Branding national images: The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, 2010 Shanghai World Expo,and 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games

International mega or hallmark events such as the Olympics and World Expo, are believed to help brand national and government images of the host country. Existing studies explain that mega-event images are transferrable to a host country and/or government. Yet, such an assumption has not been widely tested, or studied with country cases. Furthermore, while international mega events are assumed to target chiefly the international community for country branding purposes, there is reason to assert that they may just as much aim at domestic audiences for regime's political legitimization. By focusing on China's recently hosted three mega events – the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, and 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, this study addresses these issues.     

悉尼奥运的环境保护及对广州亚运的启示

2000年,悉尼奥运会成功举办,很大程度上得益于其“绿色奥运”的理念和富有成效的环保措施。本文对悉尼奥运环保措施进行了系统论述,并从中提炼出一些有益的启示,以期对广州2010年亚运会的环保工作有所裨益。     

Leveraging Mega Events for Capacity Building in Voluntary Sport Organisations

Strengthening the work of national voluntary sport organisations (VSOs) is of strategic importance as they are considered custodians of their sport and have been entrusted with its governance, management of significant public funds and provision of services to a vast network of clubs and millions of participants. Using a mixed method approach, the study examined how VSOs in the UK and Russia leveraged the 2012 London and 2014 Sochi Olympics for capacity building. The political framing of the Games as a leverageable resource stimulated VSOs’ engagement, but it was more on a tactical than strategic basis. Three main leveraging processes were employed by VSOs including aligning organisational objectives with the Games’ strategic visions, using structured Olympic programmes and teaming up with a development partner. VSOs used the Games to enhance their organisational capacity in three areas of staff qualifications, organisational learning and performance management and created public value.     

SHOULD CITIES GO FOR THE GOLD? THE LONG‐TERM IMPACTS OF HOSTING THE OLYMPICS

The Summer Olympics bring hundreds of thousands of visitors and generate upward of $10 billion in spending for the host city. This large influx of tourism dollars is only part of the overall impact of hosting the Olympic Games. In order to host the visitors and sporting events, cities must make sizable investments in infrastructure such as airports, arenas, and highways. Additionally, the publicity and international exposure of a host city may benefit international trade and capital flows. Proponents argue that this investment will pay off through increased economic growth, but research confirming these claims is lacking. This paper examines whether hosting an Olympiad improves a city's long‐term growth. In order to control for the self‐selection of cities that host Olympic Games, this paper matches Olympic host cities with cities that were finalists for the Olympic Games, but were not selected by the International Olympic Committee. A difference‐in‐difference estimator examines post‐Olympic impacts for host cities between 1950 and 2005. Regression results provide no long‐term impacts of hosting an Olympics on two measures of population, real Gross Domestic Product per capita and trade openness. (JEL O18, R11)     

老北京，新奥运

北京,一个历史悠久的文化古都,一个古老而现代的城市,在2008年,因为奥林匹克运动而生气蓬勃。自申奥成功以来,北京大街小巷弥漫着浓郁的奥运气息,只等那神圣时刻的到来!     

Promoting human rights in the era of globalization and interventions: the changing spaces of struggle

A new cartography of geopolitical and corporate interests is reshaping the international order after September 11, calling into question the state's ability to secure fundamental rights for its citizens and to preserve participatory democracy. If civil society tends, among human rights activists, to be the preferred venue to articulate human rights concerns against the state and other powerful entities, one may wonder whether civil society has not become an arena dominated by consumerism or the pursuit of security. With the weakening of social forces for human rights in civil society as a buffer between the state and the private realm, how can we protect individuals from deepening incursions by the state and the globalized market in our age of war against terror? This article considers these issues, by placing them in historic context. More specifically, it examines how selected events since the Second World War have transformed the spaces which support and shape campaigns for human rights struggle.     

Symbolic violence and the Olympic Games: low-income youth,social legacy commitments,and urban exclusion in Olympic host cities

Drawing on a five-year qualitative study on the impacts of the Olympic Games on homeless and marginally housed youth in two host cities (Vancouver 2010 and London 2012), this paper explores the instances of ‘symbolic violence’ perpetuated by the institutional infrastructure associated with the Olympics. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s use of the term, symbolic violence refers to the manner in which the young people turned dominant notions of what the desirable Olympic city looks and feels like into a sense of their own non-belonging and/or inadequacy, experienced bodily and emotionally. Feeling pressured to vie for elusive Olympic jobs and volunteer positions, and to be less visible to the thousands of tourist-spectators for the Games, youth in both cities reported a defiant mix of frustrated indignation and resigned acceptance that they did not ‘fit’ the image of the global Olympic city that organizers were trying to convey. The paper argues that this social harm, difficult to measure yet real nonetheless, is an important though unintended legacy of the Olympic Games for homeless and marginally housed youth living in its shadows. The paper also calls for a more sustained engagement with Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence in youth studies as a discipline.     

Democratising Migration from the Bottom Up: The Rise of the Global Migrant Rights Movement

Abstract

This paper discusses the link between international migration and democratisation from an actor-oriented perspective on the basis of the mobilising efforts by key civil society actors engaged in the promotion of the rights of migrant workers through developing strategies towards movement building and by capitalising on political opportunities that have appeared on the global level. Being pitched at the global level and at organising patterns via the network form, the analytical framework developed takes as its starting point global justice perspectives and then builds upon insights from social movement and constructivist International Relations scholarship. It is argued that what is emerging are (1) movement practices in migrant rights networks which are putting forward increasingly coherent claims that transcend the conventional thinking about global governance and human rights (rights-assuming advocacy); and (2) that such practices are effectively transgressing interstate political arenas (participatory, rights-producing politics). It is on the basis of the cooperation between the 2 main protagonists, trade unions and migrant rights associations, that strategic positioning of migrant rights issues within the global policy debate is taking place, with the aim of promoting a rights-based approach (RBA) to migration and its governance. The combination of rights-producing politics and rights-assuming advocacy is expressed in the RBA to migration which involves the reframing of migrants rights as well as attempts to democratise migration governance in participatory terms.     

The politics of disability and access: the Sydney 2000 Games experience

The article examines disability and access issues surrounding the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Central to this is an examination of the involvement of the Australian community of people with disabilities [1] within the Games. The Sydney Paralympic Games, in particular, was seen as a possible watershed event for developing accessible infrastructure, and raising awareness of disability and access issues. This paper draws on the official documents of the Games, newspaper accounts and disability organisation reports. The article first examines the major bodies charged with organising the Games, and the planning processes used to incorporate disability and access issues. It then examines a range of critical issues and their relationships with the disability community. Finally, the article provides an analysis of any likely legacies that the 2000 Games may have for Sydney's community of people with disabilities.     

阿拉伯国家与特奥会的和谐互动

2007年世界夏季特殊奥林匹克运动会已在中国圆满落幕.阿拉伯国家对特奥会表现出空前的热情,来自19个阿拉伯国家的594名运动员和教练员参加了11个项目的比赛,阿拉伯社会正在逐步形成支持,参与特奥,关心,帮助智障人士,促进社会文明,和谐的共识.     

阿拉伯国家与特奥会的和谐互动

2007年世界夏季特殊奥林匹克运动会已在中国圆满落幕。阿拉伯国家对特奥会表现出空前的热情，来自19个阿拉伯国家的594名运动员和教练员参加了11个项目的比赛，阿拉伯社会正在逐步形成支持、参与特奥，关心、帮助智障人士，促进社会文明、和谐的共识。     

The World Bank,INGOs, and Civil Society: Converging Agendas? The Case of Universal Basic Education in Niger

This paper explores, through a case study of the World Bank's pursuit of universal basic education, the gulf between the Bank's dialogue with international civil society elites and its treatment of grassroots civil society in its development practice. It argues that the World Bank is pursuing a conscious program to build a global elite governance system similar to Bank vice-president J. F. Rischard's concept of global issues networks, in which experts from business, government, and civil society will set globally binding social and economic policies. There is a risk of co-optation of international NGOs into this autocratic global managerial system.     

Virtual Shop Fronts: The Internet,Social Media,and Caribbean Civil Society Organisations

The Internet and, more recently, social media seem to promise the ability for non-state actors to more easily participate in domestic and international politics. ‘Global civil society’ can become ever more global with the help of these ‘new media’. This article uses the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) case to question the capacity of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to contribute positively to the insertion of developing country civil society organisations (CSOs) in a global civil society. Notwithstanding the possibilities that ICTs may open, Caribbean CSOs are not yet able to tap into these potentials effectively. Caribbean CSOs face resource constraints that ICTs alone may be unable to solve. However, the most significant hurdle that Caribbean CSOs face to elevating their work within global civil society is their relative powerlessness within global civil society. The article contends that this limited ability to be of influence is historically contingent and illustrates that hierarchies exist within global civil society that mirror asymmetries of power inherent in the state system.     

Gramsci, Hegemony, and Global Civil Society Networks

This study offers a first empirical test at a truly global level of two contradictory models of global civil society in the global governance system that are put forth by neo-Gramscian thought. The first model posits that global civil society is coopted by hegemonic capitalist and political elites, and promotes hegemonic interests by distributing neoliberal values and providing a façade of opposition. The second model views global civil society as the infrastructure from which counter-hegemonic resistance, and ultimately a counter-hegemonic historic bloc will evolve and challenge neoliberal hegemony. The predictions that these two views make as to the structure of global civil society networks are tested through network analysis of a matrix of links between 10,001 international NGOs in a purposive sample of INGOs extracted from the database of the Union of International Associations. The findings provide partial support to the predictions of both models, and lead to the conclusion that at present global civil society is in a transitional phase, but that the current infrastructure provided by the global INGOs network is conducive to the development of a counter-hegemonic historic bloc in the future, providing the northern bias in network is decreased. Strategic steps needed to achieve this are presented.     

Communicating on Behalf of Global Civil Society: Management and Coordination of Public Relations in International Nongovernmental Organizations

In the last few decades, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have become influential actors in creating awareness of international social, political, environmental and economic causes in global society. However, NGOs have not received much attention in research on international public relations. This study contributes to filling that gap by analyzing how NGOs manage public relations according to the generic principles of excellence in global public relations and how they coordinate strategic communication between headquarters and local units. An online survey of 440 practitioners revealed 2 excellence clusters and 4 clusters of organizations with differing degrees of centralization. Excellent NGOs were found to assign more resources to public relations and more frequently considered cultural context in their communication programs. Thus, the study gives significant insights into international public relations practice in the global civil society sector and reveals further need for modifying and extending public relations theory in that respect.     

Global Civil Society: Royal Road or Slippery Path?

Global civil society has become an important paradigm for progressive social change at a planetary level. It posits a bold new ethical project for global democratization. For its critics, though, it is just the social wing of neoliberal globalization diverting social movements from their tasks. It is also seen as irredeemably Eurocentric in its assumptions and orientation. A third option, proposed here, is to understand global civil society as a complex social and spatial terrain. By bringing politics back in, a progressive option can be presented to contest the dominant co-optive or reformist conception of global civil society.     

Human rights and the Beijing Olympics: imagined global community and the transnational public sphere

The Olympic Games are increasingly used by non-governmental organizations to demand transnational forms of accountability from public authorities. This article assesses the effectiveness of transnational public opinion surrounding the Beijing 2008 Olympics, when the pressure of Western public opinion was exerted upon the government of the world's most populous non-Western nation to improve its human rights record. Utilizing the concepts of 'imagined global community' and 'transnational public sphere', it finds that the Olympic Games had helped to call into existence a transnational public that ran up against the obstacle posed by the incomplete formation of supra-national forms of governance. The International Olympic Committee, a non-governmental organization, was a weak substitute. Because of the strong desire of Chinese people to take part in transnational deliberations, the article concludes with optimism about the potential of transnational public spheres that include Chinese people to develop toward more effective forms of transnational governance. But the IOC must strengthen the voice of its non-Western members, and Western interlocutors, including the media, must accept their share of the responsibility for creating the conditions for egalitarian dialogue.     

北京体育产业发展现状与对策研究——基于体育竞赛表演业和体育健身休闲业的视角

中国一方面成功地举办了北京奥运、广州亚运等大型运动会,另一方面也在努力探索如何通过大型赛事促进城市经济可持续发展。其中,发展体育产业是当务之急。北京要建设世界城市,就要打造国际精品赛事,建设国际体育赛事中心。同时发展体育休闲产业,这样既能推进全民健身,也能促进了大众体育消费市场的发展。     

Empower,inspire, achieve: (dis)empowerment and the Paralympic Games

This paper undertakes a critical examination of the International Paralympic Committee’s desire to use the Paralympic Games as a vehicle to empower individuals with a disability. We achieve this by applying Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological concepts of habitus and capital to semi-structured interviews conducted with Paralympic stakeholders. Interviewees included current and former Paralympians, active and retired disability sport administrators, social researchers of disability and disability sport, and disability rights advocates. The paper starts by highlighting the distinctive cultural context of the Paralympic Movement, before exploring the potential for the Paralympic Games to act as a source of empowerment, through the creation of sporting and lifestyle role-models. Findings suggest Paralympians are considered most likely to gain empowerment from the Paralympic Games, yet their specific impairment, athletic lifestyles and failure to identify as ‘disabled’ were identified as potentially limiting the ability of the Paralympic Games to empower others.     

Unsettling connections: transnational networks,development and African home associations

With the transnational turn in the social sciences attention has now turned to ‘global civil society’, ‘transnational civil society’, ‘transnational networks’ and, most recently, ‘migrant’ or ‘diasporic civil society’. Claims are being made about the developmental potential of these new configurations of civil society, and the global connections forged by migrant and diaspora associational life have been reified into things called ‘networks’ for the purpose of enrolling them into development policy. In this article, we challenge the network model through an analysis of transnational Cameroonian and Tanzanian home associations. The idea of a network suggests an overly robust and ordered set of linkages for what are in effect often loose and transient connections. African home associations draw attention to the historically‐embedded and mundane ways in which forms of associational life can be ‘transnational’ outside the formalized structures and Eurocentric development hierarchies created by international NGOs and other development institutions. Although they form largely invisible connections operating outside these hierarchies, African home associations unsettle assumptions about the geography of civil society and its relationship with development. Close attention to the histories and geographies of African home associations reveals that power and agency more often lie with migrants and elites within Africa than with the transnational diaspora.