Professor Simon Rofe

This is the first book to explore the full breadth and depth of the emerging discipline of sports diplomacy. Rooted in a definition of ‘diplomacy’ that focuses on negotiation, representation and communication, this book examines the increasingly important role that sport plays in the diplomatic practices of international relations, and the part played by an increasing range of key actors involved including states, athletes, international organisations, NGOs and governing bodies of sport at national, regional and international levels. This book introduces the key concepts and theoretical frameworks that shape our understanding of sports diplomacy, and also reflects a range of research methodologies in sports diplomacy befitting the wide-ranging experiences of the contributing authors. Acknowledging that sports diplomacy is a practitioner-informed discipline, it traces the history of sports diplomacy and explores the key themes that define contemporary sports diplomacy, from great power and small state diplomacy to athlete perspectives, human rights, mega-events and cultural diplomacy. This book further presents a series of detailed case studies that illuminate our understanding of sports diplomacy in action, including chapters focusing upon the 2022 Men’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar and the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. This is an essential reference for any advanced student, researcher, policy-maker or practitioner with an interest in the politics of sport, the history of sport, sports governance, international relations, geopolitics, international organisations or public policy.

This chapter addresses the practice of teaching IR theory to audiences in the United Kingdom. It begins by laying out IR’s context in terms of the student body, the current context of UK Higher Education (HE), the structures of these institutions, and the global marketplace of HE. It examines the influence of teaching practices in United Kingdom HE and how they shape IR and theories of IR, before looking specifically at the field of IR theory and the author’s own experiences teaching it. Understanding the teaching of IR in the UK is an inherently reflexive undertaking. It is important to note the central role the United Kingdom played in global affairs that preceded the foundation of the discipline - and while waning - has played since; at the same time as the discipline developed after the First World War with a fulcrum of UK based scholars, publications, and students.

This chapter investigates the central role of trust-building for the George H. W. Bush administration and its crucial significance in navigating the political transformations of 1990–91. Portraying Bush's foreign policy as driven by an effort to establish trust among adversaries to minimize risk and maintain order, this chapter shows how Bush and his key advisers, Secretary of State James A. Baker III and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, crafted a strategy of personal diplomacy and caution. Analyzing in particular the demise of the Soviet Union in late 1991 as well as the 1990–91 Kuwait crisis, the chapter highlights the Bush administration's prioritization of reliability, steadfastness, and personal relationships in fostering a culture of mutual trust as key assets for U.S. foreign policy before.

This contribution reports on the design phase of the Jam, a short, fast-paced, cross-institutional online programme over three days. Its focus is on social justice and specifically access, use and management of community space, as integral part of sustainability. This novel programme aims to enable learning, generate ideas to address complex issues, build connections and support diverse community members engage in cultural exchanges. Developed by the University of Leeds in collaboration with the University of Pretoria, ls14trust in Seacroft, and Mothong African heritage in Mamelodi, it brings together educators, professional services staff and students and the public in non-hierarchical ways to inspire new and different ways to interact and learn. We present an account of the design phase of the Jam, including an account of our institutional design context, an overview of literature on Jams and Jamming that informed our design of the Social Justice Jam: Spaces for Change 2024.

This contribution is a collective autoethnography conducted by the co-authors to capture their experiences within the Discovery Delivery Group, a group which has been tasked with re-imagining existing extra-curricular provision at the University of Leeds, U.K., aligned to its ambition for flexible, inclusive and transformative student education. Design thinking and further participatory curriculum design strategies were used to experiment and to explore more novel approaches in this two-year project. In this autoethnographic work, the researchers and members of the Discovery Delivery Group participated in an inquiry to share and gain insights into the experience of participation in this group, reflecting on a shared appetite for change and innovation as transformative educators and colleagues. The study reveals how such transformational pedagogical project groups can create a space for learning, experimentation and innovation.

This article explores scholarship regarding diplomatic processes and actors engaged in recent international sport events hosted by the United Kingdom and Japan. The article points to the range of actors involved, focusing on organizing committees, and assesses the effectiveness of sports diplomacy at a range of levels that go beyond a focus on the state. It uses international sport events documentation, global media archives, and public and private comments related to the United Kingdom and Japan. The article addresses three key issues: 1) Olympic-dominant discourse: the dominance and shift in process between hosting an Olympic Games and onto other events; 2) Western-dominant discourse: the differences between Japan and the UK in demonstrating distinct “East” and “West” sports diplomacy approaches; 3) State-dominant discourse: the role of knowledge exchange and elite networks that transcend the state and involve a range of different actors, such as the organizing committee.

The article’s aim is to illustrate the intersection of Sport Diplomacy and Sport for Development approaches. The value of exploring this relationship is to realise the potential contribution of sport diplomacy to the practitioners and policy makers within the sportscape, including those addressing Sport for Development SfD, in providing the skills and tools to critically reflect on their own practices and more effectively operate in the diplomatic realm. Sport diplomacy provides a set of navigation skills to enhance practitioner’s abilities to operate across the sportscape. The practice of sport diplomacy aggregates different stakeholders and their non-aligned goals into contextually defined and aligned purposes. It recognises simultaneous relationships across several realms, and provides a principal explanatory tool for previously unrealized discourses across a network of networks. The article’s analysis demonstrates the coexistence of complimentary and conflictual interests and practices: challenges arise, as well as opportunities for future alignments and complimentary practices.

The article addresses the diplomacy practiced by Sir Stanley Rous, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) president (1961–1974), and the international history of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea involvement in, and the boycott by African nations of, the 1966 World Cup in light of a number of newly available primary sources. The new materials reveal first, Rous’s diplomatic practice and the tension between formal and informal diplomacy he pursued; and second, the disquiet in London over North Korean participation, a problem relieved in great part by Rous’s interventions. Concerns over anthems, protocol, and flags were mediated by Rous as he negotiated with the British foreign policy-making establishment from his position as FIFA president. The analysis illuminates the negotiation, representation and communication underpinning the diplomacy of the 1966 World Cup. Rous was also influential, though to contrasting effect, in the case of the opposition of the Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF) to apartheid in South Africa and CAF’s support for the emerging pan-African cause. The article offers new insights into the diplomatic role of Rous and FIFA and throws light upon the tension between formal and informal diplomatic practices underlying the staging of a global tournament in the 1960s amid the dual pressures of the Cold War and an emerging pan-Africanism.

This study draws on the authors’ first-hand experience of designing, developing and delivering (3Ds) a massive open online course (MOOC) entitled ‘Understanding Research Methods’ since 2014, largely but not exclusively for learners in the humanities and social sciences. The greatest challenge facing us was to design an assessment mechanism that was (i) rigorous yet practicable at scale, vis-à-vis over 60,000 students from highly diverse backgrounds; (ii) compatible with the pedagogical orientation of the MOOC provider; and (iii) meaningful to the nature of the course subject. Based on a network analysis of forum interactions and a qualitative analysis of a random sample of 116 research questions proposed by students, we explore how participants’ understanding of research methods developed through a series of carefully sequenced ‘e-tivities’ and ‘open peer assessments’ over the duration of the course. The aim of this study was to consider a model of ‘flipped’ assessment, drawn from elements of ‘paragogy’ and the IR Model that acknowledges and exploits peer learning opportunities that are not routinely captured by completion statistics.

This article examines Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt’s approaches to formulating foreign policy within the context of contemporaneous debates about Isolationism and Internationalism. It argues that a ‘Rooseveltian Maxim’ can be identified based on common attributes found in each President’s ideas about US foreign policy and national security interests. This ‘Maxim’ was not dogma for either president, as they were both astute political operators. Instead it is based on their essentially internationalist reading of America’s role in the world. It meant that both were particularly mindful of the state of American public opinion informed by Washington and Jefferson’s notions of isolationism, for it was the mood amongst American people that provided the ‘finite space’ which they as president has to make foreign policy. It concludes that by investigating the approaches both presidents adopted in such circumstances, we gain further insight into both presidents and our understanding of Isolationism and Internationalism.

This chapter identifies twin foreign policy influences on the 1944 election. The first and most straightforward was that the United States was, like many others, a nation at war and that this had a huge impact on the campaign. The second influence was the decision by the Republican contender, Thomas E. Dewey, not to campaign on the extent of Roosevelt administration’s prior knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Dewey’s begrudging discretion strongly encouraged by US Army chief of staff General George C. Marshall, limited the scope of his ability to critique the administration and its prosecution of the war.

This chapter identifies four interrelated points that came to influence and shape the prologue to the Bretton Woods Conference itself. First, the influence of World War I. Second, the experience of the League of Nations in the interwar years. Third, considerations of domestic opinion on the US role in the world. Fourth, the nature of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential leadership style, which lent itself to various internecine rivalries within his administration. These factors have hitherto not been considered in either sufficient depth or in relation to each other; in doing so here there is a meaningful opportunity to critically analyze postwar planning as the prospect of Allied victory became increasingly real in the summer of 1944.

The Advisory Committee on Problems of Foreign Relations (ACPFR) of Franklin D. Roosevelt's State Department first met in late December 1939 and operated until early Summer 1940. Its previously overlooked deliberations, chaired by the dynamic Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles, are important in three related areas. First, the ACPFR was an early marker of the Administration's later post-war planning, notably the Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy. Second, a remarkable swath of issues were discussed surrounding the ongoing conflict, prospects for its end, and the shape of the post-war world, particularly regarding Europe and the consequences of a German victory. The third area of ACPFR importance is in illuminating our understanding of the Roosevelt Administration's thinking on the conflict during the complex atmosphere of the Phoney War. The analysis concludes that although the fruits of Committee's effort would be indirect, they were nonetheless important in later post-war planning efforts that contemplated a breadth of options for the post-war world before American lives were put in harm's way.

This article looks at the design, development and delivery of the IR Model. The IR Model brings together best-practice in learning design and appreciation of e-learning in producing a distance learning programme in International Relations delivered 100 per cent online via a Virtual Learning Environment (Blackboard). The results of the IR Model are notable increases in student attainment over campus-based counterparts and an enhanced student experience, as well as being stimulating for academic teachers.

The Olympic sporting context of 1908, with its tension between nationalistic competition and high-minded amateurism, provides insight as well into the transatlantic relationship between Great Britain and the United States during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and in the years following the prime ministerial tenure of Britain's Arthur Balfour. The article explores this relationship through two high-profile sports events—the 1908 London Olympic Games and its predecessor games in St. Louis in 1904—to consider how governing political and social networks in the two countries viewed themselves and one another and related to one another. The positions and values of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour are reevaluated in this context. The article concludes that the 1908 Olympics in many ways typified Anglo-American relations during the opening decade of the twentieth century. Strenuous competition between the two nations was accepted by both parties as a means to achieve a measure of superiority over the other for the broader audience in each nation and also across the globe.

This article explores Manchester United's role as a diplomatic actor in contemporary international affairs. It explores United as a lens on the role a sporting institution can have in the broader diplomatic milieu of the twenty-first century and the burgeoning understanding of sport diplomacy. The argument is that certain sporting institutions have a capacity to influence the diplomatic process in contemporary diplomacy because of the increasingly multilayered and multi-stakeholder nature of international affairs. The article analyses United across three categories: football, commercial, and business to illustrate their influence. The influence as a diplomatic actor is identified in two main forms: first, Manchester United participating as part of the English Premier League, playing in the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Champions League, and, second, as an international business with a truly global commercial brand, and in what might be considered traditional forms of diplomacy, with engagement with the attributes of Her Majesty's Government at home or abroad.

This article explores links in the grand strategic outlook of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, with particular reference to the influence upon both men of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan. It focuses upon an episode during Franklin Roosevelt's tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, when he was in direct correspondence with both Theodore and Mahan on matters of grand strategy and naval policy. The paper argues that Theodore Roosevelt proved a crucial conduit in the formulation of Franklin Roosevelt's grand strategic outlook, both through his promulgation of Mahanian thought and his support of Franklin's correspondence with the Admiral. This in turn would be important later during Franklin Roosevelt's leadership of the United States.

A new and original analysis of the mission undertaken by FDR's Secretary of State during the Phoney War, Rofe's work explains the motivations and goals of Roosevelt through an analysis of the president's foreign policy and of the nature of the Anglo-American relationship of the time.

The actors, or “players,” involved in the transactions of diplomacy occasioned by sport are manifold. In the case of the world’s “global game”—association football—they include but are not limited to individual footballers, football clubs, national leagues, national associations, football’s international governance structures, multi-national sponsors, and numerous hangers on. Importantly for this analysis, such a panoply of actors creates an architecture, replicated across other sports, which speak to the necessity of furthering the understanding of the relationship between sport and diplomacy. These two phenomena share a long-standing similarity in global affairs; both having been over-looked as means of comprehending relations between different polities otherwise centred on the nation-state. This exegesis advances our understanding in two areas. First, it addresses the parameters of the discussion of “sport and diplomacy” and problematises the discourse between the two with a note on language; and second, it utilises a framework provided by an appreciation of “global diplomacy” to explore concepts of communication, representation, and negotiation in sport and diplomacy.

This article explores the relationship between a co-created student project and people-centred design thinking. Through a critical reflective inquiry approach, we explore the broader challenges and implications of implementing people-centred design principles, as opposed to approach, in the context of Higher Education today. The article is guided by the experiences of two academic members of university staff and their engagement with an innovative student-centred project and pedagogical framework titled Thinking Inside the Box. The purpose of this intentionally critical self-reflection is to mobilise these experiences of student-centred design thinking to identify learner and professional opportunities, challenges to innovation and other touchpoints at the individual, tactical, operational and strategic levels.

This article aims to explore the evolution of the debates surrounding human rights in the discourse(s) of major sporting events (MSEs), particularly the Olympics. The paper will first analyse the western-centric origins of the "universality" of the Olympic philosophy and how it affected the protection and promotion of human rights, as well as addressing practical challenges or limitations faced. It will then focus on unpacking the elements of sportswashing and soft power in the multi-discursive context of sport where power, privilege, politics, and position are (re)produced. In doing so it draws upon the emergent field of Sports Diplomacy as the most appropriate explanatory framework to share in this discourse. Finally, it will explore the potential impact of anti-corruption reforms on the establishment of a meaningful human rights legacy.