Corporate/neo-liberalism

Neo-liberal social policies within the SDP sector, and global civil society more generally, are most obviously associated with business corporations, particularly TNCs. Since the 1970s, there has been a potent global turn towards the neo-liberalist credo that

Signature neo-liberal policies of deregulation, privatisation and the ‘rolling back’ of welfare services have been accompanied by the idealisation of a global ‘private sphere’, which imagines choice-making individual consumers being serviced by TNCs across borderless markets (Aldridge, Reference Aldridge2005; Clarke, Reference Clarke2004; Clarke et al., Reference Clarke, Newman, Smith, Vidler and Westmarland2007; Greener, Reference Greener2008). The reality in terms of social policy, however, is rather more complex, as many public services are reconfigured within ‘public–private partnerships’ or the ‘for-profit’ sector (Clarke, Reference Clarke2004: 35–6; Farnsworth and Holden, Reference Farnsworth and Holden2006).

One social policy within neo-liberalism, often overlooked, concerns the promotion of private philanthropy. The CSR sector plays strongly to that personalised, choice-based policy credo, while also advocating the voluntary self-regulation of corporate social practices, in direct contrast to policies of public scrutiny and intervention (cf. Tonkiss, Reference Tonkiss2006: 72–3).

CSR's rapid expansion has been largely inspired by the need to head off anti-TNC campaigns by new social movements, radical NGOs and community-based organisations, focusing particularly on injustices in the Global South. Nevertheless, many corporations justify CSR programmes in strongly commercial terms, as good for productivity and profitability (Kotler and Lee, Reference Kotler and Lee2005; Financial Times, 20 April 2005). The United Nations has helped to legitimise CSR, notably through its ‘Global Compact’, enabling companies to work voluntarily with it and other agencies to promote the social good. For some critics, however, such agreements constitute ‘a substitute for public regulation, an attempt to sidestep the diplomatic difficulties of dealing with the nasty bits of internationalized capitalism’ (Rowe, Reference Rowe, Lipschutz and Rowe2005: 131).

Sport CSR programmes are often underpinned by neo-liberal logics. For example, the Nike Responsibility programme, states:

CSR within the SDP sector tends to take three forms. First, radical NGOs and community-based organisations, new social movements and critical journalists have campaigned against the exploitative production techniques of sport merchandise corporations such as Nike, Reebok and Adidas (cf. Connor, Reference Connor2001; Klein, Reference Klein2000; Smith and Westerbeek, Reference Smith and Westerbeek2007: 6–7; Yimprasert, Reference Yimprasert2006). The response of TNCs – in developing their own monitoring and social responsibility programmes – has been at the vanguard of the CSR movement as a whole. For example, Reebok hired an Indonesian research company to report on conditions inside production factories (see IHS, 1999), while Nike's self-report strategies have been widely documented, debated and challenged.Footnote ⁷ Inevitably, most CSR is ‘non-political’, inherently voluntarist and strong on PR. Thus, SDP CSR strategies tend to feature celebrity-endorsed initiatives that deal with highly mediatised social dramas, rather than engage with long-term structural issues and problems.

Second, to finance and implement SDP work, some TNCs have collaborated closely with the most pragmatic or ‘co-opted’ NGOs and community-based organisations (cf. Kaldor, Reference Kaldor2003a; Phillips, Reference Phillips2007). For example, the Laureus foundation – which runs SDP projects around the world, features elite athletes as ‘academy members’ and hosts glamorous ‘world sport award’ events – is prominently financed by TNCs such as Daimler, Mercedes, Richemont, IWC Schaffhausen and Vodaphone.Footnote ⁸ These outlays are more than reimbursed by constant PR images that conflate ‘good causes’, elite athletes and sponsored brands. Corporations tend to favour SDP initiatives where real ‘impact’ is dramatised to capture public imaginations: for example, through delivering large volumes of sport equipment into impoverished communities. This arrangement places TNCs in strong positions to maximise marketing ‘yield’ from their sponsoring role and to influence the objectives, implementation and results-dissemination of SDP projects.

A third arrangement involves more systemic ties between TNCs and national governmental and intergovernmental organisations to assist with SDP programmes. For example, the UN has highlighted Nike and Reebok participation in the ‘Global Compact’,Footnote ⁹ Nike and Cartier have contributed materially to UNHCR SDP projects and sport federations have drawn TNC sponsors into SDP initiatives. Symbolically too, reflecting their underlying corporate orientation, some sport federations have explicitly titled their SDP departments as CSR divisions.

Overall, CSR programmes institutionalise neo-liberal, voluntarist policies in pursuing social goals at local, national and transnational levels. The SDP sector provides a premier site for the contemporary implementation of CSR programmes and for TNC participation within the broad global civil society. Like other policy sectors, the SDP field features some distinctive ‘public–private’ partnerships, particularly at institutional level, as TNCs both shape and benefit directly from working with other agencies (Clarke, Reference Clarke2004: 35–6; Farnsworth and Holden, Reference Farnsworth and Holden2006).

Mainstream NGOs and community-based organisations/developmental interventionism

NGOs and community-based organisations have mushroomed numerically since the early 1980s, such that some analysts identify international NGOs as the principal actors within global civil society (Lechner, Reference Lechner2009: 161). NGOs and community-based organisations encompass an enormous variety of associations, including religious bodies, hobby and sports groups, youth movements and higher education institutions, as well as organisations committed to progressive transnational politics on development, peace and social justice (Boli and Thomas, 1999).

In the SDP sector, mainstream NGOs and community-based organisations are diverse, but tend to advocate particular developmental interventionist themes such as the right to intervene when the personal safety of individuals is threatened, the value of sport as a tool of intervention and the critical role of building human capacity and public participation within underdeveloped settings. Unlike the other three domains within the SDP sector, it is the agencies themselves which implement sport-related interventions, usually with support from outside institutions. Thus, mainstream NGOs and community-based organisations stake claims to professional competence and expertise, in order to justify the value and legitimacy of targeted interventions. In recent years, many mainstream NGOs and community-based organisations have responded to concerns over the short-term and insubstantial impact of SDP interventions (cf. Armstrong, Reference Armstrong2007; Hognestad and Tollisen, Reference Hognestad, Tollisen, Armstrong and Giulianotti2004). ‘Capacity-building’ and ‘sustainability’ are now established watchwords, particularly among agencies that favour the ‘training the trainers’ method, whereby local people are trained to teach SDP principles and techniques to wider social groups at grassroots level.Footnote ¹⁰

Mainstream NGOs and community-based organisations in the SDP sector may be differentiated by their sport-specific or generalist focuses. Sport-specific organisations, founded to undertake SDP work, include the Danish NGO ‘Open Fun Football Schools’, which uses football to build social contacts in divided regions (notably the Balkans); UK Sport Relief, which finances and implements sport projects in developing nations; and the Kicking AIDS Out network, which disseminates health messages through sport clinics across southern Africa.Footnote ¹¹ Conversely, generalist NGOs and community-based organisations predate their SDP work, which tends to be used among a wide range of interventionist techniques. Illustrations here include Action Aid's use of sport in projects in Afghanistan, Brazil and other locations, and the sport-related, peace-building work of mainstream NGOs in Sri Lanka, such as FLICT and Sarvodaya.

SDP mainstream NGOs and community-based organisations are differentiated by scale and power. Some sport-specific NGOs are highly transnational and oversee networks of locally based organisations which implement SDP projects. For example, the Berlin-based NGO streetfootballworld coordinates over 80 local projects in more than 40 nations. In line with Geyer's (Reference Geyer2001: 479–81) findings on NGOs within the EU system, officials from smaller NGOs and community-based organisations who were interviewed as part of this research reported their deep concerns on the politics of the SDP system, particularly how large, pragmatic agencies were too influential, media-orientated and business-like in dealings with large donors.

Mainstream NGOs and community-based organisations are further differentiated by professional philosophies, methods and SDP objectives. Some organisations are associated with neo-liberal, voluntarist and philanthropic approaches; for example, the US-based ‘Athletes for Hope’ movement, largely driven by former athletes, aspires ‘to make a difference and to inspire others to pass their passion for philanthropy from generation to generation’.Footnote ¹² Conversely, small agencies often adopt ‘facilitating’ rather than interventionist roles, for example by staging workshops that enable local people to assess their own needs. Moreover, these organisations also display diverse methods of engagement with prospective user groups, ranging from limited consultative processes to full dialogue with officials and local peoples (cf. Darnell, Reference Darnell2008; Hognestad and Tollisen, Reference Hognestad, Tollisen, Armstrong and Giulianotti2004).

Relations with donors vary substantially. Some large NGOs and community-based organisations have close financial and political links to specific funding bodies (such as international sport federations, national governments and intergovernmental organisations) that are committed to long-term SDP initiatives. Examples here include streetfootballworld's ties with FIFA (world football's governing body), or Right to Play (formerly known as Olympic Aid) with the International Olympic Committee. Smaller agencies are wary of influences exerted by large institutional benefactors. However, in appreciating the dangers of being ‘tamed’ or ‘co-opted’, many organisation officials are highly reflexive about the underlying tensions between the twin needs of policy influence and professional principle (cf. Kaldor, Reference Kaldor2003a; Phillips, Reference Phillips2007). In line with Craig et al.'s (Reference Craig, Taylor and Parkes2004) findings on the voluntary sector, many organisational officials seek to reconcile ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ statuses. In outsider mode, my research found that officials from one organisation insisted that they retain decision-making independence, strong ‘grassroots’ ties and commitments to original goals; indeed, some officials stated that it is the donors which adapt to the SDP field rather than the other way round. As ‘insiders’, mainstream NGOs and community-based organisations emphasise the benefits of being ‘taken seriously’ by powerful IGOs (e.g. United Nations, European Union, World Bank) or major corporations, and thus being well-positioned to generate funding and to shape policies and practice across the SDP sector.

One final variation across mainstream NGOs and community-based organisations concerns their ideological and political relations across policy agendas. Often depending on context and issue, some generalist NGOs and community-based organisations slot into the ‘radical NGO’ category (discussed later) which advocates progressive social rights and stages campaigns against sport federations, corporations and state bodies. For example, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other human-rights NGOs attacked the award of the 2008 Olympics to Beijing and mounted extensive campaigns against China and the IOC. Elsewhere, labour organisations have led campaigns against specific kinds of worker abuse by sport-related TNCs. However, in broad terms, mainstream NGOs tend to prioritise the pragmatic implementation of SDP interventions and do not confront social justice questions even where corruption or serious human rights abuses taint potential partners. This ‘apolitical’ approach appeals to powerful donors and provides opportunities for insider influence upon SDP policy. More subtly, where the SDP agency implements peace-building and reconciliation projects, a non-political and ‘neutral’ stance can also help to build user-group trust.

Overall, SDP developmental interventionism features diverse mainstream NGOs and community-based organisations, differentiated particularly by scale and power. Organisations that are decidedly ‘mainstream’, large or close to strategic partners (such as TNCs and national governmental and intergovernmental organisations) tend to be ‘tamer’, but may retain insider policy-influence. Organisations that are more radical, smaller, selective in donor relationships, or with substantial SDP histories, tend to have more distinctive and critical standpoints on SDP-related practices and are more likely to identify new policy issues for the sector as a whole. Some sport-focused organisations, as in other policy sectors, endeavour to merge insider and outsider statuses, by maintaining core values while extending their influence. Finally, the recent ‘mainstreaming’ of the SDP sector has drawn many general organisations into sport-related work. Some SDP agencies consider they may provide future models of good practice for organisations across global civil society. However, officials with long-standing involvement in development work may be critical of some SDP agency practices, such as glossy PR awards events or partnerships with TNCs that have poor civil-society or industrial-relations records.

National and intergovernmental organisations/strategic developmentalism

National and intergovernmental organisations have exercised significant organisational power within the SDP sector over the past decade. The UN's commitment to sport in 2005, noted earlier, crystallised and intensified the involvement of national and intergovernmental organisations in sport and drew the SDP sector more fully into the mainstream global development field.

National and intergovernmental organisations tend to pursue strategic developmentalist SDP policies in two ways. First, SDP agencies typically share the objectives of wider national governmental and intergovernmental organisations, particularly in prioritising the Millennium Development Goals (cf. UN Inter-Agency Taskforce on Sport for Development and Peace, 2003: 7–8). Additionally, some national governmental and intergovernmental organisations, notably UNICEF, have advocated sport per se as a human and social right.

Second, strategic developmentalism is registered in the methods of national governmental and intergovernmental SDP programmes, particularly in building institutional networks and facilitating knowledge transfer such as by convening major sectoral conferences. For example, the Peace and Sport organisation in Monaco has convened annual forums since 2007, featuring NGOs, national governmental and intergovernmental organisations and TNCs. During 2005, the United Nations convened various international symposia on SDP issues as part of its International Year of Sport and Physical Education. Some national governmental and intergovernmental organisations deploy websites to facilitate knowledge transfer, such as contact details for SDP agencies and ‘toolkits’ to guide NGOs and community-based organisations in implementing specific projects.

SDP national governmental and intergovernmental organisations fall into three broad categories. First, intergovernmental organisations, such as the United Nations and its various agencies, have engaged with sport, notably since the UN's 2005 initiative, the foundation of the UN's Inter-Agency Taskforce on Sport for Development and Peace and the appointment of a Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on Sport for Development and Peace. UN agencies, programmes and funds have been engaged in SDP work. For example, UNESCO has its own SDP portal, assists various projects (especially peace-building ones) and runs a working group on the developmental aspects of sport and physical education; UNICEF's SDP division supports various programmes and institutional collaborations; and UNAIDS has a set of ‘sports partnerships’ within its anti-AIDS educational programmes.Footnote ¹³ Elsewhere, the Conseil International du Sport Militaire (CISM), which organises military sports among more than 130 member nations, controls a ‘sport for peace’ division aimed particularly at peace-keeping forces.Footnote ¹⁴

Second, sport federations and institutions hold substantial SDP commitments. FIFA's ‘Football For Hope’ movement, implemented through the NGO streetfootballworld, has five main SDP themes, building health, peace, children's rights and education, environment and anti-discrimination; it aims to found over 100 sustainable projects worldwide. At national level, SDP-active sport federations include the Jordanian Olympic Committee (through its Peace Through Sport programmes), and the football association and Olympic committee in Sri Lanka which have provided technical support for UNDP initiatives.

Third, many national governmental agencies undertake SDP work. For example, the British Council's dedicated sport unit conducts SDP work across over 40 nations and includes the ‘International Inspiration’ and ‘Dreams + Teams’ initiatives.Footnote ¹⁵ Its Belgrade office published a bilingual SDP manual and convened a major conference on sport and peace. UK Sport has an international development division that promotes education, equity, HIV/AIDS awareness and good governance through sport, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Elsewhere, Canadian Heritage and the Canadian International Development Agency have invested in several SDP projects overseas, particularly Commonwealth and la Francophonie nations (Darnell, Reference Darnell2008). In Germany, national governmental ministries have supported financially the streetfootballworld network.

Of course, these three categories are not hermetically sealed, but routinely overlap. For example, the United Nations and FIFA strategic alliance, since 1999, has facilitated collaborative work between football's governing body and UNICEF; and the Barcelona football club pays €1.5 million annually to wear UNICEF's logo across team shirts.

Overall, strategic developmentalism is characterised by top-down management and network-building techniques for knowledge transfer across the SDP sector. National governmental and intergovernmental organisations are key players in ‘universalising’ SDP work and in shaping the sector's principal policy focus on meeting fundamental needs and targeting MDGs. National governmental and intergovernmental organisations routinely build partnerships with TNCs, NGOs and community-based organisations and mirror the practices of these other institutional types, for example by using high-profile athletes as campaign ambassadors or project champions or defining their own SDP work as ‘corporate social responsibility’. National governmental and intergovernmental organisations provide a particularly powerful bridge between the SDP sector and the wider global civil society, but the longer-term substance of their social policies remains unclear.

New social movements and radical NGOs/social justice

Social policies centred on social justice within the SDP sector, and in global civil society more generally, are associated with new social movements and radical NGOs, primarily those located in the Global North. In the past two decades, transnational struggles over social justice have been crystallised by mass public protests at major meetings of the world's political and economic powers (Farnworth, 2003; Held and McGrew, Reference Held and McGrew2002) and in the establishment of the ‘World Social Forum’ (Fisher and Pooniah, 2003). New social movements and radical NGOs crystallise popular resistance towards the global imposition of neo-liberal policies and the post-9/11 diffusion of new military-industrial complexes by the United States and its allies. In democratic and political terms, new social movements and radical NGOs confront and challenge state and corporate strategies that ‘dissolve’ the public realm and wreak a ‘creative destruction’ upon old forms of collective solidarity (Clarke, Reference Clarke2004; cf. Rodger, Reference Rodger2003). These movements may also be located among historic ‘anti-systemic’ forces which have also included workers’ movements, the suffragettes and 1960s civil rights movements (cf. Wallerstein, Reference Wallerstein2003: 39–40). In this sense, new social movements and radical NGOs pursue social justice for marginalised groups through the extension of rights, as part of the ongoing struggle to extend democracy across the transnational public sphere (Habermas, Reference Habermas2001; Shute and Hurley, Reference Shute and Hurley1993). Thus, in social policy terms, these movements encapsulate the critical response of civil societies to the failure of nation-states, intergovernmental organisations and TNCs to remove practices and structures which undermine the human rights of vulnerable populations.

Overall, unlike the other three domains, the social justice field is not defined in the main by formal institutions, but instead also constitutes a policy-advocating space that is inhabited by diverse individuals and social networks, such as political activists, investigative reporters and academics. In the SDP field, new social movements such as ‘Nike Watch’ and the ‘Clean Clothes Campaign’ have led political movements against exploitative and oppressive practices in factories that produce sport apparel, thereby, as I have noted, pressing the relevant corporations to address these practices and to engage with the SDP sector. Some social movements, radical NGOs, critical academics and journalists have highlighted other injustices in global sport, such as the abusive treatment of young athletes in ‘youth development’ academies within developing nations, and corruption and human rights abuses within sport federations (Marcano and Fidler, Reference Marcano and Fidler2002).Footnote ¹⁶

Many movements and radical NGOs are not solely focused on opposition, but also advocate progressive social policies, such as the protection and extension of civil and human rights in employment, and consciousness-raising campaigns to promote tolerance of minority groups and ethical consumerism. However, social justice movements face more significant difficulties and threats than organisations within other domains of the SDP sector. These movements are still underdeveloped and relatively isolated from each other, in part because they are context-specific. There is also a substantial disconnection between these SDP agencies and the wider global civil society to an extent that is not found in the other three domains. Thus, for example, whereas leading sport officials have contributed to the World Economic Forum, sport-related issues are hardly addressed at World Social Forums. Moreover, the focus of many sports-focused new social movements and radical NGOs is on largely ‘developed world’ issues, involving campaigns against expensive bids by cities to host major sport events, the growing legal regulation of sport fans and racism, sexism, homophobia and religious bigotry inside stadiums (cf. Lenskyj, Reference Lenskyj2008).Footnote ¹⁷ It is often difficult to identify connections or direct common causes between these movements and those that focus on Global South issues.

Overall, the SDP social justice domain is dominated by new social movements and radical NGOs. Of all the four SDP domains, social justice features ‘outsider’ agencies with the weakest direct influence in shaping broad SDP policy and the lightest volumes of social capital, in institutional and interpersonal terms, vis-à-vis other kinds of SDP organisation. Thus, new social movements are rarely invited to participate in conventions led by national and intergovernmental organisations, or to contribute to projects funded by TNCs or implemented by mainstream NGOs and community-based organisations. New social movements and radical NGOs are best placed to reflect critically both on the contribution of sport to meeting specific social policy objectives and on sport's negative social effects within particular contexts (e.g. the ties between major sport institutions, exploitative corporations and oppressive regimes). However, compared to other SDP domains, agencies associated with social justice have two key positional weaknesses: first, they lack effective internal integration and coordination; second, they remain weakly positioned vis-à-vis the wider global civil society. These weaknesses underscore the difficulties faced by social justice agencies in having more than localised impacts upon the definition and development of the SDP sector.