IYTT Youth Fellows running democracy talks with Gothia Cup attendees

The yearly week-long football tournament Gothia Cup was started in 1975. It takes place in Gothenburg in mid-July and attracts around 300,000 players, parents, coaches and spectators from around 70 countries, turning Gothenburg into a sporting festival!

We four IYTT Youth Fellows  – James Mottram (United Kingdom), Federica Baggio (Italy), Valeria Andriienko (Ukraine), and Sondre Zakariassen Ranum (Norway) – along with the IYTT Director & Co-founder Urban Strandberg, gathered to ask attendants our four simple but challenging questions, plus one extra focused on sport.

This is the citizen-centric method called OCDTs Open Chair Democracy Talks, that IYTT Youth Fellows invented and inaugurated in Athens in September 2021, and that Youth Fellows have been running on five continents and more than 50 occasions.  It proved to be an intense and fruitful couple of days as we obtained over 130 responses.

We’d like to thank the Gothia Cup for working with us, allowing us to set up on the grounds and ask attendants questions that many had never been asked before. We’d also like to thank everyone, aged 12 to 87, who responded for being so friendly and cooperative.

After the success this year, next Summer IYTT will return to the Gothia Cup to run the Gothenburg World Youth Openness and Democracy Summit, inviting all in all 24 African, North American and European Youth Fellows to run many OCDTs and to engage more closely with the teams to inspire them in their local social and political roles.

This endeavor like the democracy conversations at this year’s Gothia Cup are graciously sponsored by the Sten A Olsson Foundation.

This article will summarize the results of our Open Chair Democracy Talks, and you can view the detailed results here.

1. What are the first three words that come to mind when I say the word ‘democracy’?

By far and away the word most associated with democracy among attendants of the Gothia Cup was ‘freedom’. Occasionally, this was expanded into ‘freedom of expression’ or ‘freedom of opinion’ but a conception of the freedom that democracy can allow people appeared on 44 occasions. This was followed in frequency by ‘equality’ in 25 responses.

After the two more conceptual associations came the responses which attached democracy to something more tangible in everyday life – those of ‘people’ and ‘voting’. Given the coverage received in the media, naturally, individual politicians were also mentioned, Donald Trump and Joe Biden being the most common – the news of Kamala Harris’ selection as the Democrat’s presidential candidate had not been released at that point – with Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson coming a close third.

Some interesting answers that were mentioned just once should also be highlighted. A large proportion of people who gave answers were football players under 18 but ‘school’ was only mentioned in connection with democracy once. On the positive side, ‘solidarity’, ‘diversity’ and ‘exchange’ were all mentioned but, on the negative side, so was ‘echo chambers’, ‘fake’ and ‘hopelessness’. Despite this, democracy as a concept clearly maintains a positive image among Gothia Cup attendants.

2. Do you feel free when it comes to choosing your life’s path?

Incredibly, having 79% of respondents answer ‘yes’ is not the most impressive part of this question. The most impressive part is that only 7% answered ‘no’. This is not to claim that everyone was overwhelmingly free in choosing their life’s path – ‘yes, but…’ was a common answer. The reasons given as to why people qualified their positive response included experiences of racism, being too young to vote, the influence of family, and the rich having too much power. Overall, we found it interesting that people we asked were answering much more positively than in other places we have held OCDTs.

3. Do you feel like you have power as a citizen?

The answers to whether respondents felt that they had power as a citizen was less one sided. 46% began their answer with ‘yes’. The reasons that people felt powerful ranged from having ‘human rights’, ‘the right to make changes and voice your opinion’ and being inspired by Greta Thunberg’s school strikes. Not all answers that begin with ‘yes’ were unqualified; many began with ‘yes but…’. Some were unhappy with the radicalization of political parties, or that they were unrepresented by them, and others acknowledged that individuals have less power than groups.

However, since less than half began with ‘yes’, there was a large portion of people with less positive answers – ranging from ‘sometimes’ to ‘not so much’ to ‘not completely’ to straight ‘no’. The reasons for this are interesting: some people under the age of 18 said that they were too young to feel like they had any power, by voting for example, or were unable to have their voice heard, highlighting the importance of organizations like IYTT that are allowing young people to voice their concerns. People over the age of 18 focused more on politicians being disconnected from the people who vote for them.

4. What would you need to make you feel more powerful?

It’s always fascinating to hear people reflect on whether they feel powerful and how they might feel more powerful. We had the opportunity to ask a huge number of young people, people under 18, what would have to change. At the Gothia Cup, the most common answer was to lower the voting age, only once did someone under the age of 18 push back on the idea. Other answers revealed the intelligence and creativity of young people. Some suggestions were: more internal democracy in political parties, having political discussions at school rather than only learning about the structures of the government, referendums and more democratic control within schools and organisation of more demonstrations around key areas that engage young people.

Not all answers from young people were solely political; personal development also came up as a theme – developing self-confidence and improving yourself as a person. People over the age of 18 gave remarkably similar answers, just with less of a focus on the voting age and schools. The same ideas of political parties and leaders being more responsive to citizens, acting more often within a collective rather than an individual, changing the system to remove racism and sexism and making all levels of government more democratic.

Strikingly, many people over the age of 18 also believed that young people were under-utilized in providing ideas to society. At the Gothia Cup, young people, both male and female, were displaying their leadership skills in sport and their ideas in the OCDTs. Everyone in attendance noticed this – young people have plenty to offer decision makers and should be more actively engaged with by politicians. The final question we asked focused on sports itself and was informed by our other work.

5. Has sport made you feel more included in your community?

As this session of the Open Chair Democracy Talks was in collaboration with the 49th edition of the annual Gothia Cup, an integral topic of discussion was whether sports can function as a catalyst for inclusion and have a wider positive impact on a community and society. Out of the 130 people we asked, only three seemed to disagree.

The participants of the OCDTs noted a variety of reasons for how exactly sport can foster a higher degree of social inclusion. One of the biggest reasons expressed was that of sport’s ability to bring people together, physically and psychologically, allowing individuals to make friends and feel included in something bigger than themselves, united by a common passion for the sport at hand which in addition requires teamwork, mutual trust and respect. One respondent said that “sport is like democracy”, in the way that you work together and listen to your teammates, giving everyone a voice and a part in the team, hence fostering inclusion.

It was also expressed that sport can help to break down prejudice, as you must work together with other individuals vastly different from oneself, whether this is through linguistic, cultural or ethnic diversity in addition to uniting players from different economic backgrounds. In this context, sport can act as a language to connect people. Additionally, sports can be a driving force for personal development, improving physical and mental health. We are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of sports as a place of community building and as a structured organized outlet for people outside of work, school and the home. Some countries are cutting funding to social spaces such as sports clubs and the IYTT can only see downsides to those decisions.

Several of the important positive effects of sports have also been covered in the International Youth Think Tank’s working paper ‘Sport and Social Cohesion: Bridging Social Divides through Equitable Sports Policies’ and the accompanying policy brief ‘Sports and Social Cohesion’ which assesses the potential of sports policies to reduce polarization and strengthen democracy by capitalizing on the immense potential of sports on social cohesion by prioritizing diversity and social inclusion. This prioritization is necessary as, even though sports can act as a unifying and accessible force for good, it also presents a risk of reinforcing socioeconomic differences because of the inherent costs associated with certain sports, such as clothing and training costs. The working paper also outlines other difficulties such as investments that could favor some communities over others, often more marginalized ones, in addition to the notion that certain sports environments can be seen as not closing gaps between people, but rather attempting to assert the dominance of one culture.

It is considering these positive aspects of sports, in addition to several hazards outlined that the IYTT calls for sports policies which guarantee accessibility to sports by creating venues, facilities and courses that are economically attainable and accessible to all, focusing on group sports and set up within the community of any target groups. Furthermore, the working paper strongly encourages supporting existing grassroots community-based sports associations that are actively anti-discrimination.

The Open Chair Democracy Talks conducted in Gothenburg have given us one glaring realization: that sports foster inclusion and participation while simultaneously equipping people with a third space in which they can be themselves and learn skills such as communication and teamwork while overcoming prejudices. At the same time, simply encouraging sports has its limitations, so to use sport’s full potential it is crucial to promote it while having equity, diversity and inclusion in mind.

James Mottram
Sondre Zakariassen Ranum
Federica Baggio
Valeria Andriienko

//Youth Fellows, IYTT