Smoke in Their Eyes: Lessons in Movement Leadership from the Tobacco Wars

Afterword: Lessons of the Tobacco Wars

299 Afterword Lessons of the Tobacco Wars Jeremy Brecher In traditional democratic theory, the people debate the issues and elect representatives from one or another political party who then establish laws and policies that embody the people’s interests. But what if the political process itself—from the media of public discussion, to the political parties, to the means of getting elected, to the making of laws and policies—is dominated by special interests wielding overbearing wealth and power? That was the situation faced by the tobacco control advocates described in this book. And, far from being an exception, it is increasingly becoming the rule in American politics. Because the public interest is so poorly represented in the traditional political process, there is a growing belief that social problems need to be addressed not just by government, but in civil society. The result has been a growing role for social movements and public interest advocacy . Where once those promoting a policy agenda might have worked in a political party, supported candidates for office, and then waited for them to enact the party’s platform, today much more elaborate and indirect strategies are required to affect policy in the public interest. The negotiations for a global settlement between tobacco companies , state attorneys general, and a public health advocate illustrates how the decline of traditional means of government accountability and the rise of new forms of action in civil society can create virtually unprecedented situations. Indeed, these negotiations in some ways resembled those between undemocratic political authorities who have lost their legitimacy and subject peoples with no formal system of po- 300 Smoke in Their Eyes litical representation. Perhaps that is why more than one activist saw parallels between the tobacco negotiations and the negotiations of Irish nationalists and the British government at the end of the Irish rebellion . There are similar echoes from the delegation Gandhi led to England to negotiate over India’s political future. Perhaps even closer were the “roundtable” discussions held between declining autocratic regimes and rising popular movements over the future forms of political rule in Eastern Europe. Situations like the tobacco global settlement negotiations are likely to become increasingly common. For example, for the past several years, under the auspices of the Apparel Industry Partnership unions, human rights groups and apparel corporations have been negotiating to establish a code of conduct for labor conditions in transnational corporations and a code authority to certify products produced under acceptable conditions. Initially, human rights groups not included in the negotiations attacked the process. After meetings that included both the labor and human rights negotiators, and their critics, an “outsideinside ” strategy very much like the one advocated in this book emerged. Those on the inside remained in the negotiations but maintained that the companies’ concessions were inadequate. Those on the outside generally did not condemn those participating but insisted that the concessions made were inadequate. Both continued to put pressure on the companies in the public arena. This “good cop, bad cop” cooperation broke down when the inside groups split and some left the negotiations ; the future of this process is now in doubt. What is not in doubt is that all those involved in the process—or any similar process in the future—could have benefited from the experience of the tobacco control community to better understand what the process would be like. All of these cases raise profound questions regarding representation . Clearly a government dominated by private corporate interests or an authoritarian political party cannot be regarded as the sole legitimate representative of its people. But what about movements? They claim to speak for unrepresented people, but they are always vulnerable to the charge of being a “self-appointed representatives” with no legitimate right to speak for anyone but themselves. Ultimately there is no solution to this problem other than the reconstitution of genuinely representative institutions. But neither national movements nor social movements can wait for that—and besides , they are among the prime vehicles by which such democratization can be promoted. So what they must do—and generally try to do— Afterword 301 is to make themselves so genuinely representative of the needs and interests of their constituents and of the public in general that most people support what they do even though they have not been formally authorized to do it. But that is not something that is easy to begin in the midst...