Abstract
Originally established in 1956 for Western European states, the Eurovision Song Contest has been the world’s largest popular music event and one of the most popular television programs in Europe. It is organized annually by the European Broadcasting Union, whose members now include public broadcasters from almost every European state. As it is based on national entries, Eurovision provides an interesting case study of how states have imagined and branded themselves for a pan-European audience, while its voting results have been used as a measure of how different national publics perceive each other.
This chapter focuses on why authoritarian states have used Eurovision in their public diplomacy to assert national distinctiveness, express geopolitical alliances and whitewash their international image. The chapter includes examples from Portugal and Spain in the 1960s and 1970s, Yugoslavia during the Cold War and Azerbaijan, Belarus and Russia after 1989. The chapter will consider the economic and political factors that have motivated these states to invest significant resources into their participation in Eurovision, as well as why some of these states have been more successful in appropriating popular music in their cultural diplomacy. The political debates that have taken place across Europe over the participation of these states to the Eurovision contest are also addressed.
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Notes
- 1.
Jane Buchanan, “They Took Everything from Me”: Forced Evictions, Unlawful Expropriations, and House Demolitions in Azerbaijan’s Capital (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2012).
- 2.
Margarita Antidze, “Iran’s ‘Gay’ Eurovision Jibes Strain Azerbaijan Ties,” Reuters (22 May 2012).
- 3.
On music as a technique of presentation of the self, see Chap. 6 in this volume by Damien Mahiet.
- 4.
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, trans. Michael Henry Heim (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), p. 251.
- 5.
For a comparative study of the EBU and the OIRT, see Ernest Eugster, Television Programming Across National Boundaries: The EBU and OIRT Experience (Dedham, MA: Artech House, 1983).
- 6.
International Radiotelegraph Conference (Madrid, 1932), General Radiocommunication Regulations Annexed to the International Telecommunication Convention; Final Protocol to the General Radiocommunication Regulations; Additional Radiocommunication Regulations Annexed to the International Telecommunication Convention; Additional Protocol to the Acts of the International Radiotelegraph Conference of Madrid, Signed by the Governments of the European Region (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1933), p. 12.
- 7.
Sasha D. Pack, Tourism and Dictatorship: Europe’s Peaceful Invasion of Franco’s Spain (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 8.
- 8.
Luisa Pinto Texeira and Martin Stokes, “And After Love…: Eurovision, Portuguese Popular Culture and the Carnation Revolution,” in Dafni Tragaki (ed.), Empire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest (Lanham, MA: The Scarecrow Press, 2013), pp. 223–225.
- 9.
Aníbal Arias Ruiz, “‘Operation Plus Ultra’: A Genuinely European Radio Programme from Spain,” EBU Review: Part B (General and Legal) 120 (1970): 30.
- 10.
Sílvia Martínez and Amparo Sales Casanova, “Afterword: Mediterranean Love Songs: A Conversation with Joan Manuel Serrat,” in Sílvia Martínez and Héctor Fouce, Made in Spain: Studies in Popular Music (New York and London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 202–203.
- 11.
Spain invested so heavily into the ESC that the budget of its national broadcasting organization had to rely more on commercials in order to pay for hosting the ESC. Eduardo Viñuela, ‘Popular Music in Televisión Española: Cultural Policies, Consumption and Spanish Identity’, in Martínez and Fouce (eds.), Made in Spain, p. 183; Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano, “Spain Was Not Living a Celebration. TVE and the Eurovision Song Contest During the Years of Franco’s Dictatorship,” View: Journal of European Television History and Culture, 1(2) (November 2012): 11–17.
- 12.
Francis Lyall, International Communications: The International Telecommunication Union and the Universal Postal Union (London: Routledge, 2016), p. 113.
- 13.
Pinto Texeira and Stokes, in Empire of Song, pp. 226, 231–236 (on media liberalisation, pp. 228–231).
- 14.
Soraia Simões, Passado-presente: uma viagem ao universo de Paulo de Carvalho (Lisbon: Chiado, 2012), pp. 73–74.
- 15.
However, as Portugal also finally shed its colonial territories after the Carnation Revolution, this was marked in the Portuguese entry ‘Conquistador’ (Conqueror) in the 1986 ESC.
- 16.
Pinto Texeira and Stokes, in Empire of Song, p. 236.
- 17.
Gonda Van Steen, Stage of Emergency: Theater and Public Performance Under the Greek Military Dictatorship of 1967–1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 167.
- 18.
Turkey, which was also a founding member of the EBU and a member of the CoE and NATO, witnessed three military coups during the Cold War. After Turkey joined the ESC for the first time in 1975, it had a military government from 1980 to 1983, and during this time it participated in the ESC every year.
- 19.
Vice Vukov, Tvoja zemlja: sjećanja na 1971 (Zagreb: Nakladni zavod Matice Hrvatske, 2003), pp. 79–80, 102.
- 20.
As the journalist Maroje Mihovilović wrote regarding Yugoslavia’s experience in the ESC, “[w]e are a proud nation, we know that some geographical and historical circumstances have apparently pushed us into the background of the European cultural and pseudocultural community, and that bothers us,” Maroje Mihovilović, ‘Jer što je nama Eurovizija?’ (24 March 1976).
- 21.
Dean Vuletic, “European Sounds, Yugoslav Visions: Performing Yugoslavia at the Eurovision Song Contest,” in Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday Life in Yugoslavia, eds. Breda Luthar and Maruša Pušnik (Washington, DC: New Academia, 2010), pp. 127–128.
- 22.
European Parliament, ‘European Parliament Resolution of 24 May 2012 on the Human Rights Situation in Azerbaijan,’ Official Journal of the European Union C 264 E (13 September 2013), p. 91; European Parliament, ‘Negotiations of the EU-Azerbaijan Association Agreement,’ Official Journal of the European Union C 258 E (7 September 2013), p. 40.
- 23.
European Commission, ‘Statement of President Barroso Following his Meeting with Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan’ (Brussels, 22 June 2011).
- 24.
Cited in Milija Gluhovic, “Sing for Democracy: Human Rights and Sexuality Discourse in the Eurovision Song Contest,” in Karen Fricker and Milija Gluhović (eds.) Performing the ‘New’ Europe: Identities, Feelings, and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest (Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 207.
- 25.
Stefan Niggemeier, “Eine Imageschaden? Glaube ich null,” Der Spiegel (9 May 2012).
- 26.
Gluhovic, “Sing for Democracy,” pp. 208–209.
- 27.
Commissioner for Human Rights, Council of Europe, ‘Third Party Intervention by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights under Article 36, Paragraph 3, of the European Convention on Human Rights: Application No. 69981/14 Rasul Jafarov v. Azerbaijan’ (Strasbourg, 30 March 2015), p. 7.
- 28.
- 29.
For another set of tools in the hands of Putin’s music diplomacy, see Chap. 11 by Emilija Pundziute Gallois.
- 30.
Shahla Sultanova, ‘In Eurovision Spending, Azerbaijan Is a Clear Winner’, Transitions Online (20 April 2012).
- 31.
Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergej Lavrov even alleged that vote fixing was happening in the contest after Russia did not receive any points from Azerbaijan in 2013. Miriam Elder, “Eurovision Song Contest: Russian Foreign Minister Wades into Voting Row,” The Guardian (21 May 2013).
- 32.
The only other European states that are not members of the CoE are Kosovo, which does not have sufficient international recognition, and Vatican City, due to its theocracy.
- 33.
Woodhead, How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin, pp. 221–222.
- 34.
“Lukashenko: Eurovision is Totally Biased,” BelTA (30 April 2013).
- 35.
“Germany Slams Lukashenko over Slur,” Der Spiegel (5 March 2012).
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Vuletic, D. (2018). The Eurovision Song Contest in the Musical Diplomacy of Authoritarian States. In: Ramel, F., Prévost-Thomas, C. (eds) International Relations, Music and Diplomacy . The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63163-9_10
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