Can Sports Make Nations Go to War?

A new study in International Studies Quarterly  finds that when a country’s national sports team competes internationally, that country experiences a surge in nationalist attitudes and can lead to war.

The study looked at World Cup qualifiers from 1958 to 2010: “Going to the World Cup increases state aggression by about two-fifths as much as a revolution does, and … resembles the effect of electing a leader with military experience.”