Chief Justice Earl Warren once noted that when he got his newspaper each morning, he would open up the sports pages first, to read of people’s accomplishments. Then he read the front page, to learn about their failures. The recently concluded FIFA World Cup, which offered the joy and excitement of great games, high-level competition, global superstars, underdogs like Cape Verde that captured attention and hearts around the world, and the crowning of Spain as the undisputed champions—they conceded only one goal in the whole tournament—reminds us of the heights that can be attained through sports.
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In addition to the games themselves, there was the experience that people could immerse themselves in and enjoy. The arrival in the United States of fans from all over the world, and the camaraderie of strangers in stadiums and at watch parties worldwide, both revealed and encouraged the capacity to share an experience that transcended people’s conflicts and differences. All could appreciate their love of the game, their enthusiasm for their teams and countries, and the sheer joy of celebrating the tournament together. At least for a time, other concerns could be considered little more than distractions from what was really important: football (“soccer” for those not swept up in the fun—even NFL players were calling the game “football”).
Much of the news and commentary on the tournament reinforced this sentiment, talking about the positive experiences of Americans and their visitors. This included host communities like Lawrence, Kansas welcoming teams whose home base was in their city, as well as fans from abroad, who were pleased to find, not a place always dominated by ICE agents roaming the streets and casting a pall on the mood, but a vibrant, energetic country with warm, generous people welcoming them. And the numerous news stories and social media posts of foreigners marveling over everything from Texas BBQ, to Costco, to air-conditioning were a much-appreciated respite for Americans who have grown accustomed to criticism from abroad.
What was not discussed all that much (or maybe at all) was how good sports are for liberal democracy. The connection may be less obvious, but it’s every bit as real.
At its most fundamental, liberal democracy involves an agreement on procedure, whereby political contestation is governed within a set of rules that are developed, administered, and (ideally) enforced by recognized authorities, while organizations and individuals engage in practices that are characterized not only by competitive goals, but also by cooperation and restraint. These arrangements are mirrored in sports, and this is why participation in sports fosters the habits and mindsets conducive to liberal governance.
Democracy’s Practice Field
In sports, athletes participate in a system where there is competition within a set of agreed-upon (or at least accepted) parameters overseen by a governing body. Individuals and teams compete within such a framework. They adhere to and respect rules, practices, procedures, and norms. They organize themselves and practice to be ready for the competition. Then they give it all they have in competition in order to win. When the contest is over, the participants respect the outcome, shake hands, and say “good game.” The losers then figure out what they need to do better in order to win next time, and they set off to practice and prepare. At the same time, the winners know what they must do to maintain top performance and continued success.
Institutionalized competition within agreed-upon rules offers the first link between sports and democracy. The second is that the rule of law is important in both areas of life. Fair competition in either requires that the rules have to apply to everyone equally, regardless of talent, resources, experience, fame, or past successes or failures. The rule of law both cultivates and ensures fair play; the goal is not only to win through vigorous competition, but to win via legitimate competition. A victory in sports achieved by cheating is considered illegitimate, as would be winning an election or a legislative vote by fraud or intimidation. More broadly, the authority of the rules in a competition ensures that no one is above the law. This provides what is known in political theory as “procedural justice,” which means that participants are amenable to accepting results they might not like because they recognize that the process was fair.
Another democratic value cultivated via sports is that of reinforcing respect for one’s opponent as a legitimate actor with equal standing. Opponents are not mortal enemies who have no status or claim to a place in the competition. Rather, opponents are essential, as their participation and the competition with them defines the system. There would be no game—or electoral democracy—without an opponent who holds an equal standing. Both sports and democracy at their best channel conflict into peaceful, bounded competition, which allows for participants to vie over who wins without resorting to violence and without questioning one another’s right to compete. Competition also exists alongside cooperation, as participants not only cooperate with teammates in the midst of a contest, they also cooperate with opponents in respecting and upholding rules, institutions, and common enterprises.
Even when things don’t work out as envisioned, sports provide examples of how disputes, violations of rules or norms, and breaches of trust are addressed. These occur in both formal and informal ways. Disputes over calls by a referee or umpire can be appealed and adjudicated by instant replay reviews. Flagrant fouls, unacceptable behaviors, or cheating are often addressed after competition by suspensions of players and coaches, financial penalties such as fines, or other punishments assigned to individuals or teams. And athletes themselves enforce norms and police violations through informal means. Soccer players often intentionally kick the ball out of bounds when an opposing player is on the ground with an injury, instead of exploiting the temporary advantage that comes from having an extra player. Tennis players say “sorry” to their opponents if they win what is considered an unearned point when their shot hits the top of the net but the ball just makes it over for an easy point. In a baseball game, if a player gets hit by a pitch, even if it’s an accident, when the other team comes up to bat, they know that one of their players will be hit by a pitch, too. This is an example of an escalatory tactic that is employed to bring the violation or dispute to a close.
In politics, there are legal pathways involving the courts to address violations of rules and procedures. If fraud is suspected in an election, the courts can provide a pathway to adjudicate and resolve the issue. Norms can also govern behaviors without recourse to authorities. A politician’s scandal or infirmity might result in party leaders intervening to get the person to resign or end their campaign. The most notable recent example of this involved Democratic Party leaders convincing President Joe Biden to end his campaign for reelection in 2024. Analogous to the idea of competitive escalation to impose costs for misbehavior in our current political environment may be the ongoing gerrymandering of congressional districts by Republicans and Democrats to gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, though it is unclear if and when this cycle of conflict might be resolved without a more formal, rule-based solution.
Liberal democracy and sports—at their best—also both encompass the idea of pluralism, which embodies a societal element of competition and is less strictly related to governance. Pluralism accepts that people may exhibit great diversity in terms of their personal attributes, political views, and experiences. Pluralism doesn’t deny that diversity. Rather, it allows for people with different identities, views, and interests to participate in a common political community or athletic endeavor without having to abandon those differences. It must be acknowledged that the embrace of pluralism in both sports and politics is a struggle with a long history that continues to this day (more on this later), but it can also be recognized that this type of pluralistic social engagement is often cultivated in sports, where individuals and teams encounter people who differ in race, class, ethnicity, religion, and/or background. These individuals might be part of the same team trying to win, or they may be competitors. Either way, they can still be understood as a pluralistic community working together—engaged in upholding rules, norms, and standards in the midst of competition.
The attributes of any one individual are acknowledged and respected, but the only attributes that really count are the one that contribute to victory in the sport, as all are immersed in a larger project of working toward a common goal (winning), or competing against one another in a shared system. Can there be much doubt about why sports achieved racial integration in the United States faster than the rest of society? The Dodgers led the way in baseball by signing Jackie Robinson in 1947. In the South, schools like the University of Alabama initially integrated their beloved football teams under court orders and federal intervention, but the schools and their fans soon learned that their teams were more successful with a bigger pool of athletes to recruit from. Talent came to outweigh race as the key characteristic of a player. This was not true for everybody, but it can certainly be argued that sports have played a role in teaching the country something important about racial integration. This was and is pluralism in practice.
Sports teach participants that losing isn’t the end of the world and that people can live with outcomes they dislike. The practice of accepting a result, learning from it, and returning to compete another day cultivates what has been called “loser’s consent.” Sports involve repeated instances of this, and they reinforce the lesson to athletes over and over that one can lose without rejecting the legitimacy of the entire system that resulted in the loss. This same phenomenon occurs in liberal democracy, as much of the United States is seeing currently in the midst of primary elections, where defeated candidates usually accept their losses, concede, and offer congratulations to the victors. Democratic stability and its very survival are dependent on the acceptance, routinization, and internalization of these lessons.
Sports instill the importance and practice of self-restraint. Not everything that one can do to win a competition is necessarily something that one should do. Sports make this principle concrete. Players have to control their impulses. They have to accept restrictions on their behavior. Deliberately injuring an opposing player might help a team’s chances, but everyone knows this is entirely inappropriate. It’s not only that a flagrant foul is against the rules. It’s that such action would correctly be seen as a violation of the idea of sports themselves, existing completely outside of the enterprise of athletic competition. Unrestricted behavior makes competition impossible and is diametrically opposed to the norms of fair play. By the same token, in a liberal democracy the freedom to act, including the ability to freely compete for elected office, exists within a system that requires a measure of self-restraint, not only in order to adhere to the rules, but to uphold the norms and principles of freedom and democracy.
Participation in sports also teaches people the value and necessity of hard work and preparation in the pursuit of success. If an individual or team shows up on game day without having practiced beforehand to hone their skills, get into shape, or develop a game plan, they are likely to fail. Democratic politics rewards a preparedness mindset and practices. Individuals, advocacy groups, candidates, and parties have to work to win popular elections or legislative votes. They have to build coalitions, organize, raise money, get their message out, get their voters to the polls, or make sure legislators vote for their policies. There is no substitute for doing the work.
Getting Out What You Put In
It is wise not to take this argument too far. The comparison isn’t perfect. After all, players and teams don’t try to take control of leagues, or jail or kill their opponents. Nor do players and teams seek to become the referees, to modify the rules in their favor, or to nullify competitions just because they don’t like the fact that they lost. Democracies are not immune to these abuses. Partisan elected officials have considerable authority over “the rules of the game,” and matters such as law enforcement, election administration, and the allocation of appropriated public funds all are subject to revisions of rules or unfair use to achieve short-term or long-lasting political advantages. This problem is fueling a growing sense in the United States that there is increased “abuse of both prosecutions and pardons for personal and political gain,” disputes over counting votes and determining winners of elections, and the cutoff of approved public funds to entities with political views considered antagonistic to those in power.
Also, more importantly for the argument advanced here, the positive impacts of athletic competition are not automatically conferred upon all those who are involved in sports. The benefits only result from what coaches, parents, mentors, leagues, teammates, and athletes themselves cultivate and reinforce. Coach John Wooden of the UCLA Bruins, whose men’s college basketball team won ten national championships over a period of twelve years, was known for seeing his job as one meant to help develop young men of good character. He just happened to do this by being a basketball coach. Wooden clearly understood the connection between sports and the cultivation of good habits and character that could be applied in all walks of life. The basketball court was a training ground and arena for much more than basketball games.
Undoubtedly, it is clear that sports can also foster less-than-desirable traits. They can encourage and inflame nationalistic divisions and geopolitical rivalry, hatred for opponents, racism and tribalism, exclusion, a sense of entitlement, corruption, the pursuit of victory at any cost, and even violence. Athletes, along with their fans, institutional bodies, and government sponsors/supporters, are just like other individuals and institutions in society, susceptible to all these destructive traits.
Athletes cheat, gamble on games and throw them, and push the boundaries of what is permissible in competition. And they’re not always ideal role models. Their actions and words can be both cause and consequence of situations, mindsets, and outcomes that harm people and work against the favorable attributes that sports can otherwise foster.
Many of these ugly outcomes are particularly true with respect to fans, especially fans of high-profile national or professional league teams. Individual fans’ moods, demeanors, words, actions, and even identities can be bound up in their attachment to teams and players. Sports fans represent a very different type of relationship to competition. Their fervor is part of their fun, and even if they say they wish injury and misery upon their opponents, the consequences are minimal or nonexistent, as the stakes are far lower than for the athletes themselves. To that end, the failure of many fans to cultivate good sportsmanship in actual practice is in part due to the ways fans experience sports from the sidelines, with very different perspectives from athletes.
The administrative organizations that govern leagues are also not necessarily progenitors of liberal democracy. Their organizational interests often extend beyond their respective sports. The NFL, FIFA, and other entities have their own agendas and are often pursuing goals—television contracts, expansion teams, merchandise sales, global audiences—that have nothing to do with athletic competition and fair play. The president of FIFA recently sought, unsuccessfully, to sell a 20 percent stake in the federation’s commercial rights for over $4 billion. Creating a new company and partnering with a private equity firm for a quick payout was seen as “selling the soul of football.”
And of course, governments often seek to use sports for their own ends. Authoritarian governments seem particularly susceptible to using sports to showcase themselves in an ideal light. Russia and China have both recently used international sporting events to showcase the purported unity and strength of their authoritarian systems. The 1936 Olympics are still remembered as Hitler’s, which has made Jesse Owens’s success remembered more as a challenge to Nazi ideology than as an independent athletic accomplishment. The government of Saudi Arabia has faced criticism of engaging in “sportswashing”—creating the LIV golf tour, funding the Saudi Pro Soccer League to attract stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, hosting Formula One races, and securing hosting rights for the 2034 FIFA World Cup—as part of a concerted effort to divert attention and criticism away from its authoritarian politics and human rights abuses. Nor are democratic countries immune to the temptation to make the success of athletes an expression on the worth and success of a country. Consider the national “medal count” in every Olympics, both today and in the past: during the Cold War, sports (and just about everything else, including at one point the quality of kitchen appliances) came to be fuel for the geopolitical conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Sports may also fail as a showcase and practice ground for pluralism. Racism, ethnocentrism, and international hatreds and disputes have always found their way into playing fields and sports leagues. While it is celebrated that Major League Baseball began to integrate in the 1940s, it cannot be forgotten that the sport was segregated for many decades before this, with separate Negro leagues. Brazilian soccer star Vinícius Júnior stopped a game in 2023 in Spain (he plays for the club team Real Madrid) after a torrent of racial slurs and gestures were directed at him by opposing fans. The problem isn’t just the fans, he said, “It was not the first time, nor the second, nor the third. Racism is normal in La Liga…the federation considers it normal and the rivals encourage it.” Soccer fandom was even instrumental in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, as rivalries in stadiums bled into politics and fostered recruitment into both Serbian and Croatian military forces, who fought a years-long war against each other. The aggression and violence that erupted in stadiums were not condemned; they were socially and politically legitimized and accepted as patriotism.
Long Live Sports, and Democracy
Despite all these potential and actual failures, which require continual vigilance to combat, sports still provide, at their best, a form of democratic socialization. When kids and adults play sports, they encounter systems in which they learn to follow rules they didn’t create, work with people they didn’t choose, accept legitimate authority and procedural fairness, oppose others without hating them or questioning their standing to participate, distinguish legitimate competition from cheating, respect diversity and accept it as normal, pursue common objectives that outweigh personal achievements and goals, carry out defined institutional roles, put in the hard work and preparation that is necessary to achieve success, and respond appropriately to winning and losing. When things go wrong, they learn how to navigate breaches of fairness and trust, as well as the difficult edge cases that tend to exist in any system.
Athletic competition is not simply an analogy or a theater for these virtues in their perfect form. It’s a venue for the practice of competitive social engagement across a wide range of circumstances—be they ideal or ugly—within larger systems based on rules and institutions. All this contributes to the development of habits and character that are both the cause and consequence of civil, organized, rule-bound, but still vigorous competition. This is ideal training for democratic citizenship.
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David Bernell is a professor in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University. He is coauthor of the Substack newsletters Defending Democracy, and Barrels to Batteries. He is also author of the books Constructing US Foreign Policy: The Curious Case of Cuba, and The Energy Security Dilemma.
