Sports may seem far removed from the challenges facing American democracy, but both rely on a shared commitment to rules, fair competition, and respect for opponents. As political polarization deepens, some scholars are looking beyond traditional civic institutions and asking whether the values that govern athletics can help strengthen democratic life. New research from the Ronald Reagan Center on Civility and Democracy suggests the answer may be yes.
As American civic life has grown increasingly polarized, leaders in the democracy space are investigating an unlikely blueprint for cooperation: sports. In this conversation, we spoke with Lara Brown and Alexander Pappas, the Senior Policy Advisor and Associate Director, respectively, at the Ronald Reagan Center on Civility and Democracy. Together, we discussed findings from the center’s recent “Better Rivals Survey,” which examines Americans’ attitudes toward sportsmanship in athletics and civility in democracy.
The survey examines whether Americans apply the values of sportsmanship—such as respect, fairness, and gracious competition—to politics. The nationally representative survey finds that while Americans overwhelmingly embrace these principles in sports, far fewer believe they are practiced in political life, suggesting sports may offer a model for healthier civic engagement.
Brown is a contributing author in the forthcoming edited volume the Ash Center is producing on the intersection of sports, democracy, and civic health, part of the center’s project on sports and civic participation. She will be building on many of these themes in the chapter she is authoring.
Lara: Sports is such an interesting competition, in that what sports is about is that there’s a set of rules [and] all the teams agree to play to those rules in between seasons. There are officials who monitor them and coaches and players who want to adhere to them. That’s part of what good sportsmanship means; it means winning and achieving within the bounds that the sport has been created within. And what is so interesting when you think about a pluralistic democracy is that that is what it should look like. We have, essentially, a set of rules and norms that are established by the Constitution and by statutes. We have elected officials who are like the players, and we have people who are like the fans. And people should be competing in a healthy way, respectful of their opponent, and respectful of the rules, but this should be a competition of ideas, of policy, of interest.
Alex: We found through our independent research–but then also just through our anecdotal evidence and our own personal experiences–that, in society today, in American society, one of the only monocultural aspects that we have left is sports.
So Fred said, why don’t we try to investigate sports as a way to repair some of the civic health of our country because we can use sports as a vector to retrain people and bring people together? That was really what generated the interest in sports and civics and into this research because what we wanted to do and what we had the feeling of was this could be a very fruitful place to bring people together, and through the research, I think we were able to demonstrate that empirically.
Alex: We did not create the wheel or reinvent the wheel, right? What we did was we looked at the work that has been done in the space, and we were lucky enough to be linked up with Fox Sports’ analytics team. And what they have done is developed a battery of questions that would assess the general public’s fandom or would assess the respondents’ fandom in a number of different ways.
They have a very keen interest in making sure they understand fandom and how to assess fandom in a very real and empirical way because it has a bottom-line effect. So what groups like us and More in Common have done is taken that very strong empirical assessment and turned it towards, like Lara said, some of the civic questions that matter.
Our focus is also in trying to help people understand that rivalry and competition and disagreement can occur and be healthy, and that’s what sports provides a model for. It’s not just a model of coming together; it’s a model of competing in a way that honors the game and your opponents.
Lara: The biggest pushback we get is that people say, ‘But politics is not a game. The stakes are much higher. There are life and death policy issues.’ And my argument to that is actually, right: because the stakes are higher and it’s not just a trophy on the line, we need to adhere to these principles; it’s even more important to respect the process and the rules. Because, if you don’t, you will end up in the political science world—in a Hobbesian world—where it is a war of all against all and then it devolves into chaos where you need a strong man to somehow create order. And all of that ends up being the destruction of democracy.
Alexander: We asked: “Would you say that sports rivalries bring people together, drive people apart, some of both, or not sure?” We got a very split response, but the highest respondent bucket was some of both at a 54% clip. And so we were a little bit disappointed in that result because we were hoping that people would be able to see the thesis that we have that sports rivalries help bring people together. But we also think that some of both shows that people are thinking about it in a classic
Lara: It is my plan in the chapter that I’m writing to flesh out more this idea that sports is the civic structure, and then sportsmanship is the civility within that. And how important it is for us to understand the structure but also to understand how we need to operate within the structure because it is true that if you are a better rival, rivalries will become better.
Claire Simon is a research assistant at the Ash Center under the Democracy and the Informed Public Program. As a rising junior at Harvard College, she studies political communications and reports for the Harvard Crimson.
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