Analysis of international political signaling and interpretation of the significance for the formation of the USA–USSR track and field competition GU Shuai，YU Siyuan，ZHU Na，LIU Guihai
(1.School of Physical Education and Health，East China Normal University，Shanghai 200241，China；2.Department of Physical Education，Tsinghua University，Beijing 100084，China)Abstract:The trend of in-depth research on sports diplomacy calls for interdisciplinary research methods to promote theoretical breakthroughs. Using the theory of international political signaling to conduct an empirical analysis of the diplomatic interactions between the USA–USSR track and field competition during the Cold War, it has been found that the USA–USSR track and field competition is a key political negotiation channel between the two countries during the Cold War. Through multiple rounds of encoding, transmission, decoding and feedback of sports diplomatic signaling, led to the first cultural exchange agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union and also promote comprehensive cooperation between them, which establishes a benign competitive and cooperative relationship that’s rare in the Cold War. Based on the theory of international political signaling, it is proposed that sports diplomacy promotes relations between countries and exhibits specific effect areas, specifically pointing to the transmission of diplomatic information, the expression of strategic sincerity, and the resolution of security dilemmas. The realizable mechanism of sports diplomacy is to provide a diplomatic signal encoding method with shared meaning, to build a safe and reliable diplomatic signaling exchange space, and also to endow vivid and effective diplomatic signaling conversion capability.
Keywords: sports diplomacy；international political signaling theory；USA–USSR track and field competition；inter-state relations