Call for the Dossier Resistances, Protagonisms, and Subordinations in the Agenda of Global Events

Resistances, Protagonisms, and Subordinations in the Agenda of Global Events

Organizers: Olga Lúcia Castreghini de Freitas (UFPR/UFPA); José Júlio Ferreira Lima (UFPA); Margarida Queirós (University of Lisbon)

Submission deadline: May 31, 2026

Publication date: Vol. 29, 2027

COP30 — the United Nations Conference of the Parties on climate change, held in Belém, in the state of Pará in November 2025 — has reignited a range of debates surrounding themes that have long permeated Brazilian reality, particularly in its urban and regional dimensions. These include Brazil’s renewed protagonism in environmental discussions, which had been weakened over previous years; issues related to the Amazon and its role in global climate regulation and in financing strategies aimed at forest conservation; and the processes involved in preparing Belém as the host city for the event.

Revisiting these themes revives debates on the transformative potential of mega-events in urban contexts, while also calling for critical reflection and analysis on how such global events trigger processes of resistance, protagonism, and subordination to established logics grounded in intentionalities that, in most cases, remain only weakly connected with local realities.

These global events take place across multiple world regions, encompassing diverse publics, natures, temporalities, and objectives. Despite the variety of attributes and definitions, they may be broadly understood as events that circulate among cities worldwide in search of logistical and political viability, as well as conditions conducive to social engagement, while simultaneously enabling a range of business opportunities, including tourism, infrastructure development, financing, and regulatory restructuring. Cities function as the sites in which these events become anchored, generating repercussions that unfold across multiple spheres of urban and social life.

Mega-events encompass a broad range of initiatives, which are not only limited to sporting events — such as the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup, and World Youth Day — but also include World Expos and, more recently, global summits and conferences promoted by the United Nations or by international cooperation bodies (e.g., the G20 and COP meetings). Their organization is closely tied to the strategies of transnational sporting entities such as FIFA and the International Olympic Committee, as well as intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations, which compete over agendas, norms, and international visibility. Thus, mega-events may be understood as itinerant occurrences with extensive media reach that attract large numbers of visitors and involve substantial costs — often borne by the public sector — while also promoting transformations in host cities and regions and creating (or potentializing) new destinations within international tourism (Müller, 2015; Freitas, 2025).

Among the various analytical dimensions of mega-events, particular attention is given to the mobilization surrounding their organization and to their potential legacy for host cities and countries. Resources are allocated, infrastructure projects are advanced to ensure the necessary logistical conditions, and strategic measures are implemented to facilitate the arrival of visitors and participants. Large-scale urban projects (LUPs), typically characterized by a strong iconic appeal, are deployed, while diverse forms of business activity are rendered viable. In the aftermath of the event, questions emerge regarding which effects endure and how the subsequent urban scenario takes shape.

To what extent do mega-events function as “accelerators” of pro-market urban policies, operating as devices of exceptionality capable of concentrating decisions, resources, and timelines? Under the promise of “legacies”, infrastructure and large-scale urban projects may be advanced through public–private partnerships and institutional arrangements that frequently socialize costs and risks (through guarantees, indebtedness, and the future maintenance of facilities), while simultaneously privatizing benefits (including real-estate valorization, rent-seeking, and business opportunities).

What distributive effects arise from these arrangements? To what extent are such processes associated with the displacement of low-income populations — under the pretext of sanitization — and with the intensification of control and security mechanisms, as decisions taken “outside democratic procedures”? From this perspective, mega-events may be analyzed as articulating the “city of exception”, urban branding strategies, and dynamics of gentrification and “urban cleansing” (Smith, 1996), thereby constituting — in certain contexts — forms of accumulation by dispossession.

Indeed, recurring analyses reveal the State’s indebtedness, the abandonment or mismanagement of projects, corruption in the acceleration of execution and resource allocation, the displacement of low-income populations along the paths of construction work, and real estate valorization, among other features pointing to a particular modus operandi of implementation: euphoria at announcement, frenzy during execution, and a lack of evaluation and self-critique afterwards. In this political economy of mega-events, risks and liabilities tend to fall on the public sector, while political and economic elites capitalize on the “brand” and visibility of the event; debts, underutilized facilities, and maintenance costs borne by the treasury can subsequently create opportunities for further rounds of privatization (Flyvbjerg, Budzier, & Lunn, 2021; Gaffney, 2016). Moreover, urban interventions reflecting a particular way of seeing and acting in the city, guided by the principles of urban entrepreneurship, strategic planning, and public-private partnerships, align with what Vainer (2011) has termed a “city of exception”, in which decisions bypass official democratic mechanisms and are tailored to immediate imperatives. Taken together, the practices surrounding mega-events reaffirm what Harvey (2004) described as accumulation by dispossession, whereby activities or urban spaces are removed from popular control and integrated into circuits of capital valorization, often benefiting actors or interests based outside the city.

Several additional perspectives complement this urban–regional view: (i) the geopolitical lens, which suggest that such events may constitute the manifestation of a new type of global power, “soft power” (Nye Jr., 2004), in which non-state actors wield significant influence over global decision-making, altering traditional power structures; (ii) the erasure of environmental conflicts through greenwashing, involving the financing of communication and marketing initiatives that portray companies as being environmentally responsible and socially engaged; and, not least, (iii) the emergence of new forms of diplomacy, especially sports and climate diplomacy. Mega-events also function as “global stages” on which states, cities, and corporations negotiate image, norms, and agreements, projecting reputation and leadership while attracting investment flows—including under the banner of “green” initiatives. They operate as large-scale business fairs (infrastructure contracts, technologies, consulting, and services), accelerating urban decarbonization policies and the dissemination of management models framed as “sustainable” and exportable (best practices), often oriented toward the short term. This transition raises fundamental distributive questions—who leads it and who profits?—and reactivates concerns regarding public participation, which is frequently limited to tokenistic forms in planning (Arnstein, 1969). In certain contexts, mega-events may generate new climate injustices rather than mitigating them, making counter-diplomacy central: social movements, research networks, and campaigns that expose greenwashing and the carbon footprint associated with travel, construction, and consumption.

Thus, the theme proposed for this special issue—Resistance, Protagonism, and Subordination in the Global Events Agenda—invites researchers to engage in critical analyses, revisit existing studies, and explore future perspectives, bringing together contributions around a focused thematic dossier.

Two factors motivate the proposal of this special issue. First, the intensive work of Brazilian researchers has consolidated a robust agenda on the sporting mega-events held in Brazil in 2014 and 2016—an agenda that, in our view, still requires critical assessment of which elements were realized (or not) in terms of urban transformations and regional reconfigurations. Second, the recent COP30 held in Belém, in the State of Pará, not only reactivated the debate on mega-events in Brazil but also repositioned the country within the international arena of environmental issues, mobilizing resources related to soft power, greenwashing, and climate diplomacy.

Accordingly, submissions are encouraged that address the following concerns:

i) A critical perspective on the mega-events held in Brazil over recent decades and assessments of their effectiveness; new rounds of events shaped by the logic of mega-events, such as the Conferences of the Parties (COPs); and the urban transformations that have actually taken place a decade after Brazil’s sporting mega-events, and how these dynamics have been reproduced in other cities and countries across Latin America.

ii) Mega-events as both an industry and a political–economic phenomenon: accelerators of pro-market urban policies; mechanisms for the socialization of costs and privatization of benefits; processes of regulatory flexibilization and the circumvention of democratic channels; dynamics of gentrification, “social cleansing”, evictions, and securitization; the generation of fiscal risks through public guarantees and indebtedness; and the underuse of facilities together with their long-term maintenance burdens, often accompanied by post-event privatization opportunities.

iii) Mega-events and summits as “global stages”: the production and circulation of norms, narratives, and agreements within these arenas, as well as the actors that shape and advance them; the extent to which models and best practices originating in hegemonic centers are reinforced — including solution markets, consultancies, and technologies — and their effects on local contexts; the distributive conflicts and asymmetries that arise as international agendas are translated into territorial projects, financing arrangements, and regulatory regimes, together with the forms of contestation, reappropriation, and counter-diplomacy that may be mobilized in response.

iv) Political mobilization surrounding the implementation of the physical and logistical infrastructure required for hosting COP in Belém has prompted reflections on urban dynamics in the Amazon. These debates encompass aspects related both to the conservation and the degradation of the biome, while also engaging with the specificities of the Amazonian relief and with locally situated modes of inhabiting, mobility, and consumption in cities, as they become increasingly articulated with international agendas addressing the impacts of climate change.

v) In the post-COP30 period, repercussions, forms of resistance, and mobilizations that may — or may not — subvert the prevailing logics of climate diplomacy move to the forefront of debates, raising questions about the extent to which Brazil can be considered a global actor in the exercise of soft power and in demonstrating leadership through the hosting of environmental conferences.

To this end, contributions are invited from researchers in urban and regional planning and related fields — including regional development, geography, economics, architecture and urbanism, sociology, tourism, sports studies, and law — presenting empirical and/or theoretical–critical analyses that examine agenda disputes, institutional arrangements, financial flows, and regulatory regimes, as well as their distributive, territorial, and socio-environmental effects (including carbon footprints), together with forms of resistance and counter-diplomacy associated with global events.

 

References

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