Hoooger's world

Do the PRSPs represent a genuine policy shift towards a greater poverty focus in developing countries?

2006-05-18T01:23:00.000+01:00

Here's an essay I wrote for uni, so sorry about the wordiness!

Do the PRSPs represent a genuine policy shift towards a greater poverty focus in developing countries?

Introduction

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) was brought into being in 1999 as a joint venture of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. HIPC rose to British mainstream consciousness during Tony Blair’s attempts to emblazon his name in the history books with his ‘war on poverty’ at the 2005 G8 Summit at Gleneagles, Edinburgh, UK. In order to receive debt relief and other financial assistance under the HIPC initiative, countries must produce a PRSP and receive ‘candid feedback’ (IMF.org) on it by the boards of the IMF and the World Bank. Currently 49 countries have full PRSPs in operation and 11 have interim PRSPs. The PRSP approach is described by the IMF as

“a comprehensive country-based strategy for poverty reduction. It aims to provide the crucial link between national public actions, donor support, and the development outcomes needed to meet the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are centered on halving poverty between 1990 and 2015.”

(http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/prsp.htm)

The failure of the predecessor to the PRSP, the Structural Adjustment Plan (SAP, 1980s and 1990s), to alleviate poverty, or even to facilitate the economic growth through which the SAPs were justified (see pg 7), had drawn a level of criticism globally which demanded reform. This was compounded by the IMF’s role in the East Asian Crash of 1997, particularly in South Korea and Indonesia where the IMF’s forced policies on sceptical governments exasperated a crisis and, in the case of Indonesia, culminated in a run on the banks (See Stiglitz, 2003 and Wood, 2004). The IMF and the World Bank say that the PRSP initiative is based on five key principles:

Country-driven, promoting national ownership of strategies through broad-based participation of civil society;

Result-oriented and focused on outcomes that will benefit the poor;

Comprehensive in recognizing the multidimensional nature of poverty;

partnership-oriented, involving coordinated participation of development partners (government, domestic stakeholders, and external donors); and

Based on a long-term perspective for poverty reduction.

(http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/prsp.htm)

Each of these principles relate directly to some of the more significant criticisms of SAPs as voiced by various academics and theorists.

§ Infringing on sovereignty through excessive policy conditions leading to plans not being carried out by governments (Country Driven)

§ Focussed narrowly on growth of GNP as opposed to ‘pro-poor outcomes’, leading to increased inequality and little or no poverty alleviation (Results Oriented)

§ Prescribed ‘one size fits all’ policies (Comprehensive)

§ Opaque and un-inclusive, leading to voiceless-ness and corruption (Partnership oriented)

§ Aimed at achieving fast short term growth in the interests of Western investors in the context of the debt crisis (Long term)

In this context, the PRSPs can be seen as a response to the criticisms which were being levelled at the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) at the end of the 1990s and it is clear that, rhetorically at least, the World Bank and the IMF are taking these criticisms seriously. The first question therefore is to what extent does this rhetorical shift translate to a genuine shift in policy?

I will be looking at some key areas of the PRSP discussion and attempting to build an empirical case suggesting that the shift at this stage has been much more impressive rhetorically than it has in reality. In other words that many of the criticisms of SAPs as outlined above are applicable also to PRSPs even though the rhetoric has changed. It is with regret that I have insufficient space to pay more than a cursory glance towards the involvement of China in Africa and the effect of China’s international outlook on the PRSP approach.

Main Essay:

The overriding impression from the rhetoric of the World Bank and IMF is that ownership is a key aspect in the PRS approach. It had become clear to them, albeit somewhat later than it did for many of us (at least publicly), that pushing structural reform and specific policies on unwilling governments was at the very least contributing to these reforms and policies not being carried out.

It has been widely argued that the continued existence of conditionality in the PRSP process inherently discounts national ownership. At first glance, it would seem that this would be a fair conclusion and indeed, it mostly is. However the issue is somewhat more complex than that and requires analysis.

To finance the PRSP and to help with debt, the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) provide loans, namely the Poverty Reduction Support Credit, (PRSC) from the World Bank, and the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, (PRGF). Contrary to much of the now out of date literature on PRSPs, the World Bank and IMF no longer have to provide explicit endorsement of the PRSP in order for the countries to receive these loans. However, the loans themselves come with significant policy and structural adjustment conditions attached. And this is all without mentioning Country, Policy and Institutional Assessments (CPIA), which I will explore in depth later. The IFIs argue that these conditions are entirely necessary to any lending agreement for reasons of their own accountability to their investors and their investor’s taxpayers. In any case they say, conditionality when managed in the correct way often enhances ownership.

“Conditionality should be understood as a credible indicator of

commitment by the Bank and its partners to support a mutually

agreed reform process, not an attempt to force externally

designed policy changes on unwilling governments. It represents a

transparent and explicit understanding of sustained external

support for a new and ongoing program, formulated by the

country with wide participation by the private sector and the civil

society and in cooperation with external partners. The program

would be owned by the country, and conditionality would define

the parameters of external support.”

(Branson & Hanna, 2000, p. 1, as quoted by Angela Woods, 2004, pg13)

However as the following quote from a 2005 EURODAD submission to the IMF/World Bank review committee shows, conditionality is not working like that in the PRSP approach.

“In Ethiopia, despite the fact that the constitution stipulates that any national development plan needs to be passed by parliament, Parliament had no role in the PRSP process or any vote on the final document, effectively being totally ignored. Whilst in 2003, for example, the Ghanaian parliament passed a budget which included increases in tariffs on poultry and rice. However, the IMF in a series of meetings following the budget announcement, criticised the move noting that it would negatively impact on the Fund’s program arrangements and jeopardise the status of the Fund program. As a result, the Government did not implement the tariff increases, going against the wishes of the Ghanaian Parliament -The Ministry of Agriculture, for example, first heard about it on the radio.”

EURODAD, 2005 (see bib)

According to Angela Woods (2004), proponents of the IFI position further argue that conditionality assists governments in enacting unpopular reforms by providing the bogey man of external commitments. It also attracts investment from people or corporations who may lack faith if there was the possibility of policy reversal. Finally, the IMF argue that conditionality insures the ‘cycle of funds’ continues to roll so that future generations of impoverished nations and people can have access to them, in other words that the conditions provide both an incentive to repay the loans and enforce the policies to enable the repayments. It is quite possible that there is empirical evidence to substantiate these claims, however, two hours of trawling the IFI websites has left me empty handed.

There is on the other hand a multitude of evidence refuting these claims. The claim that conditionality insures repayments is laughable considering the existence of the HIPC initiative and the severity of the debt situation. “From 1989 to 1999, the share of (IMF) programs with structural conditions has increased from 60 percent to 100 percent… and the average number of structural conditions per program has increased from 3 to 12” (Woods, 2004, pg 16). With that in mind, consider that in 1998, The Ivory Coast, Lao, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Sudan, Zambia, Guyana and Mauritania all had debt totals of approximately two years of national income, Angola had closer to three years worth, Nicaragua and Guinea-Bissau around the 4year mark, with Sao Tome and the Democratic Republic of Congo having debt in excess of SIX years of national income. When converted into years of exports, which is pertinent considering the fact that debt must be paid in foreign exchange, sixteen of the HIPC nations had debt which would take in excess of 5 years to pay off, with eight of those nations the debt was equal to over ten years of export income and with three of them, well in excess of twenty years (all statistics taken from Sutcliffe, 2001, pg 83). As Sutcliffe points out, debt worth two years of national product is similar to what was imposed on Germany as reparations after World War I, which was widely perceived as un-payable and completely crippling. How much damage IFI conditionality is doing to HIPC nations’ ability to clear their un-clearable debts is unknown, however it is beyond doubt that the conditions imposed by the IFIs are not insuring that they get repaid. It is also true that conditionality has no history of insuring that structural adjustment is carried out, in fact quite the opposite. According to Wood (2004 pg 15), 44% of IMF programmes between 1992 and 1998 were not carried out and in many quarters, this figure is estimated to be considerably higher.

Having said all of the above, it is my belief that some degree of conditionality is desirable and I agree with the IFIs that conditionality in itself is not an oxy-moron for ownership. As we are seeing with the involvement of China in Africa, large capital flows to corrupt governments are hardly ‘pro-poor’. An article in Le Monde diplomatique in May 2005 (see bib) points out that in Angola and Sudan, Chinese loans and aid, which come with no conditionality at all are known to be both encouraging corruption and, in the case of Sudan, propping up a government involved in the practice of genocide. As The Guardian reported on 18^th July 2005, Nigeria’s leaders over 40 years have collectively stolen £222 Billion. Africa’s problems are obviously not simply due to corruption, the same report goes on to make the point that Mali is rated highly in terms of honesty by transparency international but is still riddled with poverty. Nonetheless it is clear that corruption (in tandem with countless other factors) has played a significant role in the problem of global poverty. The notion of money, intended to alleviate poverty, falling into the control of a leader such as the former President of Zambia, Frederick Chiluba (1991-2002), who stole at least $52 million (Transparency International, 2003) is not a positive one and there are many such examples in Africa over the last 40 years.

Conditionality surrounding corruption is not what the problem is with regards to our central question however. The curtailing of grand corruption is undoubtedly good for the poor but I think it is clear that in the area of economic policy there is much to debate. Earlier I touched on Country, Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA), which, along with a nation’s need (Gross National Product), is the instrument used by the World Bank to determine the allocation of funds amongst HIPC countries. CPIAs rate countries based on 20 equally weighted criteria which are broken into four clusters displayed in the table below.

Economic management, including management of inflation and current account; fiscal policy;

management of external debt; and management

and sustainability of the development program.

Structural policies, including trade policy and foreign exchange regime; financial stability and

depth; banking sector efficiency and resource

mobilization; competitive environment for the

private sector; factor and product markets; and

policies and institutions for environmental sustainability.

Policies for social inclusion, including gender equity

and equality of economic opportunity, equity

of public resource use, building human resources,

safety nets; and poverty monitoring and analysis.

Public sector management and institutions, including

property rights and rule-based governance;

quality of budgetary and financial management;

efficiency of revenue mobilization; efficiency of

public expenditures; and transparency, accountability

and corruption in the public sector.

Information taken from UNPAN (2005, pg1)

During the fiscal years from 2003-2005, UNPAN point out that the World Bank allocated almost five times the amount of money to governments in the top performing quintile than those in the bottom quintile. We see here that receiving funds under the PRSP approach for HIPC nations is reliant on accepting conditions imposed by the IFIs on fundamental policies for economic development and poverty reduction. If we consider the economic management cluster to be standard good governance and the social inclusion cluster to be basic 21^st Century morality, the final two clusters alone constitute undiluted Neo-Liberal theory with absolutely no difference from the failed policies which were imposed under the SAP model.

Based on data from CPIAs, the IFIs say that

“Over the past five years, gains in policy performance by low-income countries substantially outpaced that in middle-income and other low-income countries… The focused attention which the PRSP approach placed on improved institutions and policies may be responsible in part for these developments.”

World Bank/IMF joint PRS review, 2005 (pg7)

As the IFIs proudly inform us, during the PRSP period there has been a homogenisation of Neo-Liberal economic policy amongst HIPC countries, in fact in the 2005 joint review, as we shall see in the next paragraph, this is the only area where any significant gains are empirically justified on a general basis, as opposed to data for individual countries. So is Neo-Liberalism compatible with a greater focus on eradicating poverty?

For individual countries, like for example Zambia, the World Bank/IMF joint review of the PRSP approach (2005, pg 6) does present some encouraging statistics. GDP growth in Zambia went from 3.3% in 2003, to 5.1% in 2004 and then steadied at 5.0% in 2005. And growth in exports in Zambia almost doubled between 2002 and 2005. There are also some reasonably impressive gains in a very limited range of socio-economic indicators on a general basis, with rises in low-income African countries of 8.6% in primary school enrolment, 7.7% in measles immunisation and 11.3% in access to improved water supply (pg 6). The report also shows that GDP growth and per capita growth in low-income countries rose steadily between 1995 and 1999. However curiously in terms of their conclusion that growth figures in low-income countries provide an ‘encouraging basis on which to build’’, growth decreased slightly in low-income countries between 1999 and 2003.

The scope of this essay does not permit the full analysis of Neo-Liberalism that is required here. I have no space to delve deeply into the question of whether or not economic growth is good for the poor. Dollar and Kray (2001) show in their study Growth is good for the poor that it probably is in a very generalised way. They show with statistical evidence (Figure 1) that there seems to be a linear relationship between growth and incomes of the poor. Their work also suggests a link between ‘pro globalisation policies’ and growth. According to their study, government consumption as a percentage of GDP for instance, decreases growth by up to 42% with a knock on effect on incomes of the poor of up to 50%.

A report summarising the critiques of Dollar and Kraay’s work however (Left Business Observer (LBO)Issue #95, Nov’ 2000), shows a number of holes in the above argument. The summary first looks at the allocation of the benefits of growth in the United States and shows that while economic growth does benefit the poor, the real winners are the rich. Between 1980 and 1999 the richest 5% in The United States enjoyed 41% of the benefits of economic growth and the poorest 5% gained access to only 2%. According to Mark Weisbrot of CEPR (as quoted in LBO, 2000), David Dollar when questioned by him at a seminar in August 2000 admitted that they could just as well have titled the paper ‘Growth is good for the rich’. The report goes on to cite Howard White and Edward Anderson of the University of Sussex as illustrating that Dollar and Kraay are guilty of biasing the statistics by averaging the sharply variant experiences of different countries. In some, the poor have brought averages down, but in others they've brought them up, when you average them, the results seem neutral.

Regardless of how much economic growth benefits the poor, the question with regards to the scope of this essay is more of how far Neo-Liberal economic theory is good for growth. Growth is a central strand of the Neo-Liberal/IFI argument and the statistics show that Neo-Liberalism has not lead to greater growth in developing countries over long periods of time, although it is clear that Neo-Liberalism leads to growth in the short term in some cases, as is shown above. Ha Joon Chang (2002.pg 128) shows that between 1960 and 1980 (the years of ‘bad policies’) growth in 116 developing and developed countries was 3.1% per year. And between 1980 and 2000 (the years of good Neo-Liberal policies and SAPs) it was only 1.4% in those same countries. The growth rate rose above 0.1 percentage points in only 13 of the 88 developing countries in that sample in the same period. In Africa growth fell by 15% between 1980 and 1998 but had grown by 36% between 1960 and 1980.

Incidentally, Chang, in the same book, makes a particularly strong case against Neo-Liberalism on the basis of its A-historical nature in the history of industrialised economies. He shows that countries such as Britain, the United States and Japan, along with the Tiger Economies of East Asia used policies which have little in common with Neo-Liberalism in their own periods of development. To take protection of infant industry for example, a hugely frowned upon policy in Neo-Liberal theory; Britain in 1820 had 45-55% tariff rates on manufactured products, in 1875 The United States had 40-50%, Japan in 1913 had 30% (Chang 2002, table 2.1, pg17). A cursory glance at the history books will tell you that these were the periods in each country when their industrialisation was in its blooming stage. Chang asks the question of why it is that today’s developing countries are not being allowed to follow policies which have historically led to success.

The only statistics we have on poverty reduction come from the World Bank who say that global poverty has declined between 1987 and 1998 from 28% to 24%. Again I do not have space here to analyse these statistics but Robert Wade (2003) shows that the statistics quoted by the World Bank on poverty reduction have hugely dubious methodology. Based on PPP currency, calculated using a basket of products including plane tickets (which are not commonly bought by the world’s poorest people) and on statistics from 2 different base years, these statistics shed absolutely no light on poverty reduction globally. However, even if we are to use these statistics to measure poverty reduction, if we take out China and India (distinctly non Neo-Liberal countries), poverty, not to mention inequality would certainly be seen to have increased. For the purpose of discovering how far Neo-Liberal policies help the poorest people in HIPC nations it is quite justifiable to omit China and India. As Wade points out (Prospect magazine, March 2002), 85% of world income goes to 20% of the world’s population and 6% goes to 60%. If inequality and poverty has increased in HIPC countries in the Neo-Liberal period and, as we have seen Neo-Liberal economic theory is embedded in the PRSP approach, how can it possibly be argued that PRSPs have a greater poverty focus?

It is also clear from evidence compiled by UNCTAD and AFRODAD that Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), trade unions and other popular movements are not being listened to, which sheds serious doubts over the ‘partnership oriented’ principle laid out by the IFIs.

What PRSPs would look like if popular demands ruled

Concern	Popular demands	Typical PRSP
Education	Primary and secondary schools free of charge	Free of charge/low fees for primary schools but fees for higher levels
Health	Treatment and medicines free of charge	Primary health care free of charge but otherwise user fees (excepting some diseases and vulnerable groups)
Agriculture	Rural reform, subsidised inputs and credits, no privatisation of communal or cooperative land	Create a market for land, small-scale rural credit schemes, end public trade monopolies
Labour market	Create job, keep employment of public sector high	Increase flexibility
Macro-economy	Expansion	Restriction
Equity	Sensitivity for income and social differentiation	Avoids equity issues
Private sector	No wholesale privatisation, against big business and foreign capital	Private sector development key: privatise public services and credits
Corruption	Fight corruption and nepotism in health, education, justice, police	Fight corruption in high places (government, big business)

Based on UNCTAD (2002a) and Afrodad (2003), cited by Hermele, 2005 (see bib)

Conclusion.

President H. Truman, 1949

“We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of under-developed areas. The old imperialism – exploitation for foreign profit – has no place in our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair dealing”

(quoted in Allen and Thomas 2001, pg5)

President John F. Kennedy, inaugural address January, 1960

“man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty”

Robert McNamara, Nairobi, 1973 (head of the World Bank 1968-1981)

"The powerful have a moral obligation to assist the poor and the weak."

Paul Wolfowitz, (Head of the World Bank 2005 –present) keynote speech, Anacostia Economic Summit, May 2006

“when it comes to fighting poverty, when it comes to giving disadvantaged people a chance for the opportunities that some of us take for granted, there shouldn't be politics.”

The above quotes in themselves make the point that the rhetoric of the IFIs and successive prominent World leaders on the importance of poverty reduction are nothing new. In the years after Truman’s speech in 1949, American multi-nationals like Valco in Ghana exploited the newly independent states in Africa who were desperate for the money to industrialise their countries (see bib). In the same year that President Kennedy made the above speech, the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States was complicit in the removal from power and murder of Patrice Lumumba (Washington Post, July 21^st, 2002), the only leader ever democratically elected in Congo and one with an unabated commitment to a thriving Africa. His replacement, Mobutu Sese Seko was still being propped up and funded by the American government in 1973 at the time of McNamara’s speech in Nairobi. As the Guardian reported in March 2004 citing transparency International

“Washington leaned on the International Monetary Fund to continue lending,... By the time he was overthrown in 1997, Mobutu had stolen almost half of the $12bn in aid money that Zaire - now the Democratic Republic of Congo - received from the IMF during his 32-year reign, leaving his country saddled with a crippling debt.”

The United States was helping Mobutu in the context of Cold War fear of an invasion by then Communist Angola.

As we have seen there is little to suggest that the words of Paul Wolfowitz, a signatory of the Project for a New American Century (a think tank openly promoting US global domination), or similar rhetoric from the likes of George W Bush or Tony Blair carries any more weight than Truman’s words in 1949, or Kennedy’s words in 1960. The core principals of PRSPs outlined by the IFIs are all contradicted by the reality of what has been taking place. We have seen from the analysis of conditionality that the country driven principal is not being honoured. The results oriented principle is contradicted by the continuing dominance of Neo-Liberal economic theory in the PRSP approach, as is the comprehensive principle. We have seen from the UNCTAD evidence at the end of the essay that PRSPs are not partnership oriented. And the long term perspective is difficult to judge seeing as the PRSP approach has only been around since 1999, although Ha Joon Chang’s statistics on growth and his illustration of the history of economic policy gives cause for pessimism.

Bibliography

Books and articles

§ Ha Joon Chang

Globalisation, economic development and the role of the state

Zed Books, 2003

§ Joseph Stiglitz

Globalisation and its discontents

Penguin, 2003

§ Bob Sutcliffe

100 Ways of Seeing an Unequal World

Zed Books, 2001

§ Robert Wade

The disturbing rise in poverty and inequality: Is it all a big lie?

In D.Held and M. Kroening-Archibugi eds. Taming globalisation polity

2003.

§ Kenneth Hermele

PRSP: A Study of the literature (Forum Syd, Stockholm, Sweden, June 2005)

§ Allen and Thomas

Poverty and Development into the 21^st Century

Oxford, 2000

Websites

§ IMF PRSP fact-sheet

http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/prsp.htm

§ Angela Wood (2004)

http://www.global-poverty.org/PolicyAdvocacy/pahome2.5.nsf/gereports/00D3C4F30C7E423E88256E7F000CB054/$file/One%20Step%20Forward.pdf

§ The Gurdian on corruption in Africa

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g8/story/0,13365,1530559,00.html

§ Transparency International report on Zambia 2003(Frederick Chiluba)

http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/nis/regional/africa_middle_east

§ Joint World Bank/IMF Review of the PRS Approach:

Balancing Accountabilities and

Scaling Up Results, 2005

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPRS1/Resources/PRSP-Review/2005_Review_Final.pdf

§ UNPAN

Judge and Jury: The World Bank’s scorecard

for borrowing governments, 2005

http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN018179.pdf

§ Dollar and Kraay

Growth is good for the poor, World Bank, 2001

http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2001/05/11/000094946_01042806383524/Rendered/PDF/multi0page.pdf

§ EURODAD submission to IMF/Worold Bank review committee (2005)

http://www.eurodad.org/articles/default.aspx?id=625

§ Le Monde diplomatique on China (May 2005)

http://mondediplo.com/2005/05/11chinafrica

§ The Guardian on Mobutu

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1178342,00.html

§ Washington Post on CIA complicity in Lumumba murder

http://www.africawithin.com/lumumba/murder_of_lumumba.htm

§ Third World Network on Valco in Ghana

http://twnafrica.org/news_detail.asp?twnID=314

Socio-Economic Football

2006-04-14T13:20:00.000+01:00

As a person who generally wants the downtrodden to rise, the working classes to toast the aristo’s, the Southern hemisphere to ‘out market’ the North, Open-source to triumph over Microsoft, I’m fascinated by the smile that comes to my face when I consider the plight of the lesser teams of the English Premiership. Like it or not, outside the big five of Spurs (Yes Spurs), Chelski, Arsenal, Liverpool and Man U, nobody has a shot for the foreseeable and, in odd contrast with my attitude to the world outside football, that’s the way I like it. Basis for adding Spurs is not what I'm interested in here though.

I’m interested here in why it is that the majority of football fans seem to have a mindset in reverse of mine. You think that the free market is a great thing, you love Britain because it’s such a meritocracy, you think that if a person is poor it’s because they didn’t work hard enough. And yet you piss and moan about how unfair it is that Roman ‘The Ruble’ Abramovich can buy success for Chelsea and how such a gulf between the best and the rest ‘ruins’ football. Many of you would like to see the governing bodies do something to level the playing field, salary caps for players is often talked about so that the top teams wouldn’t be able to monopolise the best players, a re-distribution of wealth in essence. You cry in horror at the notion of the G14 splitting off into a European Cup with guaranteed entry for the top teams (which even I think is going a bit far). Manchester United… no room in football for corporations you say, their success is based on history and marketing not football, what a scandal. You sit there with The Daily Mail or The Sun in your hand, one minute you’re criticising people on the doll, the next you’re salivating about the latest 3rd division team to go bankrupt.

The same market forces which dictate that a black person in Peckham has much less of a chance to become a CEO of a multinational corporation than a white person from Hampstead, dictate that the smaller teams can't win the Premiership. "There are Black judges" I hear you cry, yeah there was Wimbledon too. It's those market forces which make a breakaway European league possible, there's a market for Liverpool Vs Real Madrid even if they both finished 10th in the league but some fisherman in Galicia has never heard of West Ham or Blackburn and couldn't give a monkey's. You hate Man U because they're horrible corporate tossers but you deck yourself out in Nike and drink your Starbucks with no worries at all. You refuse to take into account that a person's background, the history of their family can be any kind of excuse for being a drug addict or a criminal but you can completely comprehend that Wigan can't be expected to win the league. "If they work hard they can be anything you say", it doesn't matter how hard Wigan work, there's a glass ceiling in football just as there is in life.

Football is the perfect socio-economic metaphor for life, people need to apply their values about football to their politics in real life.

Below is quite an interesting excerpt from a discussion I had on a football forum where I posted the above article to see what the reaction would be. This discussion can be found at http://s12.invisionfree.com/Football_Fan_Zone/index.php?showtopic=17682

More discussion on it can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mb606/F2241581?thread=2726371

Posted by Hoooger, April 15th, 2004 on football fanzone
"Sorry if this is a bit vague, have a pretty serious hangover

I agree that you have to let people help themselves and football is a wonderful release for people everywhere. What I'm saying has nothing to do with money in football. What I am saying is that many football fans (not neccesarily you) have completly polar political values between football and real life. If I re-write your previous post a little you'll see what i mean

People argue that big money in football brings a reward of better football,

*people argue that large growth brings a reward of a better society,*...

you quote the Cira-A situation of the late 1980s and early to mid 90s. Question if you will that, Italian football like the Prem, like the Dutch, Like the Scots, like Portugese, Like the Spanish all now produce elite clubs. You can probably names them Juventus, AC Milan, Inter, Benfica, Sporting Lisbon, Celtic, Rangers, Ajax, PSV, the clubs that make up the top echelons.

*you quote the Asian Newly industrialised countries situation of the late 1980s and early to mid 90s. Question if you will that South Korea, like China, like India all now produce elite multinational corporations. You can probably name them, LG, Sinopec, Axistech, corporations that are part of the top echelons.* But these countries have not followed the free market prescription that you advocate...

What hops is there for the clubs that in their day were forces to be reconed with and gave their supporters that small hope in life that they to could share in glory of the game, Coventry, Derby, Ipswich, Sunderland even a brief rise of Bristol City. There are also a multitude of similar clubs all over Europe.
These clubs with the demands placed upon them will make it vertually impossible for them to compete. If Bolton have a fall or Blackburn the chances of coming back is difficult just look at Southampton or any of those I name above. The football team was (and still should be) part of that community, something to rally round, now it is the big boys toy and its the community that has lost.

*What hope is there for the nations that in their day were forces to be reckoned with and gave their populations the small hope in life that they too could share in the properity of the world. Nigeria, Iran, Egypt and even a brief rise of Zambia There are also a multitude of similar nations all over Eastern Europe. These Nations with the economic policy demands being made by the IMF and the WTO will find it impossible to compete. If Bangladesh or Uganda experiences a financial catastrophy the chances of coming back without the safety net of significant government control of the economy is difficult, just look at Indonesia or many of the countries I name above. Economic prosperity should be shared by everyone, now it is the big boy's toy and it is the majority of people on Earth that have lost*...

As I said I don't know what your politics are but certainly your values on football are pretty socialist and when apllied to the current global system are highly critical of it. The majority of football fans share your values on football but their values on society and politics are completely opposite."