Chris Dillow has a great article (link here – would recommend reading all of it) that considers the revolution taking place in Tunisia at the moment, and how the events over there may serve as an inspiration for others and create a “domino effect” around the world with regards to the cause of the disposal of dictators and autocrats in favour or democracy and freedom.
I wouldn’t normally comment on such matters because in no way am I qualified to blog on international politics (even on football is debatable!), I try to keep my opinion on such areas to a minimum and leave the debate to the more informed Oliver Kamm’s and Noam Chomsky’s of this world, but I think that the ideas that Chris puts forward can be linked to the MUST inspired anti-Glazer movement in a way.
Chris says, “This paper (link) sheds some light. Consider someone pondering whether to protest. The gain from doing so is the probability of achieving your objective. The cost is the risk of being arrested or beaten up. How you weigh up these costs and benefits depends upon your belief about the strength of the government. If you think it’s strong enough to resist the protests, you might not bother. But if you think it’s weak enough to either give in or not punish protestors, you will protest.
And here’s the thing. The reaction of neighbouring governments to similar protests affects your judgment of your own government’s strength or weakness. If it is weak, you figure: “Maybe protests will work here as well.” At the margin, this gets more people onto the streets. One government’s reaction to protests has “reputation externalities” for other governments.
As it stands, there are a couple of holes here. One is the problem of collective action (link). To the individual, the potential costs of protesting are high – possibly death – whilst the benefits are spread over millions. So why doesn’t he just free-ride (link) on others’ protests? If everyone does this, there’ll be no protests.
The very fact that there are protests shows that there’s something wrong with this. The answer, I suspect, is that some people – “extremists”! – gain symbolic utility (link) from protesting. If they are not beaten up and arrested, other, less fanatical, people join them. This is why the size of protests sometimes snowballs. (A further mechanism here is Timur Kuran's theory of availability cascades (link): seeing others protest makes us think that protesting is a reasonable thing to do).
The second hole is: what exactly is going on the mind of the marginal protestor who sees a successful revolution in a neighbouring country? The paper seems to suggest that he has been always conducting a rational cost-benefit analysis of whether to protest or not. But I suspect what might instead be happening is a form of attention effect (link). The thought of protesting simply doesn’t occur to him, until he sees others – people like him doing so. And when he sees this, he figures: “I can do that.”
Now obviously protesting against the owners of a football club doesn’t quite carry the same importance or significance as protesting against a dictatorial Government, but parallels between the two can be drawn. The “free rider” problem, whereby people receive a benefit from something despite not having had to bear any of the cost in obtaining it (think of street lighting, a “public good” in economics jargon) is clearly evident in the anti-Glazer movement. Why go to the effort of protesting in order to get rid of the Glazer’s (which will offer the benefits that all can enjoy, such as more cash available and therefore more investment in the squad and success, and more morally considerate ticket prices) when others will do it for you?
Whilst the risks of protesting against the owners of a football club probably don’t include the possibility of being killed, there is still a risk of being arrested or banned from football grounds. As Alan Smithy has pointed out at Football Hobo (link cheap viagra online
ss.com/2010/12/17/i-fought-the-law-and-the-law-won/”>here), football fans are often treated as sub-human scum, with the authorities disdain towards us resulting in a complete abandonment of basic human rights and civil liberties and freedom. Wouldn’t be much point in protesting for your football club if you can’t watch them again as a result, would there? A kind of selfish but entirely understandable viewpoint.
Another reason I feel for people not choosing to protest with regards to the Glazer situation, apart from the obvious which is that they don’t agree with the movement (which I touched on once, link here), is that they feel that there’s nothing that we fans can do to get rid of them. The consensus amongst many fans seems to be that we simply don’t have enough power to get rid of them, that the only thing that holds any sway in such an event is money, and we don’t have enough. To take such a view though, I feel, is self-defeating and a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t think something like this is going to work, well, it’s not going to work then is it? Well done you. The protests have ultimately had an effect, just look at the fact that the Glazer’s didn’t use any of the clubs cash (despite having the means to do so) to pay off the PIK debts (see Anders Red blog for more details).
And of course though, despite 1 million people protesting in London against the Iraq war a few years back, the war still went ahead. Yet people still protest about things, despite it seeming to be the case that their collective voice carries very little weight (just ask the students). I think many of us feel that a lot of the time a protest is kind of futile, yet we still do it. Why? Well I for one go on anti-Glazer protests because I feel it’s the right thing to do. I feel very strongly about a social institution that is a football club being used to line a rich man’s pockets at the cost of ordinary people who just want to follow and support their team, but are now unable to do so. I understand that football clubs are businesses, they need cash to survive and should therefore be run as competent businesses aiming to make a profit, but the means do not always justify the ends. Football is no ordinary business, it is more than “brand loyalty”, and unfettered free markets have a tendency to leave the poor behind.
But of course I go on the anti-Glazer protests for selfish reasons as well; it gives me that “warm feeling” inside, the satisfaction and camaraderie of standing side-by-side with someone, of belonging to a certain group identity in uniting against a common cause. It also makes me feel like I’m a “better fan” than those that don’t go on the protests, just like someone who gives to charity so they can feel smug about it afterwards and tell everyone about their great deed. But this doesn’t invalidate the justification for the protests.
With talk of an Arab takeover on the horizon, a lot of people seem to be taking a back seat on the issue again, waiting to see what happens and if the Glazer’s can be gotten rid of without the need for any input from ourselves. The moral debate regarding such a sale I’ll leave for another time, although with the Glazer’s I don’t think it’s a case of “better the devil you know”. We know this devil very well, and there are a plethora of better alternatives out there. But we can easily make things harder for the Glazer’s and make a sale more attractive for them and the prospective buyer if we can up the ante a bit and get right on the Glazer’s backs. If the Glazer’s are replaced with desirable owners, I for one will be straight down to the megastore to buy the new shirt and some Cantona memorabilia. You can never have enough Cantona memorabilia.
But more importantly, we can serve as an inspiration to the rest of the footballing world. The fans of one of the largest and most famous football clubs in the world ousting their owners? It would send shockwaves (and no Liverpool fans, you didn’t do it, RBS did. Kind of wish you did do it though). The brilliant In Bed With Maradona have recently proposed a revolution (links here and here) with regards to the coverage of football in this country, because many of us (myself included) have had enough with the mundane, poorly-informed, English heavy focus of football coverage in this country. Sepp Blatter and his Fifa cronies? We’ll take them on while we’re at it as well. These things have a tendency to snowball, and I think we should start getting that ball rolling again.
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