THE AUTHORITARIAN'S GUIDE TO FOOTBALL: THE REACH AND REPERCUSSIONS OF QATAR'S SPORTS EMPIRE.

AuthorGanji, Sarath

INTRODUCTION

The FIFA World Cup is football's most celebrated competition and among the world's most watched and attended events. Unsurprisingly, the task of hosting this complex, month-long spectacle has long fallen to advanced and emerging economies. When South Africa played host in 2010, its population stood at 51 million and its gross national income (GNI) at $648 billion. When Brazil assumed hosting duties four years later, it boasted a population four times that of South Africa's and an economy almost five times as big. And when Russia took up the next, and most recent, World Cup, it had a population of 144 million and an economy however shaky of $4.1 trillion. (1) It is no coincidence that BRICS economies--the high-performing club of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa--were the pitches of choice for a decade's worth of World Cups: each spent between $3 billion and $15 billion to realize its hosting responsibilities. (2)

Breaking with that tradition, this year's World Cup will be played in the country of Qatar. Come November, fans and footballers will descend on a peninsula the area of Jamaica's, mingle with a local population the density of the Caymans Islands', and support an economy the size of Kenya's. It says something about Qatar's international reach that, over a decade ago, its bid to play host beat out proposals from the United States, Australia, South Korea, and Japan--all of which are OECD nations. It also says something about Qatar's domestic capabilities that, in the decade since, its preparations have reportedly cost more than $200 billion--a seven-fold increase over the prior three World Cups, combined. (3) Much of that spending was likely to take place anyway, but it is difficult to imagine the torrid pace at which hotels and public spaces, roads and transportation, and even a new city were to be built without a mega event to animate their urgency.

This "something"--the conundrum of a Jamaica outbidding an America and outspending a Russia--is often chalked up to Qatar's soft power, the term journalists and scholars have used to capture the persuasive and attractive tools underpinning Qatar's actions abroad. At some turns, soft power is like a sartorial style that a nation dons: the New York Times has used it to describe glittered gatherings at Qatar's world-class museums, one of the country's cultural tools. (4) At other turns, it is like a set of virtues that a nation signals: political scientists have used it to characterize Qatar's partnerships with Western universities, the centerpiece of its educational tools. (5) Whatever the frame, Qatar's soft power toolkit is seen as vast, spanning sectors as varied as media and academia, culture and entertainment, law and banking.

Within this toolkit, sports have come to play a greater and greater role. Sports have provided Qatar, despite its size, with unique opportunities. By hosting sporting competitions at home, Qatar can project stability and modernity to tourists wary of the Middle East's volatility, and by sponsoring professional clubs abroad, it can promote its national enterprises in foreign markets. Sports have also presented Qatar, maybe because of its size, with unique challenges. In the case of the World Cup, it has had to marshal an incredible network of international support--professional organizations and labor migrants--to overcome its geographic and demographic limits. This has invited a number of controversies, from charges of malfeasance to secure competition rights to reports of migrant abuse--including forced labor and human trafficking--while constructing competition venues. (6) These controversies are hardly unique to Qatar: prior World Cup hosts faced similar accusations, and their collective shortcomings have called into question FIFA's broader culture of financial integrity. Still, Qatar's transgressions stand apart for the scale of harm they have generated and the consistency of attention they have attracted. (7)

The Qatari case underscores an unheralded dynamic, playing out with ever greater speed, in world politics: internationalization is enabling states of lesser stature to wield disproportionate influence beyond their borders. Internationalization is a facet of globalization, often described as a business strategy executed by private actors in search of opportunities abroad. (8) But when those actors are state-owned or state-directed, and when those states are autocratic and kleptocratic, internationalization takes on the character of a grand strategy executed by states in search of influence abroad. Sports are among the most internationalized of sectors, owing to the number of national actors crossing borders and the number of national teams and leagues inviting them in. Qatari actors own or sponsor sports teams on six continents, forging relationships in service of the state's economic and security objectives. While these relationships may benefit Qatar, recent events show just how costly they can be to those with whom Qatar shares the pitch. These events challenge the argument that sports are a tool of Qatari soft power. Power is still in play--but of a different, sharper kind.

This paper surveys Qatar's vast investments in global sports, particularly football, to show how smallness need not be a barrier to states throwing their weight on the world stage. It begins with a review of the literature on power--a useful gauge of smallness--and authoritarianism. In both cases, this section makes theoretical contributions: first, to clarify the concept of power in its many forms, and second, to identify the rationale behind authoritarians' choice of sectors. The paper then turns to the case of Qatar, outlining the contours of its foreign policy and the importance of sports to it. This section offers the most comprehensive picture to date of Qatar's sports empire, based on a dataset that draws on media reports, scholarly articles, and industry releases to catalogue roughly 630 unique Qatari investments in global sports. To be clear, this section does not suggest that sports are more pivotal to Qatari foreign policy than other sectors. Rather, it demonstrates how Qatar's investments in the sector have created interdependencies that are coloring the geopolitics of the Middle East and elsewhere. The paper concludes by considering whether Qatar's sports activities warrant concern by outside parties and what that says about the enduring limits of smallness in world politics today.

STATURE IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

In December 2010, then-FIFA President Sepp Blatter announced Qatar as host of the 2022 World Cup--and in the days after, media outlets attempted to make sense of the choice. Many were keen to reference Qatar's population and geography, calling it a "tiny emirate," a "mini-state," and a "small country." (9) Smallness, for them, seemed to be a disqualifier. Others were sure to mention Qatar's natural resources, responsible for the country's "petrodollars," "deep pockets," and "financial prowess." (10) Wealth, for them, did not actually make up for smallness; it just pointed to the presence of corruption. What is apparent across these lines of commentary is that smallness, in international affairs, is presumed to have some bearing on geopolitical outcomes, whatever that may be. This section interrogates the literatures on power and authoritarianism for answers.

Measuring Smallness

Population, geography, and natural resources are all examples of state capabilities--a common definition of power. Political theorist Hans Morgenthau refers to these as "elements of national power" and places them at the center of international politics, where states "struggle for power," for capabilities. (11) But to what end? Taking up this question, political scientist Kal Holsti identifies "influence" as the means by which states mobilize capabilities in pursuit of interests, ones that require them to change the behavior of others. (12) But change how? Filling this gap, scholar-practitioner Joseph Nve describes two forms of state influence. The first, "hard power," relies on bullying and buying--on coercion and manipulation--to induce behavior change. The second, "soft power," rests on convincing and cajoling--on persuasion and attraction--to do the same. (13)

From these scholarly contributions emerges a useful framework for understanding power. First, power is the ability of an actor to influence others in support of its objectives. "Actor" refers to the state and non-state units that make up international politics. These are the subjects and objects of global influence operations. "Ability" refers to the capabilities--also called resources or assets--that an actor possesses or cultivates. An actor's capabilities offer a rough measure of its potential power. "Influence" refers to the tools--also called instruments or actions--that an actor uses to mobilize those capabilities and induce behavior change in others. An actor's toolkit reflects its use of realized power. "Objectives" refer to the outcomes--also called goals--that an actor seeks from international politics. Outcomes can be productive or disruptive and reflect the consequences of an actor's realized power.

Second, power is a function of a tool's underlying logic and capabilities as well as the outcomes it produces. "Logic" refers to the type of behavior change a tool elicits. Coercive or manipulative, persuasive or attractive--a tool's logic is based on whether its subject's intentions are transparent or opaque and its object's agency is preserved or diminished. These relationships are shown in Figure 1. "Capabilities" refer to the kind of inputs a tool employs. Coercion is generally powered by material capabilities like military readiness and industrial capacity, while persuasion and attraction are often linked to ideational capabilities like education and culture. By the end of the 1990s, few commentators seemed concerned with a tool's logic and...

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