Why are the reflective consultants hiding?

I referred in the last post to the tens (if not hundreds) of billions of euros spent in recent decades by international bodies on what we might call the “development industry”. That translates into thousands (if not hundreds of…) individuals like myself who transit the world’s air terminals and hotels working on projects designed to build organisational capacity in countries receiving technical assistance.

For almost as long as I remember, I’ve written reflections on my endeavours and published them

In this venture, I seem almost to be unique….Robert Chambers – a much more exalted figure than I could ever claim to be – is someone who, from his institutional base, has been able to combine practical work with theoretical reflections in the manner I aspire to. Albert Hirschmann is perhaps the real doyen of the genre. 

This morning I was delighted to encounter a new blogsite with the wonderful name Aidnography with a post – Where are the consultants hiding? - which is the first I’ve seen to deal with this deficiency

Every so often I receive a short email from a senior development consultant – women and men with probably 15, often 20 or more years of paid professional employment inside the ‘aid industry’ – they basically started before it was even called an ‘industry’!  The messages are usually short, sometimes straight from ‘the field’ (i.e. really uncomfortable, dangerous and complex locations) and often along the lines of ‘little do you/that researcher/this journalist really know about organization X or the crisis in region Y’. 

But with very few exceptions, these voices rarely make into the development blogosphere, let alone find their way into virtual, classroom or policy discussions. The proverbial ‘I will write a book about my time in the industry once I have retired’ approach only works for very few and even if they manage to write that book, the distance of a few years between what happened in, say, Rwanda and the publication creates a safer, but often also less relevant story. 

Why are senior consultants ‘hiding’? There are some more obvious reasons why senior consultants are often not very visible in public debates:·         They tend to be very busy: they have carved out their niche and are on the go to the next assignment in ‘their’ country, region or area of expertise
·         They tend to be older and may not have been socialized in the digital culture of sharing, being online and maintaining a digital presence or even a brand
·         They actually have something to lose if public critique leads to fewer assignments for a favourite organization or they are perceived as ‘difficult’ (many freelance senior consultants have quasi-employment status with some of the largest bi- and multilateral organizations)
·         They know development is a job; after decades of work, every profession, job or calling has been met with plenty of reality checks; even if you are not cynical or burned-out it is difficult to have similar discussion regularly or get excited when the latest ‘participatory bottom-up community design project’ turns out to be just like any other project with a budget, log-frame and quarterly reports
·         They do not really like the academic reflection business and prefer to get an assignment ‘done’ rather than reflecting on an industry that may not be responsive to critique anyway (see previous point)

On the other hand, their detailed and nuanced insights would be beneficial in many discussions on why certain organizations do what they are doing, who was resisting an idea and how difficult and political consensus building really is; they could also shed light on many realities in the field, the grey areas, the trade-offs, the secrets of the industry of how to get positive change going and how to avoid bureaucratic pitfalls etc. Or how they maintain marriages, families, well-being and gruesome travel schedules. 

How do we get access to senior consultants and get them to share their wisdom, stories and experiences (if they want to…)? Traditional formats, like inviting them to (academic) conferences and workshops, usually fail or are limited to the context of one event.  The IRIS Humanitarian Affairs Think Tank is an interesting approach that connects researchers and humanitarian practitioners in an academic framework with support from SaveThe Children. And there are probably similar projects that I am not aware of and that you are most welcome to share with me so I can add it to this post.  So what other formats can we think of? Writing retreats that aim at producing a publication through a book sprint rather than going through traditional publishing channels?  Or do we need more traditional, multi-sited research that works along those busy schedules and may include interviews in unusual locations, e.g. airport lounges, R&R hotels or organizational debriefings?
At this point in time, I am thinking out loud really and I am grateful for comments, suggestions and ideas!

The Missionary Position

“Getting to Denmark” seemed an appropriate title for the collection of musings I’m trying to edit about the challenges which technocrats and academics funded by international bodies have wrestled with over the past 2 decades in ex-communist countries – particularly those of us working to try to build the capacity of state bodies there – whether central or local. 
Several billions of euros have been spent on such efforts (not including the hundreds of millions spent in the last decade by Structural Funds in these countries which have employed local rather than international staff)

The musings are a small selection of blogposts I’ve done over the past 5 years - which build on two long papers I produced a few years ago -
- “administrative reform with Chinese and European characters” (2010)  - whose last section  is a summary of the sort of lessons I felt I had learned about public administration reform in Western Europe 
- “The Long Game – not the logframe” (2011) was a caustic paper I presented to the 2011 NISPAcee Conference ( building on an earlier paper to the 2007 Conference) in which I took apart the superficiality of the assumptions EC bureaucrats seemed to be making about the prospects of its Technical Assistance programmes  making any sort of dent in what I called (variously) the kleptocracy  or “impervious regimes” of most ex-communist countries.  

But the adrenalin released by the 50 lengths I try to swim regularly in the Rodina Hotel here made me realise today that “The Missionary Position” is a better title – not only in the sense of potentially getting more hits but of its hitting the target better…… 
After all, what have most of us “Westerners” in ex-communist countries been doing these past 25 years (however little we may have recognised it) – if not “proselytising” (in almost evangelical fashion)  for better systems of what the jargon has (significantly also since 1989) taken to calling better “governance”???

I have always had a problem with this term - which seemed to cover broadly the same issues as the discipline I had known as “public administration” – although I grant you that “governance” has given more emphasis to anti- corruption, coordination, transparency and pluralism.

Volumes have been written about the change of terms – and its significance (one of the best is Whatever Happened to Public Administration? (2004)

In 2007 I did actually use the title “Missionaries, Mercenaries or Witch-Doctors?” for a paper I presented to the Annual NISPAcee Conference (in Slovenia) but, until now, I hadn’t made the connection between my activities since 1990 and the wider process of evangelism – let alone “colonisation”.  Only today did I read an article which used an anthropological approach to interpret the sort of people who go on “missions” to “developing” countries

Most “experts” are trapped in their particular world (geographical and/or intellectual) – be it of “political science”, “sociology”, “economics”, “management”, “public administration”, “europeanisation” or “development”.

Each has its own distinctive networks of socialisation, approval and punishment. Those of us who prowl the edges of these disciplines run the risks all renegades do – of neglect, ridicule, calumny, ostracisation ….except that we were never there in the first place to be ostracised!

Can political and academic leopards change their spots?

Tempus fugit! It's time already to think about a paper for the 2012 NISPAcee Conference - which,again, will be held nearby - at Lake Ohrid in Macedonia.
The two previous papers I have presented at NISPAcee Conferences (in 2007 and 2010) were about the role of Technical Assistance in building the capacity of public bodies in transition countries. They basically argued that –
• Technical Assistance based on the logframe approach and competitive tendering is fatally flawed - assuming that a series of “products” procured by competitive company bidding for discrete projects can develop the sort of trust, networking and knowledge on which lasting change depends
• The EC's 2008 "Backbone Strategy" has not improved matters – the audit which led to the review was narrowly focused on procedural issues in the procurement process and the Backbone strategy continues with this bias.
• Few comparative and longitudinal studies have been carried out of administrative reform in transition countries – and in particular of the effectiveness of the various tools in the technical assistance cupboard of administrative reform. The myriad evaluations which the EC commissions of its institution building projects in the Region are formalistic and difficult to find – largely because of the commercial basis on which most technical assistance in this field is carried out.
• we are, to put it mildly, rather hypocritical in our expection that tools which we have not found easy to implement in our own countries will work in the more politicised contexts of East Europe and Central Asia.

At the 2012 Conference, I propose to elaborate the latter part of this critique; with respect to three issues -

a. Can the leopard change its spots?
One common thread in those few assessments which have faced honestly the crumbling of reform in the Region is the need to force the politicians to grow up and stop behaving like petulant and thieving magpies. Nick Manning and Sorin Ionitsa both emphasise the need for transparency and external pressures. Cardona and Tony Verheijen talk of the establishment of structures bringing politicians, officials, academics etc together to develop a consensus (see section 10.4 of this paper on my website). As Ionitsa put it succinctly –

The first openings must be made at the political level – the supply can be generated fairly rapidly, especially in ex-communist countries, with their well-educated manpower. But if the demand is lacking, then the supply will be irrelevant.

This seems to imply an emphasis on civil society and democratisation – rather than institutional development.

b. Over-specialisation and lack of dialogueDepartmental silos are one of the recurring themes in the literature of public administration and reform – but it is often academia which lies behind this problem with its overspecialisation. For example, “Fragile states” and “Statebuilding” are two new subject specialisms which have grown up only in the last few years – and “capacity development” has now become a more high-profile activity. But the specialists in these fields rarely talk to one another – not least because of the professional advantages in pretending that theirs is a new field, with new insights and skills.

c. The superficiality of public managementInstitutions grow – and noone really understands that process. Administrative reform has little basis in scientific evidence (See the 99 contradictory proverbs underlying it which Hood and Jackson identified in their (out of print) 1999 book. The discipline of public administration from which it springs is promiscuous in its multi-disciplinary borrowing; new public management (still alive and well) is based on a mixture of dubious managerialism and theoretical eccentricities. Traditional PA was at least aware of politics and history. Technocratic NPM denies both.

My ambitious proposal for the 2012 NISPAcee Conference is to present a paper which will explore these issues through–
• A literature review of comparative assessments of administrative reform in the Region – and of the experience and lessons of the specific tools used
• A tentative exploration of the basis and contribution of the various “disciplines” to our understanding of institutional development

The painting is of St Joan Church on Lake Ohrid - by the esteemed Bulgarian Atanas Mihov (1879-1974)

project bids, public services in hard times; and the craft of short stories

Technical problems with blogspot prevented a post today. But my longer silence is due to my work on a bid for a project. I hate this stage when one is trying to construct convincing statement about HOW one would carry out the various required activities of a project. I don’t find writing difficult – I’ve had long practice and the results are there to see on the website and blog. But two aspects about writing proposals I find deeply frustrating and indeed alienating. First that one is generally writing in ignorance of the actual context – and actually prevented (by procurement rules) from actually talking with those for who one would be working. This not only breaches basic rules of consultancy – but creates a distance I can’t cope with. I’m a touchy, feely guy (in some senses) and can only operate in a hands-on situation when I’m getting responses. The second reason I find this stage difficult is that you are supposed to restrict text to HOW statements – not the WHAT. And I always want to jump to the content – not least to convince the evaluator that they would get a good deal if they went with my bid. As the content of bids have equal status with the original terms of reference, companies are reluctant to commit themselves to substantial things – and prefer to throw back in different language what the terms of reference are saying. And this is an EU Structural Fund project – whose administrative and financial requirements are so tough (for generally local companies) that it is not difficult to disqualify companies before their methodologies even reach the evaluation stage! What a game! So watch this space.
I’m just taking a short break (hopefully to get the creative juices working). But I have a few useful references to pass on. Amongst all the mythogising of Greece and Greeks that is going on, a rare bit of commonsense. This particular blog has looked at the various statistics to explore whether the Greeks are in fact as lazy as is being asserted (retirement ages, pension, working days etc ) and finds the myths unsubstantiated (although some people might say "fear the Greeks - particularly when tney come bearing statistics"!).
However what is true is that they don’t declare incomes in order to avoid taxation. And, of course, this is not merely true of Greece – I’ve made the same point about Romania - with the incredible time and money people spend on building their own houses - with local labour whose incomes are never declared!

Yesterday the Scottish Government released an independent report they had commissioned from an interesting collection of people last year on the future of public services in the new tough world . What was impressive was that they asked a retired trade unionist to chair it – and did not pack it with their own people (a couple of my left-wing colleagues were on the commission). And the report – despite some unpalatable messages – has been positively received in most quarters. So at least the Scottish tradition lives on – unlike the tribal politics of England.

Time for a stirring Spanish political song from the old guard

And Simon Jenkins has rediscovered the virtues of the classic civil service.

I’m becoming a fan of the short story art form. William Trevor, Carol Shields, Vladimir Nabakov always hold me in thrall. Hanif Kureishi is an impressive novellist whose acquaintance I am only now making – with his Collected Stories. Now back to the grind!

Sound and fury – signifying nothing?

I’m now at the stage of creating the slides for the 10 minute presentation of my paper at the Varna Conference on 20 May. It’s a deeply depressing (but salutory) experience to have spent several months crafting a 25 page paper (with almost 100 footnotes!) and then find – when you look for the basic message - that it seems to say so little! What does this say about me? Or about the nature of administrative reform? Perhaps that should be the focus of my presentation??

The basic points in the paper are that –
• The EC programme of technical assistance is a multi-billion euros industry and policy field
• The European Court of Auditors published a fairly strong critique in 2007 – which was about its procurement procedures rather than the effectiveness of the tools used
• The EC’s 2008 response – its „Backbone strategy” - basically said that the overstretched staff of its 80 European delegations should try harder to achieve 4 things – demand-driven solutions; better project design; better selection of experts; and more project flexibility (already possible during the inception period). This is a cop out!
• Serious gaps in the analysis were failures to analyse the companies and individual consultants who are the real „backbone” of the TA
• There are too many cowboy companies winning projects by dubious means – and using experts they don’t know; who have arrived in the business by accident; and who receive no training (A paper I had presented to the 2006 NISPAcee Conference had questioned the „accidental” nature of the comeptitive procurement system used by the EC TA)
• The project basis of the EC TA is questionable – it lacks sustainability
• Perhaps there is another model - which strikes a better balance between competition, flexibility and sustainability?
• The second part of the paper looks at the difficult contexts of the EC Neigbourhood countries and suggests that few of the (overly rationalistic) tools in the reform toolbox of the EC will work there
• Change is a mysterious process for which the logframe (a tool for the construction industry) is totally unsuitable. This is recognised in the development industry
• Experts in adminsitrative reform lack insights into these wider development processes – and are stuck at stage one of a four-stage process which has been mapped by development experts
• EC TA is a deeply paternalistic model of change

It's been a useful exercise to list these points. Between now and Monday I have to elaborate them and decide what the slides should actually say for a 10 minute presentation - bearing in mind what the other presentations will be saying!!!

The painting is one of several Emilia Radusheva ones which have suddenly appeared. She has been in the Netherlands and her paintings seem to have dried up. But no longer. She has a very distinctive style and is, with Juliana Sotirova and Michko Constandinov, one of my favourite contemporary Bulgarian artists.

Flesh and Blood

The NISPAcee Conference in Varna advances apace (May 19-22) so yesterday I gave the present version to the local printer for him to run off 150 copies for the lucky participants, It's now called Flesh and Blood - the EC's Backbone strategy meets "Impervious power" - and contains as a bonus some of the Sceptic's Glossary I wrote at the start of the year.
It's been an important paper to write these past few months - I've tried to pour all the experience and knowledge Ive gained óver the past 20 years into it. It's been a bit like crafting a painting - at some times honing sentences and phrases. At other times, when I've realised that it was missing an important area, a blank part of the canvas was suddenly filled with whirls. This last happened this week - which explains the minimal posts. I realised that my scepticism about anti-corruption work had meant that I had not even deigned to mention it in the paper! And, when I surfed, it was to find a huge literature - including several literature reviews.For the moment let me just link you to this 2001 book summarising experience of anti-corruption work

I cycled to Victoria Gallery today - to discover that they had sold the lovely Vulchev painting of Thassos and Kavala I showed a week or so ago. But I did buy this Rubev. I have been coveting a Rubev for some time - and was glad to find this one (also with a glimose of Thassos).

making sense of what we seem to be saying

I’ve reached the point with my Conference paper of being able to read it as a critical outsider – interjecting, every now and then – a pointed „So??”. And, at this point, the old advice about the three-part structure of effective presentations becomes very helpful – „tell them what you’re going to say; say it; and then summarise what you’ve said.” It’s the last which is particularly useful. You read your paper through – and then try to summarise what it seems to be saying. Sometimes the results can be surprising! And, after yesterday’s post about Impact Assessment (part of the consultant’s toolkit) and a skypechat, I realised that I had left the discussion about the toolkit up in the air. If you looked at any of the IA papers I linked to yesterday, you will have realised how difficult member states such as the UK have found it (15 years and still not working) – let alone the European Commission itself. Why, then, is is something which the Commission has been pushing hard on new member states and accession countries? Perhaps simply that those pushing it (in the Development arm of the EC) don’t have the experience to understand that few countries have actually got it to work for them? Or is it a case of „cast-offs” being sold on – to the greater benefit of consultancy companies? The present version of my summary therefore reads as follows -

My argument so far has been that Technical Assistance based on project management and competitive tendering is fatally flawed – assuming (as it does) that “expert services” procured randomly by competitive company bidding can in a short period develop the sort of trust, networking and knowledge on which lasting change depends. I have also raised the question of why we seem to expect tools which we have not found easy to implement to work in more difficult circumstances. At this point I want to suggest that part of the problem is the hierarchical nature of the assumptions which underpin the whole TA system. The very language of Technical Assistance assumes certainty of knowledge (inputs-outputs) and relationships of power – of superiority (“experts”) and inferiority (“beneficiaries”). What happens when we start from different assumptions? For example that-
• Technical Assistance built on projects (and the project management philosophy which enshrines that) may be OK for constructing buildings but is not appropriate for assisting in the development of public institutions
• Institutions grow – and noone really understands that process
• Administrative reform has little basis in scientific evidence . The discipline of public administration from which it springs is promiscuous in its multi-disciplinary borrowing
• When we try to make public institutions work better for their citizens in transition countries, we are all working in unknown territory. There are no experts.

Once one accepts the world of uncertainty in which we are working, it is not enough to talk about more flexibility in the first few months to adjust project details. This is just the old machine metaphor at work again – one last twist of the spanner and hey presto, it’s working!

At this stage in the paper I introduce Robert Chambers’ great table which shows different roles and relationships for development work – and the move to a more humble and collegial working. But one has to ask what stops this - and here I am brought back to my experience in 1992 with the EC Energy network which I realised was simply a front to allow Western companies to caapture the new Eastern European market. The late lamented Peter Gowan had a lot to say about this - and this, I think, is where the conclusion of my paper should be heading. A proper critique of TA is that it is seeming to help transition countries while in reality ensuring that their state system will never agaion have any capacity to challenge the prevailing European ideology.
The painter is the great mid 20th century mountain painter Cyril Mateev. All miountain associations should buy his stuff - available generally for about 500 euros

Cowboys, bodyshops and backbone

I’m on the home strait now for the paper I shall be presenting (insallah) to the Conference of the Network of Institutes of Schools of Public Administration in Central and East Europe (NISPACee) on the Black Sea coast here in Varna 19-22 May. It’s now in two parts – with the first part dealing with the EC’s recent attempt (The Backbone strategy) to make its Technical Assistance more effective. The second part explores the absence of any theoretical basis to its institution-building efforts in those countries with regimes which share the feature I have decided to call “impervious power”. In 2006 I had made a critique at the same Conference which was mainly concerned with the procedural aspects of how the EC found experts for its institution-building work in “transition” countries – but which ended by suggesting that neither the EC nor the experts really had much of a clue about the process of administrative reform in such contexts. This new paper is a much more solid version which takes account of what the EC itself has been doing in the intervening period to sharpen up its act – what it calls its Backbone strategy.
I find it significant that that 2008 strategy failed to give any analysis of the commercial companies and the (freelance) consultants on which the entire multi-billion euros EC system of Technical Assistance hinges. Companies (but not experts) are scrutinised by the EC before they are allowed to tender but only for the volume of their business – not for the quality of their work. The result is that many „cowboy” companies are in operation – who skilfully manipulate the rather simple evaluation system used for the competition for projects. There are two basic tricks. The first is to have a few excellent project writers at HQ – and to name as experts high-quality people who just happen to be ill when it comes to taking up their appointment! The second is to slip a few thousand euros into the hands of some locals.
And, as far as experts are concerned, the only thing that counts for companies is the extent to which the experience shown in the CV matches the particular job requirements. The quality of the work done by the experts in the past is irrelevant. During my 20 years in this game, a company has interviewed me just once - BMB Arcadis (now Mott MacDonald).
Working on this paper has made me realise that the continuity which capacity development requires cannot be provided by a procurement system which tries to carve knowledge and skills into commodifiable products and which allows in companies which are little more than "body-shops". Profit-oriented companies simply take the money and run. I can name the number of companies who have a serious interest in knowledge development and transfer on the fingers of one hand. And twinning isn’t the answer – nor the latest wheeze of „south-to-south” institutional links.
The Americans have an interesting model which has allowed a high-quality think-tank (The Urban Institute) to win a long-term contract within which it has the flexibility to negotiate adjustments from time to time.
The sketch is by Alexander Bozhinov whose house next door here in the heart of Sofia is still kept in his memory

More thoughts about neighbourhood strategy

I reached the limit of creativity last week with the draft of my paper for the Varna Conference of NISPAcee. The present draft (updated 9 April) basically looks critically at the European Commission’s 2008 “Backbone strategy" for improvement of Technical Assistance; and at the absence of any public discussion of the various tools it uses in its good governance projects. The one exception is the “democracy promotion” strand of work where Richard Youngs is particularly prolific. Indeed I discovered today an important book he edited in 2009 which matches the concern I voice in the second part of my draft paper - about the failure of the EU to understand properly the context of neighbourhood countries and to adjust TA accordingly. The book has the marvellous title of “Democracy’s Plight in the European Neighbourhood – Struggling transitions and proliferating dynasties” with chapters on Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Serbia, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco

But my point still remains – that few people (certainly in the EC) seem to be looking at how state institutions and local government can realistically be developed in neighbourhood countries in a way helps develop a real citizen- or customer-orientation and which is sustainable. For example in 2009 Sigma produced a very important paper which suggested that the work of the merit-based civil service agencies established with EC Technical Assistance were being undermined. Very few people are casting such an analytical eye over the work of institution-building in neighbourhood (let alone recent member) countries. The Court of Auditors’ 2007 Report (which provoked the Backbone strategy) was concerned with procurement procedures – it is questions about the substance which are overdue.

In 2007, the Journal of Democracy, for example, had an excellent paper by Tom Carothers which looked at some of the global thinking about the institutional development process which affects the Technical Cooperation field. He took exception with the argument that democracy should take second place to the establishment of the rule of law. Tom Carothers (US Aid) is a rare voice of logic, clarity, experience and balance in the world of international aid subject (Brinkerhoff is another) - and their articles are so good that they rate folder of their own in my laptop library. In 2009 Carothers produced another paper which looked at the experience and discussion of the past decade with rule-of-law projects. His paper points out the ambiguity of that term - which finds support from a variety of ideological and professional positions and therefore leads to confused implementation if not state capture.
I need to work all this into the new draft of the Varna paper. Feedback would be much appreciated!
The painting is an Alexander Milenkov

harlots of the aid business - part IX

I was today reminded of a useful EC forum for those interested in capacity development – capacity4dev – which has a special section on the ongoing reform to technical assistance I have spoken about. Two years ago it published Guidelines for Delegation staff about this - which is useful for outsiders like myself.
Insofar as I understand the EC reform, it seems to boil down to one analytical statemenent and four injunctions (or am I being unfair??). The basic analysis is that the system is fine; it’s people (implementation) that are screwing up. The four injunctions are -
• avoid supply-driven solutions - make sure it's the beneficiary who defines the project
- „Get the project design right”
• „select the right consultants”
• „Allow them flexibility” (at least in the inception period)

The strategy (and the Court of Auditors’ 2007 Report) does actually answer a lot of the complaints which I’ve been making about the EC system of technical assistance. I should be happy - but find myself deeply uneasy. I am trying to explore why this is so. Basically, I think, because the document hardly mentions (let alone analyses) the commercial companies and the (freelance) consultants on which the entire system hinges. On the few occasions consultants are mentioned, it is with some embarrassment – as if we were harlots.
Not surprisingly therefore, the Backbone strategy - which is now the bible for the staff of the 81 European Delegations throughout the world - fails to explore its own role in ensuring that people like myself have the relevant information, knowledge, skills and…attitudes. I’ve been 20 years in this game – and only once has a company involved me in a sharing of experience. And once too a desk officer in a European Delegation asked me to attend on their behalf a conference about decentralisation. Their Guidelines say nothing to encourage such practices – nor to ensure that the methodology of the company bids add any value. At the moment these are prepared formulaistically by staff with little or no experience on the ground – and yet are considered part of the contractual obligations which bind new Team Leaders. If the design and individual experts are indeed critical – then why award so many points in the evaluation for a methodology which is just a paper exercise in which the consulants play little or no part?
And trying to measure the breadth of the professional experience and/or understanding which experts have about “good practice” is a futile exercise – except when the beneficiary expressly (but rarely) asks for that. There is no magic bullet – that’s why the Bliar slogan “what works” was so wrong – so technocratic – reflecting the illusion that, if only we look hard enough, we can find the technical solution to governance problems. “What works” is, first, someone’s judgement. If it’s a fair judgement, the success will reflect a particular context; a set of actors; and a particular script. Elsewhere that script may not translate; some of the actors (or props) may be missing. (Although sharing of experience does encourage and help us all to think more critically and creatively about what we are doing. And it is rather odd that the EC shows so little interest in the impact its institutional reform efforts have had……)
Skills and attitudes are the key - whether the consultant is sufficiently sensitive to the local context and networks to be able to identify opportunities and networks and has the skills to use them at the right time and manner. I have tried to give some examples in the latest draft of my paper for the next NISPAcee Conference.
Again, I don't see that as one of the criteria recommended in the Backbone strategy for selecting an expert - and how, in any event, could that be measured in a way to satisfy the procurement system???? One of the wisest comments I have seen on this whole issue is this - Bryn Tucknott comment on Robert Chambers' paper

I have long given up on the quest to find the one universal tool kit that will unite us all under a perfect methodology… as they will only ever be as good as the users that rely on them. What is sorely missing in the development machine is a solid grounding in ethics, empathy, integrity and humility.

uncertainty and capacity - part VIII of a critique

It’s been a tough few days as I completely revamped my Varna paper in the light of the EC papers of 2007/2008. The focus has shifted from the neglected role of consultants and politicians to the capacity of the EC policy-making system; instead of a cri-de-coeur, it’s become a case-study and has therefore a new title “Reforming the reformers”.
I was initially happy – to discover (however belatedly) that the criticisms some of us had been making about the system had been recognised and acted upon. Ironically, however, it made me realise that my 2006 analysis had not gone far enough and, in particular, had not followed through on the issues embodied in my later 5 questions•

"Do the organisations which pay us practice what they and we preach on the ground about good organisational principles?
• Does the knowledge and experience we have as individual consultants actually help us identify and implement interventions which fit the context in which we are working?
• Do we have the space and skills to make that happen?
• What are the bodies which employ consultants doing to explore such questions – and to deal with the deficiencies which I dare to suggest would be revealed?
• Do any of us have a clue about how to turn kleptocratic regimes into systems that recognise the meaning of public service?”

The very language of Technical Assistance assumes certainty of knowledge (inputs-outputs) and relationships of power – of superiority (“experts”) and inferiority (“beneficiaries”). What happens when we start from the following assumptions?
• Technical Assistance built on projects (and the project management philosophy which enshrines that) may be OK for constructing buildings but is not appropriate for assisting in the development of public institutions (Such criticism has been made of Technical Assistance in the development field – but has not yet made the crossing to those who work in the (bureaucratically separate) world of institution-building in post-communist countries)
• Institutions grow – and noone really understands that process
• Administrative reform has little basis in scientific evidence – just look at the 99 contradictory proverbs underlying it which Hood and Jackson identified in their (out of print) 1999 book. The discipline of public administration from which it springs is promiscuous in its multi-disciplinary borrowing.
• Once one accepts the world of uncertainty in which we are working, it is not enough to talk about more flexibility in the first few months to adjust project details. This is just the old machine metaphor at work again – one last twist of the spanner and hey presto, it’s working!

Robert Chambers writings have been so very good at exploring alternatives – which is why I gave that excerpt of his a few posts back. And my 2006 critique used an excellent table of his at page 12 table 4 which indicated the direction in which Technical Assistance needed to go
I found it interesting that the Court latched on to capacity development (giving appropriate references) in its 2007 paper whereas the EC response was a bit sniffy about that perspective and made no attempt to pick that concept apart (as the Morgan paper I referenced does). I vividly remember my own discovery of the “capacity” concept in 2006. That should give a clue to the inadequacy of TA work – I am a well-read and conscientious consultant and yet I had to reinvent the wheel of capacity development. It was only after I had developed the diagrams you will find at the end of the 2006 paper that I discovered the literature and debate on capacity development – at the same time it seems as the EC.

Rethinking Technical Assistance - part VII

The more I looked at the EC's reform of TA - the 2008 Backbone strategy - the more I realised that it is simply saying that everyone just needed to try a bit harder. The document sets out 8 „principles” and 5 „axes” – a sophistication which should raise alarm bells! The principles embody all the right words - flexibility, demand-led, result-orientation, harmonised, country-owned, quality control of companies etc – but the 5 axes are simply the 5 stages of the project management cycle (which remains sacrosanct). And the more I thought about the paper, the more I realised the superficiality of my own 2006 analysis which had focussed on procedural aspects - rather than the issues embodied in my later 5 questions.
Let’s face it - the Court of Auditors consists of accountants. The EC officials who drafted the response are managers. Neither accountants nor public managers are specialists in administrative reform or social science methodology and able to deal properly with the ends-means issue involved in such social interventions as administrative reform. The language of the logframe has them imprisoned in a system which believes in short causal links between activities and outcomes; if the outcomes don’t happen, then it’s the project designers, managers or implementers to blame! It’s that simple! The possibility of a more complex – if not chaotic – world does not occur to them. I’m now trying to explore what the consequences of such a (more plausible) world view might be for Technical Assistance in my field. Of course several websites are already devoted to this alternative view in the general field of development - but not PAR see Aid on the edge of chaos

The context in which we work

One of the problems about institution building in non-accession countries which I haven’t touched on is the weakness of the our understanding of the way power in many post-communist countries. Because countries quickly introduced elections and have open, competition between parties, the word „democracy” is used – and the imagery associated with this word therefore governs our choice of intervention mechanisms for administrative reform. Azerbaijan was a seminal experience for me – when I realised that it had the inverse of the „normal” political-civil service relationship. I was used to a system where Ministers temporararily occupy positions of power – and civil servants were the more permanent system whose perceptions and behaviour needed to be challenged. In countries like Azerbaijan it was (and is) the other way around – the Ministers were the permanent feature (except for the Minister of Economic development in 2006 who was thrown into prison for being too ambitious!) and the civil servants who were there at their whim. There was therefore no challenge. Too many western experts are taken in by the terms and language they and others use – and assume they are dealing with systems similar to those at home.
I referred recently to the typology of the 1996 book by Linz and Stepan which suggested the term „Sultanistic” for one type of post-totalitarian regime. The word did not, sadly, catch on. A new article on the Russian situation suggests the term „neo-feudalism” for the system there.

The Russian system is fundamentally far more solid and durable than most Western comment allows. Its strength emanates from a basic principle: It is much easier for subjects to solve their problems individually than to challenge national institutions collectively. This is because what Westerners would call corruption is not a scourge of the system but the basic principle of its normal functioning. Corruption in Russia is a form of transactional grease in the absence of any generally accepted and legally codified alternative. Built under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s “power vertical” provides a mechanism for the relatively simple conversion of power into money, and vice versa. At every level of the hierarchy a certain degree of bribery and clientalist parochialism is not only tolerated but presupposed in exchange for unconditional loyalty and a part of the take for one’s superiors. The system is based on the economic freedom of its citizens, but cautious political restrictions on these freedoms generate the wealth of the biggest beneficiaries. There is a cascade of floors and ceilings to the restrictions on freedom, so it is a feudalism with more levels than the old kind. But it works fundamentally the same way: The weak pay tribute “up”, and the strong provide protection “down.”
The Putin phenomenon reflects the fact that Russian leaders of the 1990s preferred a mediocre officer with no noteworthy achievements to become the new President instead of, for example, experienced if imperfect men like Yevgeny Primakov and Yuri Luzhkov, both of whom were quite popular at that time. The rise of Putin, who barely progressed to the rank of lieutenant colonel in Soviet times and who later became famous only for his corrupt businesses in the St. Petersburg city hall, became typical of personnel choices in the 2000s. Inefficient bureaucrats by the hundreds recruited even less able people to occupy crucial positions in their ministries and committees, content in the knowledge that such mediocrities could not compete with or displace them. As a result, Russian governance suffers today less from a “power oligarchy” than from a dictatorship of incompetence.
On the one hand, Russia has built a system in which the execution of state powers has become a monopolistic business. It is controlled mainly by friends and colleagues of the system’s creator, Vladimir Putin, and faithfully operated by the most dutiful and least talented newcomers. All big national business is associated with the federal authorities or controlled by them; local entrepreneurs still try to bargain with regional bureaucracy. All of the new fortunes made in the 2000s belong to Putin’s friends and people who helped him build this “negative vertical.” Therefore, in the coming years, competition inside the elite will diminish, the quality of governance will deteriorate further, and what is left of effective management will collapse. Yet to change these trends would nevertheless be a totally illogical step for the political class.
At the same time, a huge social group wants to join this system, not oppose it (in contrast to the final years of the Soviet Union). In a way, this is like wanting to join a Ponzi scheme at the bottom in hopes that one may not stay at the bottom, and that in any event one will be better off than those left outside the scheme altogether. As the de-professionalization of government advances (along with the “commercialization” of state services) competition among non-professionals will grow, since these have never been in short supply. Therefore, in the future a less internally competitive ruling elite will be able to co-opt any number of adherents.
The Russian elite has essentially “piratized” and privatized one of the world’s richest countries. It is so grateful for this privilege that it may insist on Mr. Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2012 for 12 more dismal years. By then the young liberal cohorts on whom so many Western analysts pinned their hopes for change will have grown up. The mediocre among them will be part of the system. Most of the best of them, no doubt, will no longer reside in Russia.

improving the system - part VI

What conclusions do I draw from my belated discovery of the critical 2007 EC Court of Auditors Report on Technical Cooperation – and the rediscovery of the curiously entitled EC response A Backbone strategy of July 2008?

• how isolated individual consultants like myself are?
• How poor my internet surfing is?
• how responsive the EU systems is?

I would concede the first and third – but in fact my surfing is pretty good and I discovered this paper only by accessing the new EC site on development cooperation which has taken the place of my old EuropAid site. The paper doesn’t appear on a google search.
And the 2008 EC response is a good topic for both textual analysis and monitoring. Certainly I need to recast my paper for Varna – which becomes less an individual cri de coeur and more a case study in EC policy-making and implementation. My questions now become –
• How did the Court of Auditors pick up on these criticisms?
• What role did the monitoring reports of the period play?
• How coherent is the EC 2008 strategy response? At first sight it seems to be „all over the place” and not actually working from a clear problem identification
• How have the 81 European Delegations in charge of programmes understood the issue?
• How have they framed their responses? Formalistically (though action plans)? Or realistically – through a limited number of actions?
- do they in fact the capacity to do what is expected of them - with only 2-3 staff for such things?
• How are the results being monitored?
• What use is actually being made of experienced people like me?

I certainly haven’t noticed any changes – the European Delegation in China actually compunded felonies by imposing in December 2009 a unilateral requirement of an action plan from me within one month of my arrival instead of the several months given in the ToR for the Inception report – and stuck to this despite the lack of a counterpart appointment. It was one of the factors which led to my resignation.
The EC seems to suffer from an inherent schizophrenia about consultants in its work. On the one hand it chose 2 decades ago to go for procuring private consultancies rather than building its own internal system. But, whenever the choice presents itself (eg on Twinning; and BackBone strategy) it indulges in the populist attack on consultants. It would be better if it did at least make a distinction between the consultancy companies (who make the profit) and the individuals who work for them on a casual basis. The 2008 document has an interesting section which says

This entails on the one hand promoting the involvement of organisations other than commercial firms (such as public institutions, universities, non-profit organisations, think tanks, etc.), and on the other hand making more use of local and regional expertise (and more generally facilitating South-South cooperation). Particular attention will be given to facilitating the dissemination of know-how, the extension of learning systems, training, etc.through appropriate guidance, training and dissemination of good practices, raise awareness of the existing mechanisms available for mobilising expertise in public bodies. This includes:
- a) greater use of the negotiated procedure (already allowed by the PRAG in case of publicsector bodies or to non-profit institutions or associations);
- b) use of grant contracts (possibly and where relevant by direct agreement) to provide TC through non-traditional sources.

Guest post from Robert Chambers

I've just come across a post by Robert Chambers which is highly relevant to my attack on the logframe.

In my 1997 book Whose Reality Counts I presented two alternative paradigms - as I then understood them – which contrasted things with people, as shown in the table below

.
Things People

mode; blueprint - process
Goals; pre-set, closed - open, evolving
assumptions; reductionist - holistic
technology; table d'hote - a la carte
interaction
with locals; instructing - enabling
locals seen
as; beneficiaries - partners
force-flow; supply-push - demand-pull

The ‘things–people’ distinction is useful for identifying and understanding relationships between many phenomena and for diagnosing problems. It points up the contrasts between disciplinary and professional orientations: the things paradigm is more associated with engineering and economics, the people paradigm more with anthropology and sociology. And the contrasts in the two columns indicate differences which are evident in much practice. At the same time, there are many cross-overs and cross-applications.
One key difference is that the things paradigm works in contexts (including human contexts) in which inputs and receiving environments are relatively uniform and controlled, and there is clear causality leading to desired outcomes.

Because of this narrow applicability, many of the errors and failures of development policy and practice have stemmed from the dominance of the things paradigm. This dominance goes back at least to the Marshall Plan, to the creation of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to development projects in the 1950s and 1960s devoted to infrastructure such as harbours, railways, roads, communications, dams and irrigation projects, and to the idea that Third World countries had to catch up with capital investment in ‘infant industries’. These all gave primacy to things over people.
Engineers and economists were in charge. It was they who set norms and procedures. For the infrastructure projects of the time, these largely made sense. But the things paradigm was then embedded in the values, culture, hierarchies and staffing of the World Bank and of bilateral and other organisations.

Non-economist social scientists were few, of low status, and regarded at best as useful to call in to deal with any ‘people problem’ in implementation once the planning had been done. So top-down, standardised approaches and methods came to be imposed on diverse, uncontrollable and unpredictable people and conditions, often with bad results.
There followed a long and continuing struggle for a better balance that put people first, with their participation from the start and throughout in projects and programmes. There were calls for a new professionalism to shift the balance, effectively from things more towards people. There was progress. For many reasons the balance did indeed shift.
Some attempts to introduce top down routinized procedures were abandoned. Participation and empowerment became part of the rhetoric even if less often of the reality of development. Local people were much less regarded as a residual. People living in poverty, women, children, those who were vulnerable, marginalised and socially subordinate, were given more priority. Though there remained far to go, their knowledge, aspirations, capabilities and priorities were better recognised and brought more into development processes. Especially in the 1990s, the centre of gravity of the balance between things and people began to shift towards people.

But the 2000s brought reversals. ‘Things’-related procedures were increasingly imposed on processes and people. In much development practice, problems were aggravated by the way linear logic, assumptions of predictability, objectively verifiable indicators, impact assessments, logframes and results-based management were more and more required by donors and lenders. More and more the assumption took hold that ‘we know what to do’ and all development required was more money. Good practice and performance, so often dependent on intangible personal and inter-personal unmeasurables like commitment, honesty, energy and trust, were undermined and sapped by the spreading culture in much development of targets, indicators and measurement, and the implicit and even explicit orientation of ‘If it can’t be measured, it won’t happen’.
‘Rigorous’ impact assessment was increasingly demanded. The so-called gold standard for this became randomised control trials (RCTs). These can make sense for medical research where there are many highly standardised units (people and their bodies) and inputs (immunisations, medicines, treatments) but misfit the realities of the complexity of social and much other change, with their uncontrolled conditions, multiple treatments, multiple and indeterminate causation, and unpredictable emergence .
In such contexts, RCTs are liable to postpone and limit learning, and to be costly, slow and inconclusive. Another contested manifestation of this control orientation has been the logframe. Thought by many in the late 1990s to fit realities and programme and project needs so badly and to have so many defects that it would die a natural death, the logframe has to the contrary flourished and spread to become a methodological monoculture in donor requirements.

So in the name of rigour and accountability what fits and works better in the controllable, predictable, standardised and measurable conditions of the things and procedures paradigm has been increasingly applied to the uncontrollable, unpredictable, diverse and less measurable paradigm of people and processes.
The misfit is little perceived by those furthest from field realities and with most power. But then all power deceives. Aid recipients do not tell donors what they experience. They think about future funding. Because funds and power are involved, these tightening and constraining shifts pass largely unremarked and unchallenged.

And what can be called ‘things procedures’ like the logframe are convenient for understaffed donors: they transfer transaction costs and any blame to those whom they fund. Recipients of aid funds are like frogs in the proverbial slowly heating pot and they adapt; but more than the frogs, they increasingly feel the pain. They do less and do it less well. They would like to jump out but fear for their survival if they did.
In my next post, subtitled Expanding Paradigms, I examine the limitations of this simple binary opposition of things and people. Shifts in technology and advances in the complexity sciences are starting to transform these paradigms, helping bring nuance to and even transcend these longstanding divides.

For the second part of his post see here

Fighting the logframe - part III

There is, perhaps, a certain arrogance in the argument underlying my position about Technical Assistance – and the last few posts. My basic objection is to the rigidity of project “Terms of Reference”. But let’s look at it from the EU point of view – they have a complex procurement system which starts with a strategic plan for a country – which is a statement of priorities and the result of a negotiation with the beneficiary country.
An independent expert then drafts a detailed project specification setting out an intervention logic and the activities which need to be carried out – which is discussed with and approved by the beneficiary (stage 2).
Someone else (in the winning contractor’s company) drafts a methodology around this – which is scored by a team of evaluators (generally including the beneficiary.
And then someone like me comes along (at stage 4) and says “this is all a lot of nonsense, we’re going to do something different”.
I got away with this in Azerbaijan partly because the ToR were loosely written; partly because the project was blocked and it seemed sensible to work with more cooperative people in other parts of the system; and partly because of the trust there was between myself and a Brussels desk-officer. And I got away with it in Kyrgyzstan because the overthrowal of a President patently creates a new situation requiring some creative policy jumps.
Am I seriously arguing that this flexibility should be the norm?

Well, yes I am - at least for projects in countries which are not in the accession queue.
I realise that the EU system is worried that such flexibility would leave it open to legal challenges from the losing contractors – nothing is so heinous in such procurement systems as subsequent departures from the advertised specifications. But this just shows the nonsense of the “commodification of the intellect” which is embodied in the EU system of procuring services. An earlier post identified the drafting of project Terms of reference as a gaping black hole – nothing is known publicly about the skills and background of those who carry it out. I’ve done it a couple of times – a long time ago. And, naturally, have no idea whether it was well done or not (this would have required some conversations with those who drafted bids around it as well as those who tried to implement the project).
All I know is that project Terms of Reference are treated as a bible by those in the companies who draft the bids for the subsequent competition – the rules of competition require this. Like has to be compared with like!
Of course, there is an opportunity for the new Team Leader to suggest some changes during the Inception stage (the first few weeks) – but, if this is the first time in the country, this requires some arrogance. And also a lot of paperwork! So the specification of the independent expert drafted some 18-24 months earlier is the key – but what model of change did they use? After how long in the country? And with what sort of dialectic with the European Delegation?
And why the ridiculous pretence about rationality embodied in the logframe? This is fine for the construction of buildings - but administrative reform is a completely differemt process

elephants in european administrative space

I’ve uploaded to the website the paper I want to present to the Varna Conference in May of NISPAcee - the body which has, for the past 20 years, done a valiant job of encouraging the development of studies and training in public administration in the countries of central and eastern Europe (CECE). The original title was The Elephant in the Room because I wanted to focus on consultants whose activities are ignored in the writing on reform in the area - but then realised that, as part of my criticism was the way their models abstracted from political realities, I needed to bring the politicians in as well. And, in order to mock the dreadful EU jargon, I substituted „administrative space” for „room”. But, since discovering changes which the EC has been making to the TA system, its now called Reforming the reformers an dhas a very different content. And a few days ago, I read with some interest but some frustration a post about a new culture of learning – and it reminded me of some distinctions I had made in a paper I wrote for the Bulgarian project in 2008. I excerpted the section – and it’s available here.

who knows of reforms of kleptocratic regimes?

Three things account for my silence of the last three days – a particularly foul bout of the flu; a powerful novel 1,000 page book The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell which recounts, from old age, the activities of a senior 30 year old SS bureaucrat throughout the harrowing years of the war; and my attempt to draft a paper for the May Conference of the Network of Schools of Public Administration in centraland eastern europe (NISPAcee). I’ve got a fair amount of text and have reached the critical stage of drafting a first Executive Summary of the key points I seem to be arguing –

The Schools which form NISPAcee train officials from state administration in both EU member countries and in those which neighbour the EU - but their courses have little or no impact in shaping the perspectives and behaviour of public officials particularly at a senior level where the agenda is set by politics with both a large and small „p”.

More seriously, the content of their teaching is conducted at a high level of rationality – and takes little account of the political context of the work of the public service (particularly appointments and promotion) in CEEC nor of the questionable basis of many of the new models of pubic management they have adopted with such enthusiasm.

The same is true of the intervention tools used by the (large) consultancy industry funded by the EU which fail to account of the highly charged political environment of most CEEC countries – and which therefore make little impact.

The design and delivery of technical assistance of administrative reform is, in any case, fatally split between anonymous individual consultants and EU officials (on the one hand) who design the programmes and Terms of Reference according to unknown assumptions about drivers of change – and the actual consultants who have to manage the projects exactly as designed – regardless of their relevance to the situation they confront on the ground several years later.

As long as accession was the name of the game, this perhaps didn’t matter too much since the „beneficiaries” of Technical Assistance in accession countries had little choice than to comply with external advice.

It is a completely different matter with, for example, Neighbourhood countries – where the language of „local ownership” has to be taken more seriously.

The rhetoric about and programmes for anti-corruption cloak the reality that a systemically corrupt New Class has arisen in many CEEC countries – which makes a mockery of administrative reform and improved public services. The global financial crisis was just the last nail in the coffin.

It is insufficiently recognised that the language of „beneficiaries” and „experts” contradicts utterly the dynamics of a normal client-consultant relationship.

Despite the many evaluations of EU programmes of Technical Assistance which have been carried out, I am not aware of any real (as distinct from formalistic) assessments of the impact of (and lessons from) the large amounts of money spent on the various blocks of work in such fields as functional review, rule of law, civil service reform etc

I know of no examples of the successful transformation of kleptocratic regimes into operational democracies – nor of the possible drivers of such a transformation.

Another heroic example from China – a blind activist released from prison but surrounded in his house day and night by more than 20 state louts is able to smuggle out an eloquent video of his experience which you can see here. He and his wife are beaten senseless for this gesture.
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Structures, systems and skills - demand and supply again

As I said, I had a dream about deliberative structures - which got me thinking about the various mechanisms which those in think-tanks and consultancies have pushed on unsuspecting governments in the past few decades – both in developed and transition countries. But let me start with the dream - which took me back to two periods in my political life. First – 40 years ago (!!) – when I was operating in a highly charged atmosphere of political conflict with a group of Liberal councillors who had just wrested power from the Labour establishment which had ruled a small shipbuilding town for about 25 years. At the age of 26 years I had been elected (in a bye-election) to represent a poor part of the town – and, facing a re-election within 12 months, had to forge a distinctive identity for myself before I faced again the 4,000 odd voters of the “ward” I had been elected to. (There were 9 such wards – each with 3 councillors - one of whom was subject to election each year. The system was discontinued in 1974 and – with all the current concern about democracy – its restoration might perhaps be considered). It was 1968 and not surprising that the distinguishing feature I developed was a strong participative (and community action) impulse which threatened not only the Liberals but my own political colleagues. But, within three years, I had managed to manoeuvre myself to the Chairmanship of an important new committee (Social Work) which was a joint one with a neighbouring town still within Labour control. The Social Work legislation passed for Scotland by the Wilson Labour Government of 1964-70 invited these new committees to “promote social welfare” and I was therefore able to use that position to develop community conference processes.
That stood me in very good stead a few years later when a giant new Region was formed – and the reputation I had gained propelled me to a central position in the new ruling Labour group.
Section 3.4 of this paper on my website describes how some of us quickly invented an inclusive process of policy deliberation. I was quite hostile to the committee structure which was then the mechanism used for political decision-making. I saw and called it strongly as a front for officer power. Our new system (called “member-officer groups”) embraced members of the opposition parties and junior officials – and the groups were invited to look critically at services which fell between the cracks of departments. Our experience attracted wide interest and was in the vanguard of a wider rethink about the process of decision-making in local government which took place more than a decade later in England – which culminated in legislation encouraging municipalities to set up cabinets and a directly-elected mayoral system. A good picture of this can be found here.

This experience gave me an insight into the role of various stakeholders – ruling party, opposition, senior officers, junior officials, citizens – which few consultants are lucky enough to obtain. It showed me how the structures we use so often pervert the potential insights each of these parties possess (one of the reasons perhaps to explain why I am disposed to the “balance” theory I offered recently). There had to be a better way of making decisions!

When I was a politician, I put the emphasis on new structures – but my more recent experience helps me understand that structures are only part of the picture. A lot of recent technical assistance in which I am involved has required the drafting of (and training in) policy analysis processes and skills - but these are not much use if they are inputed to a political process which does not operate on “rational” lines (I put this word in inverted commas simply because politics at its best has its own rationality from that of the pretensions of administrative rationality!). Effective technical assistance (TA) should to be based on a systems philosophy – bit is trapped in a project management (logframe) ideology. Of course the latter is supposed to be firmly based in the former – but never is! A nod is given in the drafting of Terms of Reference to “General and specific objectives”; but the role of the project in achieving the objective (and the other factors influencing policy outcomes) are never discussed).

A real systems approach to policy analysis in TA would (a) craft a map of the entire system – in this case
• The locus and system (formal and informal) of policy analysis and proposals
• The structure and protocols (formal and informal) of decision-taking
• The interaction between the two

And then (b) demonstrate exactly how the selected mechanism (new or amended structure, process or legal regulation; training etc) could act as a catalyst for positive change.