Brazil, politics, the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup

Interest in the development of the political system of the largest nation in South America has been a long-standing feature of scholarly research (see for example Rocha and McDonagh 2014; Levine and Crocitti 1999; McCann 2008). Academic interest in sport in South America has been given a significant boost by the scheduled hosting of the two largest sports megaevents – the FIFA men’s football World Cup Finals and the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games – in Brazil and Rio de Janeiro in 2014 and 2016 respectively. This is not to say that research has not been conducted until recently, but to acknowledge that the English-language literature has started to increase, and looks certain to grow even more rapidly in the coming years (for earlier research see Arbena 1999). One of the reasons is that the staging of these ‘megas’ focuses the attention of the global media and academics on the host nation and cities involved.