ABSTRACT
There is now an extensive literature on the political economy and sociology of sports mega-events. Much of this literature seeks to analyse the increasing popularity of these events, and the similarities between the impulse to pursue them across a wide range of political and economic systems in the context of globalization and ‘late modernity’.1 Even more explores the particular motivations, meanings, and repercussion of specific events.2 Relatively neglected, however, are studies that seek to systematically explore the appeal of these events to intermediate categories of actors, whether regional or developmental. In this article, we explore the degree to which, and the ways in which, sport mega-events have held a distinctive kind of appeal for a succession of ‘developmental states’ in Asia. We argue that there are characteristic features of the political economy of developmental states, and of mega-events themselves, that have made these events particularly appealing to the political elites of these countries. Moreover, because of these characteristic features and the resulting appeal of mega-event hosting, a different kind of calculus of costs and benefits has applied in these cases, tied not to a more narrowly economistic or material calculation of projected gains (however illusory these may be in practice),
but to a longer-term and more symbolic calculus of repositioning and re-imagining the country in the global hierarchy of states.
