The World Cup in Qatar is the norm, not the exception

Concern about human rights issues raised by the Qatar World Cup 2022, although commendable, is unfortunately late. Since 2008, the People’s Republic of China has organized two Olympic Games (both winter and summer), while Russia has organized the Olympic Games. and the 2018 World Cup, and those events did not raise the same concern.

For the rest, the fact that international sporting events are held under authoritarian regimes is ceasing to be the exception to becoming the new norm. According to research by Adam Scharpf, Christian Glaessel and Pearce Edwards, while between 1989 and 2012 only 15% of these events were held under these circumstances, between 2013 and 2022 the proportion was 37%. One possible explanation for this trend would be that, while the proportion of democratic regimes in the world grew during the first period, during the last decade this trend reversed. It could be said, then, that if the proportion of total political regimes represented by democracies is declining, it becomes more likely that international sporting events will take place under authoritarian regimes.

Although this argument could be part of the explanation, it is not enough to understand this trend. We mention, for example, Qatar, China and Russia as recent organizers of the most prominent sports tournaments: none of them was a democracy that later became an authoritarian regime. The tendency to hold more and more international tournaments under authoritarian regimes does not stem only from the fact that such regimes are more common than in the past: it also seems to stem from the fact that authoritarian regimes are more likely to bid for the venue of such tournaments. According to Al Jazeera (news agency owned by the Qatari monarchy), the government of that country would have invested more than 200 billion dollars in the organization of the World Cup (for example, a subway transport system was built for this tournament). But, according to a report by the private intelligence agency Stratfor, Qatar only expects to get about 20 billion dollars for hosting the World Cup.

A group of activists from the LGBT community protest in London against the holding of the World Cup in Qatar, a country that restricts the rights of minorities. (Photo by ISABEL INFANTES / AFP) (ISABEL INFANTES /)

In general, unless the appropriate infrastructure is in place beforehand, organizing large international sports tournaments would not be profitable. And democratic states or (in the case of the Olympic Games) cities within them would be held accountable for those losses (which authoritarian regimes are not required to do to the same extent). For example, in the case of Tokyo 2020 (carried out in a context of a pandemic), estimates of the huge losses that it would cause sparked protests against its holding.

For the rest, the aforementioned authors indicate that the media attention that an international sporting event attracts changes the performance of authoritarian regimes in terms of human rights, but not necessarily for the better. According to his estimates, the repression, in effect, decreases dramatically in the stage prior to the start of the tournament and during its completion. But, on the other hand, this repression intensifies a couple of years before the start of the tournament and intensifies some time after its completion. In other words, authoritarianisms are sensitive to the damage that repression can cause to their international reputation, but only during the period (of a few months) in which international media attention is focused on the country in question.

In other words, it is legitimate to use the media attention that the World Cup entails to put the behavior of the Qatari State in terms of human rights under the spotlight. But if what is desired is to produce lasting changes, an episodic focus on a particular case will not only be insufficient, but could even be counterproductive.

Source: Elcomercio