ABSTRACT
So far this book has concentrated on the relationship between sport and diplomacy as seen ‘through the embassy window’ (Wilson 1962, 122). Theorising and charting how governments co-opt sport – ‘what we know’ – is important when attempting to build a quadripartite framework of sports diplomacy. It is, however, equally important for the Popperian theorist to chart new intellectual ground, to focus on ‘what we don’t know’ of the subject under inquiry. Therefore, the next three chapters flips the diplomacy-to-sport relationship around and examines the notion that sport is a form of diplomacy in its own right. These chapters use the non-state sporting actor (the NSSA) as the key referent object of inquiry and asks whether NSSAs practice diplomacy and, if so, are they any good at it? Disaggregating the state, Chapters 6, 7 and 8 step through the embassy window, so to speak.
