World Cup: Democratic or Autocratic Nations?

FIFA President Gianni Infantino and countless other soccer commentators and leaders often describe soccer as the world’s “most democratic sport.” This widespread belief draws heavily from the game’s unparalleled global reach, as well as its long history of widespread popularity across all social class and racial divides.

Whether this well-worn axiom actually applies to the quadrennial FIFA World Cup tournament, however, is an entirely separate question. Throughout modern history, authoritarian governments have repeatedly leveraged the high-profile tournament to bolster the legitimacy and global standing of their regimes.

Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini followed exactly this playbook when Italy hosted the 1934 World Cup. He manipulated competition rules and structures, handpicked match officials to stack the odds in favor of the home team, and ultimately watched his side defeat democratic Czechoslovakia in the tournament final. A nearly identical dynamic played out in 1978, when Argentina’s military junta used both the prestige of hosting the tournament and the national team’s surprise title win to “sportswash” the brutal political repression that followed the group’s violent seizure of power.

A striking pattern unites both of these famous cases: the national team of the authoritarian host nation claimed the tournament title. As a political scientist and lifelong soccer enthusiast, I set out to examine whether this anecdotal pattern holds across the full history of the World Cup, by comparing how teams from authoritarian regimes have fared over time against teams from democratic countries.