In An Essay Written In The Mid-1980S Trevor Taylor Concluded that ‘. . . international relations scholars show little sign of seriously considering the place of sport in global human affairs’ and prescribed that ‘international relations should take more account of sport . . .’ We might have expected some change in the period since then, not least because the academic study of sport has established itself in such fields as politics and law and has made further advances in sociology and social history. The ‘myth of autonomy’ which suggested that sport should and did have little effect on other human activities has been largely undermined; indeed, we might argue that in some cases there has been an overreaction against it. Modern sport is increasingly and perhaps essentially international and has had an international dimension almost from the outset. It has developed highly autonomous international organizations, most notably the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, the international (association) football federation.

Political science lags behind social history and sociological theory in its contributions to the academic understanding of sport. One remedy for this lag might be the analysis of the concept of civil society in relation to sport, since sporting institutions fit many of the definitions and fulfil many of the supposed functions of civil society. An analysis of sporting institutions in Georgia, Thailand and South Africa shows that they do ‘reflect’ the general condition of civil society in those countries, albeit in a distorted or exaggerated way, and that it is possible, though not necessary, for sport to be a major component of civil society.

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