Status Signaling and the Risk of Domestic Opposition: Comparing South Africa and Brazil's Hosting of the 2010 and 2014 World Cups

Abstract

Whereas much of the literature on status and domestic audiences analyzes how international achievement helps shore up domestic legitimacy, analyses regarding the opposite direction—how the lack of domestic support undercuts status signaling—remain rare. Mega-events constitute a highly public and visible example of conspicuous consumption as a form of status signaling. However, in rising democracies state elites are obliged to frame the benefits of hosting a World Cup in both instrumental dimensions and expressive virtues. In Brazil, the political fallout from the economic crisis, however, made it very difficult for state elites to rely on the expressive value of Brazil's status as World Cup host to subdue domestic opposition driven by instrumental logics. In contrast, for South Africans, the 2010 World Cup not only became an “exceptional status moment” but also constituted a “nation founding moment,” which meant that the expressive significance of hosting the first World Cup in Africa mitigated similar instrumental criticism.