Global games, local rules: Mega-events in the post-socialist world

Abstract

In the past decade mega-events have entered a new phase of global reach, as post-socialist countries in Eurasia, from Poland to Russia, have or will become host to some of the largest events on earth: the Olympic Games in Sochi (2014), the Football World Cup in Russia (2018), the Football European Championship in Poland and Ukraine (2012), Expo in Astana (2017), the Asian Winter Games in Almaty (2011) and the Universiade in Kazan (2013), as well as a series of high-level political summits including the APEC and the BRICS summits in Russia. Although these mega-events are global, the various institutional, economic and cultural constellations and recombinant forms of rule that have emerged in their post-socialist host countries have shaped fundamentally the planning and organisation of each mega-event in unique ways. In each case, mega-events in post-socialist countries have involved a strong role for the central state and neopatrimonial forms of resource allocation. The events are meant to demonstrate to the rest of the world that the cities and countries once behind the Iron Curtain have at long last arrived in global modernity. While the rhetoric of worldwide competition, nationalist pride and one-upmanship between event organisers may be global, policies, knowledge and ideas connected to the events tend not to move unchanged to the post-socialist world.

‘For the benefit of our nation’: unstable soft power in the 2018 men’s World Cup in Russia

“…This is a common scenario in many post-socialist nations, and one of the reasons that postsocialist elites covet mega-events is because they can be used to make claims to a particular, western vision of modernity (Koch 2010;Militz 2016;Roche 2002). At the same time, many post-socialist nations also host mega-events because of a genuine needs to improve aging infrastructure (Müller and Pickles 2015). The Russian World Cup addressed both of these imperatives, constructing and upgrading infrastructures in the host cities while also imparting new skills, all in an effort to present a coherent picture of a modern nation.…”

Az állam szerepe a városi terek fogyasztás-központú „újratermelésében”

“…a belváros és a piac kereskedői esetében), és ebbe az irányba hat a demokrácia térbeli-zikai kereteit jelentő köztereknek az új szimbolikus városi gazdaságba történő beillesztése is. Ezért úgy gondoljuk, hogy az állam hierarchikus-térbeli (át)szerveződésének, és a hátterében álló hatalmi viszonyok átrendeződésének explicit össze kapcsolása a városi terek átalakításának irányításával-ellenőrzésével gyelmet érdemel -különösen az európai (keleti) periférián, ahol az állam az átmenet időszakában, illetve a globális (európai) térbeli munkamegosztásba történő beilleszkedésben is központi szerepet játszott, illetve ahol a válság után fölerősödtek a centralizációs folyamatok (Bohle, Greskovits 2006;Müller, Pickles 2015;Szalai E. 2006). Ezért (is) fontos a városi terek átalakulási mechanizmusaira fókuszáló -esettanulmányokra épülő -kutatások folytatása.…”

Mega-events and the Preservation of Urban Heritage: Literature Gaps, Potential Overlaps, and a Call for Further Research

“…According to its promoters, a mega-event unequivocally translates to an increase in quality of place through the specialized mechanism of the event accompanied by an investment in the physical realm and improvement in the image of the city (Sykes and Brown 2015). This definition represents much of the aura that has long surrounded the discussion of mega-events and attracted cities to pursue hosting them (Essex and Chalkley 2004; Goldman 2011; Müller and Pickles 2015; Roy and Ong 2011). It is these “defining attributes” that have also come to determine a large swath of the literature and make up several of the following sections.…”