Prospectus (1)

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Oct 30, 2023

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Sports, Nationalism, and War 1 Sports and its Relationship with War and Nationalism: Survey Methodology Joey Cook Department of Political Science, Georgia State University POLS 3800 Dr. Daniel Altman April 26, 2023 Introduction Does international sports increase or decrease an individual’s national pride and attitude towards war? Any indication of such a relationship could prove instrumental in analysis of an individual’s motivations to actually fight in war or provide an explanation for why senses of strong national pride and superiority develop in specific people. Sports are extremely important for numerous individual’s early development; young children are exposed to sports frequently, which provides a valuable source of socialization and stimulation. These same young children are soon exposed to the international sports world and quickly begin rooting for their home country. As they grow, many of them become passionate sports fans. Even someone who is only a casual fan or even barely aware of sports might find themselves watching the World Cup or Olympics when they are on. As such, examining large, organized international sports events should be prioritized because of their massive outreach and influence. This prospectus will provide a survey designed in order to determine if there is a relationship between sports and nationalism at all, and if there is a relationship between the two, whether it is positive or negative. The survey outlined in the prospectus will have multiple questions, a measurement system outlined, a control group, repeatability, and also indicate causal inference and potential biases.

Sports, Nationalism, and War 2 Theory It is important to establish first, the variables(and how they are defined), as well as the hypothesis. The independent variable, sports, will be defined as international organized sports fan activity. This specific definition has been chosen because the survey should focus on large scale events like the World Cup which affect millions, in addition to providing a necessary comparative analysis between countries. In order to draw a strong conclusion about sports, a comparative analysis should be used as surveying one country would be too limited or coincidental. Additionally, the goal of the survey is to evaluate how sports affects individuals, so the general prospectus should explore the hearts and minds of fans. Likewise, the dependent variables nationalism and war would be defined as a strong advocacy or pride in what one considers their home country and any type of war support or political aggression. The term home country is used for those who might have immigrated or been displaced from the country they most align with culturally. If someone spent 20 years in China and 1 year in the US, but was surveyed in the US at the time of the study, assuming they are American and fans of the American teams could skew results since they would probably prefer to support China. The hypothesis of this prospectus is that there is a relationship between sports and nationalism and political aggression in individuals. Such a relationship can either be negative or positive, but due to many of the causal mechanisms behind the hypothesis, all the survey is attempting to determine is whether there is a relationship at all. The causal mechanisms behind a positive relationship hypothesis and a negative relationship hypothesis would be drastically different, so it felt more appropriate to first examine whether there was a relationship at all. For the positive relationship hypothesis, sports would be argued to be a psychological whip which increases an individual’s sense of nationalism and pride, as well as train able bodied persons and encourage

Sports, Nationalism, and War 3 wartime attitudes and behavior. Examples of sporting events which contributed to these dependent variables are the Joe Louis vs Max Schmeling fight 1 & 2, the Miracle on Ice, the Football War and the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Louis v. Schmeling and the Berlin Olympics were part of a culmination of international tension before World War 2 and subject to Nazi propaganda, and the Miracle on Ice symbolized a great triumph over the United States’ adversary in the Soviet Union by “beating them at their own game” (although the Soviet Union got their revenge at the 1988 Olympics, winning the gold medal in basketball). These sports rivalries symbolized larger political struggles, but never contributed directly to a war until the Football War or 100 Hour War, a conflict between El Salvador and Honduras. The war buildup was mostly due to immigration and demographics, but the actual conflict kicked off due to violence after a two leg World Cup game. El Salvador cut ties with Honduras, claiming that the Honduran government had done nothing to stop the violence. The war was never truly caused by a sport, but it was the “catalyst to help ignite an already inflammable situation” (Cable, 1969, p 662). Whether strategically utilized by El Salvador in order to provoke a conflict, or weaponized by Honduras in order to expel a minority group, The Football War provides a strong indication of sports’ use as a political weapon by states in order to aggravate their own population in order to make them politically aggressive. On the other hand, one might argue that sports can serve as an outlet for an individual to release political aggression and national pride. The drive discharge model argues that “An inverse synchronic relationship between war and combative sports will be found, with more warlike societies less likely to have such sports and less warlike societies more likely to have them” (Sipes 1973, p 67). However, it should be noted that the psychology behind the drive discharge model as well as the statistics appear to be less than concrete. Like any other cultural activity, an international sporting event can also be used to express pride and love for

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Sports, Nationalism, and War 4 one’s country, and promote peacetime activity between nations. Pierre de Coubertin, the man who essentially brought back the Olympics claimed that “young men would grow more tolerant, and friendships and international respect would arise that would help stem the tide of war in the world” (Keefer, Goldstein, Kasiarz, 1983, p 183). This argument appears more sound, as generally speaking, the Olympics are thought of at least in concept as a source of peace and world unity, which should decrease individual’s nationalism and support for war. The Olympics does have a troubled history though, and this hasn’t always been the case. Research Design A survey is the chosen methodology because this prospectus aims to find a relationship between the independent and dependent variable on an individual person’s level. A survey would be most appropriate since a survey directly asks a person what they think about sports, their country, etc. An experiment could be a possible alternative but the logistics behind implementing treatment would be challenging. How does a researcher control how much sports a person is exposed to outside of the main international events, and then how do they administer such treatment? An experiment could be performed on a similar topic, but with this specific IV a survey would be much more efficient. Not that all surveys are perfect and that experiments are wrong; many subjects would likely refuse to answer or mess with results purposefully but for the sake of the hypothesis a survey should be chosen. A survey just happens to be the most suitable for what the research desires to accomplish. While the IV and DVs have already been established, the scope and unit of analysis must be discussed. The unit of analysis will be each person surveyed in each World Cup qualifying country in each year. The scope will be each World Cup qualifying country since 1930. The year 1930 was chosen because that was when the World Cup was founded and that time span encompassed the entire post WW2 world. 1930 is

Sports, Nationalism, and War 5 meant to be a generous year as well, as it gives the survey an extra few years to work off of as well as providing possible analysis on WW2 and the years before it. However, these early years could prove to be inconsistent sources of data as there was a lack of international travel and boycotts which should be considered when analyzing the survey results. Data from these years would still be beneficial, it’s just that if there is a discrepancy between those years and more recent years that could be a possible explanation. One of the benefits of this research design is that it creates a strong control group. Since the survey examines World Cup qualifying countries, the survey can use every non-qualifying country as part of a control group. While the general control group would vary(as different countries qualify every 4 years) countries would be chosen to “match” qualifying countries based on population, region, GDP, etc. For example, If Sweden qualified one year and Finland didn’t, Finland would be a good choice for the control group since the two have similar characteristics. The control group would be given the same survey questions as the main group, but the control group’s scope would vary since it would be dependent on which countries qualify and which don’t. Since the questions between the control group and the main group will be identical, these questions must be specified. For the IV, the question “How would you describe your support for [insert country] during the World Cup?” would be asked. The individual would then respond on a scale from Very Weak, Weak, Neutral, Strong, or Very Strong. This question should provide a straightforward answer to how much of a sports fan they are. For the nationalism DV, the question asked would be “How closely do you identify with the nationality of your home country?” This question would also have a scale from Very Weak to Very Strong. A qualitative scale was chosen instead of quantitative(1-5) because a quantitative scale felt like it would pressure someone into giving a 5. For the second DV the question “How likely would you be to support your country in an invasion or foreign conflict?” was chosen.

Sports, Nationalism, and War 6 Invasions and foreign conflicts are specified because if it were just any armed conflict people might feel pressured into choosing 5 out of a desire to defend their country. This way, the question evaluates whether an individual is more aggressive and wants to attack other countries or go to other countries to fight. Additionally, it is very important for this study to be repeatable and compared over the years. The World Cup was chosen as an event because it probably has the most influence, but this survey should be repeatable for any large international event or tournament with a qualifier. Even if the survey is conducted and the results appear to indicate that the hypothesis is true, various biases need to be acknowledged and the survey process needs to be evaluated to see if those biases have affected the research. For instance, reverse causality could be the real cause of the relationship between the IV and DVs and could go completely unnoticed. Reverse causality would be apparent if both the IV and DVs increased while the World Cup or any other event isn’t happening. This is why the scope includes every year, and not every World Cup. Another such reason could be selection bias- the survey uses World Cup qualifying countries, which creates a good control group but only chooses the best countries at soccer, which are typically wealthy European countries which already have a history of nationalism. Additionally, “younger” countries may also be just as nationalistic but since these countries are typically developing and semi industrial, they don’t have the wealth to invest into a strong soccer program which would then exclude them from the study. When these countries aren’t considered, it would make the total result appear to have a strong relationship when the selection bias is leaving out countries that contest the correlation. Another bias which would imply a correlation between the IV and DVs and not causation would be omitted variable bias. There are many different types of omitted variable bias but the most likely to be influential would be that many of the people who watch sports are also people who are generally

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Sports, Nationalism, and War 7 nationalistic or support war for other reasons. For example, sports is more popular amongst men and men are generally regarded as more aggressive and ready to fight. To make sure omitted variable bias doesn’t skew any results, it's important to look at the demographics of individuals that are surveyed. If all the people who’s answers to the survey indicate a strong relationship between the IV and DV are all one demographic or one political leaning, then it's more likely that omitted variable bias is skewing the results to look like there is causation. The survey should include a brief questionnaire at the beginning, asking a person their race/ethnicity, gender, and political leaning in order to determine whether there is omitted variable bias.

Sports, Nationalism, and War 8 Works Cited Sipes, R. G. (1973). War, Sports and Aggression: An Empirical Test of Two Rival Theories 1. American anthropologist , 75 (1), 64-86. Keefer, R., Goldstein, J. H., & Kasiarz, D. (1983). Olympic games participation and warfare. Sports violence , 183-193. Cable, V. (1969). The'Football War'and the Central American Common Market. International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) , 45 (4), 658-671.