Sport and strategic peacebuilding: Northern Ireland and Korea compared

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the growing body of scholarship on sport’s peacebuilding capacity by comparing the role of sport in two peace processes, Northern Ireland and Korea. Uniquely, the analysis is guided by the concept of strategic peacebuilding which goes beyond the much-criticised liberal peacebuilding ‘toolkit’ and emphasises the importance of coordinated action at all levels and by many types of actor. The empirical sections examine the peacebuilding roles of sport at state level – in relation to elite sport, symbolism and diplomacy – and at grassroots level, particularly people-to-people projects. The article shows how and why sport has been able to play certain peacebuilding roles in each case, as well as the constraints on sport placed by structural characteristics of the peace processes. The article argues that the sporting domain can make interdependent peacebuilding inputs at each peacebuilding level, and thus has a distinct potential as a dimension of strategic peacebuilding.