Worlds Apart at the Danube

Today I remember a good man who died exactly two years ago. Ion Olteanu was a friend who devoted much of his life to the youth of the country – encouraging them to get involved in their localities; to establish youth parliaments in their towns; and to make contact with their European counterparts. He was a philosopher by training and had the dry manner of the Romanian intellectual – but, unlike that class, had a passion and real commitment to make Romania a better place. And transmitted this to the teenagers he (and his wife) worked with. I saw this vividly at a couple of the events he was kind enough to ask me to perform at.

I first met him in the Prime Minister’s offices at Piata Romanie in the mid-1990s where he was responsible for the initial attempts to develop a strategy for working with non-governmental organisations. I wrote this paper for him. Faced with a reshuffle, he chose to leave the civil service and move to the hand-to-mouth world of international grants. I wasn’t all that close to him although we did pop in unannounced from time to time to his flat in the centre of Bucharest which was, with its mass of files and papers, more like an office – not least with the other visitors. Last year I dedicated a post on policy-making to him. 

Today I devote this post to his memory. It is a post written spontaneously (ie I have no idea where it will go) on yet another glorious cloudless if nippy morning in the Carpathian mountains – between the Piatra Craiului and the Bucegi ranges. And written in this lovely old house given a new life by his friend Daniela over the past 12 years. In her love of the vernacular Romanian architecture (and efforts to preserve it) she is in a tiny minority here in Romania – despite the best efforts of Valentin Mandache and Sarah in Romania. 

For reasons I don’t yet pretend to understand, Bulgarians seem to value their traditional village houses much more than Romania – despite (or perhaps because) the socio-economic dereliction which has overtaken so many Bulgarian settlements. After its “liberation” in 1989 Romania went for the American dream – with all the “creative destruction” and modernist eyesores that involves. I was, therefore, delighted to purchase recently a book which showcases some old restored houses here in Romania 

And also pleased to see this post on one town’s architectural heritage by one of my favourite Romanian bloggers.

The pity is that people don’t seem able to get together to cooperate properly here – the trust and respect which that requires seem for the moment to have been destroyed in this country. That’s one of the things which Olteanu was fighting to restore……

Alternating, as I have in the past 5 years, between Bulgaria and Romania has made me think a lot about cultural differences. Despite sharing the Danube as a border, the citizens of the two countries have (apart from the summer trips to the Bulgarian part of the Black Sea  - which are such good value) little contact and know very little about each other. It hasn’t helped that the Dobrogea area at the Black Sea has changed hands several times in the past few centuries – nor that the Bulgarian alphabet is Cyrillic and the Romanians so profoundly Latin  

Although Romania attracts far fewer foreign residents (partic Brits) than Bulgaria, it has a fair number of ex-pat bloggers - perhaps due to its exoticism. One of them talks feelingly in the online book he has made of his blogs about the country

A Romanian wife’s fury is as legendary as it is short. In the morning, you can have your ear chewed off – my sins generally rotate around where I leave my shoes in the hall and woe betide me if by briefcase ever touches the kitchen table! There are constant bumps like this - yet by evening, she is back to chilled and happy as if we never argued at all.
Romanian girls do seem to work much harder in the home than their British counterparts. My wife is always scrubbing and cleaning our 1 bedroom apartment (we even took on a maid to further help!)
You do need, however, to develop a skin like a rhino, as every small mistake you make in life is blown up into something significant, before floating away again into nothingness

And two books have been produced recently by Brits on the country - William Blacker' s elegant if controversial Along the Enchanted Way; and Mike Ormsby's more gritty Never Mind the Balkans, here's Romania. And here's a recent documentary on the country which suggests that Ceaucescu's baneful influence is still active.

After several years of familiarity with Romania, I suddenly found myself based in Sofia. The Bulgarians were down-to-earth, modest and….well..bourgeois! Not least in the extent of small spaces in the centre where old and young alike can set up shop themselves - whether to sell cigarettes, haircuts, coffee, paintings or clothes. I've commented on this here; here; here; and here. 

One of the key books on cultural values is Richard D Lewis’s When Cultures Clash – a complete version of which I have just discovered online. Some of the values he attributes to Bulgarians (on page 319) are disciplined, sober, pragmatic, cautious, stubborn, good organisers, industrious, inventive.
The terms he uses for Romanians are – pride in being a Balkan anomaly, opportunism, nepotism, volatility, self-importance, unpredictability, tendency to blame others, black humour…..

Certainly I know that my Romanian friends sometimes get impatient with what they – as tough, direct speakers – feel as the polite hypocrisy of Bulgarians! As a Scot who has felt the same about a certain type of Englishman, I know what they mean! Certainly I find it fascinating that Bulgarian paintings of the 20th century speak to me in a way which the Romanians don't.....

I feel an important project could be one focusing on Bulgarian-Romanian relations. The EU is putting a lot of money into trans-Danube projects – pity that cultural aspects don’t seem to have been addressed.
I've reached the age when I think how the money I leave behind might be used to further passions of mine - whether conceptual or sensual. One idea which occurred to me recently was to leave a small fund which could encourage Bulgarian and Romanian painters/artists to come together once a year (starting with my village here!)
It would have been great to work with Olteanu on this!

The painting is an Atanas Mihov (1879-1974) - "washing at the Danube" which can be seen at the Russe Art Gallery

In Memoriam; Ion Olteanu 1953-2010

I dedicate this post to the memory of Ion Olteanu – a Romanian friend who died a year ago and whose anniversary was today at the Scoala Centrala in Bucharest. Sadly, being in Sofia, I wasn’t able to attend. He was one of a tiny minority in post-Ceausescu Romania with a vision for Romania – and worked tirelessly and with great sacrifice and professional passion with its adolescents to try to realise it. He had a marvellous and unique combination of tough logic and tender care.
I hope he will consider it a suitable memorial comment.

In recent years, some of us consultants in admin reform have found ourselves drafting manuals on policy-making for government units of transition countries. I did it ten years ago for the Slovak Civil Service (it is one of the few papers I haven't yet posted on the website). I’m sorry to say that what is served up is generally pure fiction – suggesting a rationality in EC members which is actually non-existent. I like to think that I know a thing or two about policy-making. I was, after all, at the heart of policy-making in local and regional government at the height of its powers in Scotland until 1990; I also headed up a local government unit which preached the reform of its systems; and, in the mid 1980s I got one of the first Masters Degree in Policy Analysis. So I felt I understood both what the process should be – rational, detached and phased - and what in fact it was – political, partial and messy. I was duly impressed (and grateful) when the British Cabinet Office started to publish various papers on the process. First in 1999, Professional policy-making for the 21st Century and then, in 2001, a discussion paper - Better Policy Delivery and Design. This latter was actually a thoroughly realistic document which, as was hinted in the title, focused on the key question of why so many policies failed. It was the other (more technical parts) of the british government machine which showed continued attachment to the unrealistic ratonal (and sequentially staged) model of policy-making – as is evident in this response from the National Audit Office and in the Treasury model pushed by Gordon Brown.
The Institute of Government Think Tank has now blown the whistle on all this – with a report earlier in the year entitled Policy-Making in the Real World – evidence and analysis. The report looks at the attempts to improve policy making over the past fourteen years – and also throws in some excellent references to key bits of the academic literature. Based on interviews with 50 senior civil servants and 20 former ministers, along with studying 60 evaluations of government policy, it argues that these reforms all fell short because they did not take account of the crucial role of politics and ministers and, as such, failed to build ways of making policy that were resilient to the real pressures and incentives in the system.
The Institute followed up with a paper which looks at the future of policy making “in a world of decentralisation and more complex problems” which the UK faces with its new neo-liberal government The paper argues that policy makers need to see themselves less as sitting on top of a delivery chain, but as stewards of systems with multiple actors and decision makers – whose choices will determine how policy is realised. As it, with presumably unconscious irony states, “We are keen to open up a debate on what this means. There is also a third paper in the series which I haven’t had a chance to read yet.

In this year’s paper to the NISPAcee Conference, I raised the question of why the EC is so insistent on accession countries adopting tools (such as policy analysis; impact assessment; professional civil service etc) which patently are no longer attempted in its member states. Is it because it wants the accession countries to feel more deficient and guilty? Or because it wants an opportunity to test tools which no longer fit the cynical West? Or is it a cynical attempt to export redundant skills to a gullible east?

One less good man in Romania

Romania lost this week someone it can ill-afford to lose – Ion Olteanu – whom I first met 15 (?) years ago in a small office in the prestigious Office of Government just round the corner at Piata Victoreii. He had been made a State Secretary - with a background not in politics or civil service but in philosophy and the voluntary sector. Indeed he was one of the founding fathers of the real aspects of that sector here – with a strong commitment to help younger people get involved in politics. Establishing youth parliaments in various parts of the country was very much his life – with all the European networking and fund-raising that involved. And his job in the Government Office was to help the government sector understand how to dialogue with and use properly the skills and energy of the voluntary sector. After a few years, he returned to full-time work with youth – with all the minimal finance that gave. To visit the family house was always amazing – with the rooms bulging with files, visitors and – open friendship.
A heavy smoker, he was diagnosed two years ago with lung cancer – but continued to the end to work. And we never heard any complaint.
We never appreciate our friends sufficiently – until they are gone. May God forgive us – and give Ion the mix of serenity and philosophical exchange which he would want and which he deserves!