Boycotts

[ajva]

I had a really interesting exchange with Lauren Close today on Marcus's Facebook page. Marcus had posted the link to this wonderful thing on Americablog about the New York Times' report on November 6, 1935 that "German Chancellor Adolf Hitler promised International Olympic Committee (IOC) chairman Count Henry Baillet-Latour that he would take down

Comments

[thekumquat]

I don't know much about effectiveness etc of political boycotts, but I've read a fair bit about large retailers and how they respond to boycotts and other forms of pressure (Nestle, McDonalds etc). Apparently the main value of a boycott in pressure terms is the publicity that goes with it, as the boycott itself is rarely significant enough to effect the bottom line, but if it leads to news items, or media not taking their ads, it counteracts their advertising, has therefore a significant cost, and is more effective. Most effective of all are threats of legislation if voluntary changes aren't made (hence all those Industry Codes of Practice), and receiving well-argued letters cc'd to MPs is therefore taken most seriously.

So sending a letter is likely to be more effective than a boycott on an individual purchasing level, but trying to get both a government and a society to change its values is rather different. And in this case, it's people asking the athletes to forego the greatest moments of their career - it might make more sense if it were spectators boycotting the event. Which is a similar issue to whether tourism to dodgy-regime nations is good or bad - the populace may want the economic and social benefits of tourism, or they may want tourists to stay away as their presence is seen to condone the regime (and probably the populations disagree with each other), and IIRC it varies from country to country. But given Amnesty's successes simply from getting people to write to embassies and ministers, maybe letter-writing is more effective than boycotts here too? Though if the majority of the population actually support the government, it's a lot harder - and I'm pretty sure we're never going to go to war with Russia.