Is hosting the World Cup a “propaganda victory” for Vladimir Putin? That’s the question being asked – or rather, begged – as the United Kingdom pulls ministers from the coming tournament in Russia and others campaign for England football team not to participate (a likely compromise is for the team to attend, but to play badly).
Of course, Putin’s Russia is a “managed democracy”: that is to say, it has the appearance of democratic contests but in fact does not. So the importance of a propaganda victory is relatively minor. I was curious, however, to see if there was any evidence that successfully hosting a major sporting tournament had any bearing on a party’s success, so I went back through the contests since the financial crisis.
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