics, critically analyzing how states employ sporting investments, mega-events, and athletic achievements to pursue foreign policy objectives, enhance international prestige and consolidate domestic legitimacy. Moving beyond the analytically limited framework of "sportswashing," the research demonstrates that the political use of sport represents a historically embedded and structurally normalized practice rather than a recent deviation associated exclusively with authoritarian regimes. Rather than reducing these complex strategies to simplistic accusations of reputation laundering, the research situates them within broader processes of state-building, economic restructuring, and integration into Western-dominated global sporting governance structures. The thesis contributes to scholarly debates by historicizing the political use of sport and problematizing normative assumptions embedded within dominant analytical frameworks, exposing how concepts such as sportswashing reflect and reproduce geopolitical hierarchies by granting interpretative authority to Western actors while delegitimizing non-Western sporting engagement. Furthermore, it advances more nuanced understanding of contemporary sporting strategies by Gulf states, moving beyond reductive external-oriented interpretations to examine domestic objectives, institutional development, and long-term transformation agendas. The findings demonstrate that legitimacy in using sport politically is determined not by practices themselves, but by the political identity of actors and their capacity to control dominant narratives within global sporting discourse. Western liberal democracies have historically been granted interpretative authority over the political use of sport, framing their own initiatives through positive language while simultaneously condemning comparable practices by non-Western authoritarian states. This asymmetry reveals enduring hierarchies in global sport governance, where the boundaries of legitimacy remain contested terrain shaped by geopolitical power, cultural authority, and selective moral scrutiny.