Politicization of national-state identity in sports as a factor of destruction of sports traditions and principles

Abstract

The formation of a national-state identity in the sports field is an effective tool for the representation of states and the development of international cooperation through the use of sports as a "soft power". However, the aggressive politicization of the mechanisms of sports competitions leads to the political stigmatization of athletes and national teams regarding their citizenship to the detriment of the traditional principles and values of sport outside of politics. The authors, relying on retrospective, as well as institutional and structur-al-functional approaches, explore the phenomenon of politicization of the mechanisms for developing a national-state identity in the sports sphere, prove that the aggressive politicization of sports replaces the national-state identity with a political one, the line between which is easily erased by political actors. In order to level the destructive politicization of the processes of generation of national-state identity in the sports field, the authors propose comprehensive steps to solve this problem.