It’s out in the world! I’m very happy about this paper. While it flows from the same place as my doctoral research, it’s a separate piece that stands on its own.

Here, I advance the concept of Potemkin Neoliberalism, exploring various dimensions of superficiality in the articulation of the 2018 Men’s Football World Cup in Russia. Starting from the idea that mega-events are an expression of neoliberal urban entrepreneurialism, I uncover how – unlike many other mega-events – this World Cup was orchestrated by the central state, though using neoliberal rhetoric to legitimize a wide-ranging urban development program aimed at modernizing peripheral host cities.

You can find the paper online here.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the $3000+ required to make this paper open access, but you can read my author’s accepted manuscript for free here. (I’ve provided the citation and made sure the page numbers correspond, too.)

Next up, a series of papers exploring soft power in the World Cup. More on that soon, I hope.