First of all: When the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were awarded to Russia and Qatar, I was simply speechless. We no longer need to talk about the World Cup in Russia, even if the protests in Germany at the time were shamefully moderate.
But to award a World Cup to Qatar, a desert state half the size of Rhineland-Palatinate, without any football tradition or relevance, that upset me as a football fan terribly. I was even more outraged that Qatar, along with Iran, is one of the biggest sponsors of international terror – a topic that I seem to be missing in all the discussions about queer rights there. Fifa wouldn’t be Fifa if all of that played a role.
As an economist, I have deeply internalized the principle of sunk costs. It means, loosely speaking, that instead of whining about the spilled milk, you are wondering how to make the best of the situation. So if we can’t undo the award of the World Cup after Qatar, then we should ask ourselves what is the “best” thing we can do in this situation. There is no doubt that this would move something for the better – be it in Qatar or at Fifa, so that we don’t have another aseptic World Cup in a totalitarian country that is remote from football.
Two opposing camps, which are almost irreconcilable in terms of dealing with Qatar, are now pursuing this goal. On the one hand there is the protest and boycott faction, which considers the working conditions of migrant workers and discrimination against minorities to be so unbearable that the World Cup must not be a happy celebration, not a success and therefore not a promotional event for Qatar.
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On the other hand, there is the Change Through Trade faction, which believes that only cooperation and a diplomatic tone behind closed doors can achieve anything. We heard their arguments almost word for word in relation to dealing with China and Russia.
To have something to gain and something to lose
As a negotiation expert, I am convinced that neither of them will achieve anything alone. When companies ask me for advice on preparing for negotiations, I often follow a simple principle: If you want to achieve something in a negotiation, you have to make sure that the other side has a lot to gain, but also a lot to lose.
Translated into the corporate context, this means that I should not expect too much concession in negotiations from a strategic partner and supplier who has received all orders in recent years and knows about his position.
Marcus Schreiber is a founding partner and chief executive officer at TWS Partners. He has many years of experience in strategic purchasing and broad industry know-how. His focus is on strategic purchasing, applied industrial economics and market design. He also supports companies in applying game theory knowledge in complex procurement decisions.
On the contrary, the other person will be very self-confident and make their own demands. I just don’t have the levers. I can’t offer anything more. But the other extreme is even worse: a partner whom I cannot get rid of in the short term but who has no long-term future is – if he realizes this – downright dangerous. If you have nothing to gain and nothing to lose, you can use every contractual loophole to make extreme demands.
That’s the lesson I would give to the “boycott faction”. If you mean well with them, you could call them, after Max Weber, ethicists. However, if they really want to achieve something, then Qatar must not be put in a position where the result, namely categorical rejection, boycott and protest, is certain from the outset.
The “boycott faction” and the “cooperation faction” need each other
If someone puts the high jump bar at 1.45 meters, I don’t even start. It may objectively be a height that professional athletes laugh at. But no matter how hard I try, at my age and at my weight I will not reach them. Likewise, in Qatar, we must work towards realistic progress.
>> Read also: Comment: Boycotting the World Cup is not a solution
On the other hand, with the “cooperation faction” – let’s call them the responsibility ethicists – I’m not quite sure what would have to happen for them to distance themselves from a state like Qatar. Or when she would accept sacrifices of her own if no progress was made.
As contradictory as they appear, on closer inspection the two groups are not at all independent of one another. Every success of one group requires the existence of the other. The boycotters have stopped the dialogue and achieve nothing on their own. The perennial collaborators would have fewer negotiating levers in their talks without the pressure of the dogmatic protesters.
Our lesson for China and Russia
Like probably 99.99 percent of Germans, I hadn’t heard of the kafala system until 2010. Migrant workers have to hand in their passports to their Qatari employers, making them completely dependent. I was also not aware of the extent of accidents at work on Qatari construction sites and the number of heat-related deaths.
The “Gabriels” and “Hoeneße” are right when they point to the at least official abolition of the kafala system and the progress in occupational safety that has also been confirmed by the international employment agency Ilo. But it was the dogmatic protesters who threw the spotlight on the grievances and made the necessary noise in the background for the cooperators to achieve something.
If I should have prepared and structured the political negotiations with Qatar about the grievances, I would have invented the two different groups exactly like this. Interestingly, the Qatari side is set up as a mirror image. The cosmopolitan negotiators at the front point to the conservative forces and powerful structures in the background that tie their hands.
What can we learn from this for our western dealings with Xi Jinping’s China and Putin’s Kremlin? If you want to influence the devil, you have to be willing to dance with him. But also be just as willing to pack up and leave the ballroom, even if the short-term costs are high.
More: Which companies benefit from the tournament in Qatar – and which do not