Sport as a Sphere for European Union’s Public Diplomacy

Student: Popova Irina

Faculty: Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs

Educational Programme: International Relations: European and Asian Studies (Master)

Year of Graduation: 2016

Public diplomacy is becoming a more and more important foreign policy instrument. It is especially relevant to the European Union because of its normative power status. Sport has turned into a sphere of EU’s dominance in discourse articulation and by this reason is commonly used for reaching public diplomacy’s goals. “European dimension” discourse is currently dominating EU’s public diplomacy in sport, but its important element – “specificity of sport” concept – wasn’t fixed in any particular meaning. This paper uses Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory together with institutional, legal and political space analysis to find out why the closure of specificity of sport’s meaning didn’t happen. The analysis revealed that clash of interests of two powerful pressure groups and operationalization of the concept in EU’s public diplomacy and internal affairs impede the closure.

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