SAUDI ARABIA'S STRATEGIC USE OF SPORT IN THE FORGING OF A NEW NATIONAL IDENTITY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30925/slpdj.3.2.4Keywords:
Strategic use of sport, Saudi Arabia, Nation, Identity, Saudi Vision 2030Abstract
Instability in the Middle East has been on the rise in the first two decades of the century due to the power void created by the American invasion in Iraq, the geopolitical confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring. For the Sunni Kingdom, this has meant that the core of the Royal Family’s legitimacy has been in permanent tension, menacing the continuity of the Saudi model and the homogeneity of the Saudi nation. At the same time, the securitarian bond with the West, key for sustaining the Al-Saud grip on power, has eroded as a result of the growing incapacity of Saudi Arabia to fulfill the role of regional stabilizer.
In response, the Saudi political elite, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has directed all their efforts on the Saudi Vision 2030, the most recent national development plan that aims to diversify the economic apparatus and shield the Al-Saud legitimacy.
This article aims to demonstrate, through a multidimensional lens, how the strategic use of sport under the Vision 2030 programme has been designated by the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a catalyst for the modernizing and nationalist agenda, shaping the new national identity. While the new nationalistic drive of the Saudi Vision 2030 has been covered by several scholars, how sports have been articulated to be useful for this narrative and how they have influenced the fluid and everchanging nature of the Saudi nation remains a void in the literature that this article seeks to partially fill.
A constructivist approach, anchored in the theoretical works of Alexander Wendt, is suitable to observe how the strategic use of sport has been leveraged as a platform for the extrapolation of the content of the Saudi nation, presenting itself as a modern, moderate, proud and diverse country in order to alter the identitarian structure with a securitarian ally as the West. Furthermore, the investigation of the extrapolation of this new national identity, a more covered area, through a constructivist lens aims to theoretically enrich the debate over Saudi Arabia’s strategic use of sport.
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