The politics of reform

The world is an unruly place and has sometimes to be kept in order – whether by force or persuasion. And presumably because of our need for simplification - the battle is generally between two sides.  Sun versus earth; Catholicism v Protestantism; Cavaliers v Roundheads; Left v Right; Christians v Muslims. Those in the middle – whether liberals or greens – generally get ground down between such enmities…

So it has been for the past in my professional field - of what used to be called public administration and is now better known as public management. 
Until 1980 things were actually quite boring - with “public administration” being largely legalistic and a description of conventions governing the “machinery of government” in particular countries.

The subject had been a bit more interesting in the United States – at least at the end of the 19^th century when the blatant collusion between big business and the political class made reform an explosive issue. Indeed it actually led to the founding of public administration as we know it – with none less than Woodrow Wilson leading the way….

In Britain, the politics may have been more muted - but let’s not forget that it was the infamous charge of the Light Brigade in 1854 during the Crimean War which created the conditions which led to the creation of the British civil service system which remained intact for more than 100 years. A Royal Commission on the Civil Service (Northcote-Trevelyan) had been set up in the early 1850s but had been labouring until that military action exposed the disastrous nature of the aristocratic leadership in the country – it was the spark which led to the demands for a more meritocratic approach…..

And the early 1960s saw strong questioning again of British administrative traditions – epitomized in the establishment in 1966 of the Royal (or Fulton) Commission on the Civil Service which laid the foundations to a much more managerial approach in the 1970s which became increasingly aggressive in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher. Richard Chapman’s The Civil Service Commission – a bureau biography 1855-1991 (2005) is the best guide to this process – although B Guy Peters’ The Politics of Bureaucracy – an introduction to comparative public administration; (1978) was probably the first comparative and sociological approach to the subject. But it was probably The Private Government of Public Money; Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky (1974) which first made this subject really sexy in Britain!

Coinciding (?), however, with the breaching of the Berlin Wall, the phrase “New Public Management” (NPM for short) signalled that we had a new ideology on our hands. Christopher Hood is credited with having invented the term and described it very clearly in this 1995 article

New Public Management (NPM)

No.	Doctrine	Meaning	Typical Justification
1	Hands-on professional management of Public Organisations	Visible management at the top; free to manage	Accountability requires clear assignment of responsibility
2.	Explicit standards and measures of performance	Goals and targets defined and measured as indicators of success	Accountability means clearly stated aims
3.	Greater emphasis on output controls	Resource allocation and rewards linked to performance	Need to stress results rather than procedures
4.	Shift to disaggregation of units	Unbundle public sector into units organised by products with devolved budgets	Make units manageable; split provision and production; use contracts
5.	Greater competition	Move to term contracts and tendering procedures	Rivalry as the key to lower costs and better standards
6	Stress on private sector styles of management practice	Move away from military- style ethic to more flexible hiring, pay rules, etc	Need to apply "proven" private sector management tools
7.	Stress on greater discipline and parsimony	Cut direct costs; raise labour discipline	Need to check resource demands; do more with less

How much is really new?

In all the excitement of new rhetoric, it is all too easy to imagine that we are confronting these issues for the first time: in fact argument about how to run government and public services goes back many centuries and the present debates are in some ways a replay, in different language, of those debates. Whilst the technology and skills have certainly presented us with new opportunities, perhaps a touch of humility or sense of history might help us in these frenetic times?

1991 saw the publication of a particularly interesting and strangely neglected book - Administrative Argument - which identified 99 different "solutions" which had been advanced at one time or another to the issue of improving administrative performance. Sadly it is out of print; not available on google books; nor accessible even in part on the internet...

If ever we needed a lesson in the need for a measure of scepticism toward the enthusiastic marketing of the latest management fashion, we have it in the brief list of these 99 solutions - many of which happily contradict one another. Sometimes the need for continuity in staffing is stressed: sometimes the need for turnover. Sometimes openness; sometimes secrecy……

Hood and Jackson suggest that we tend to use three general "stereotypes" in our thinking about organisations -

Three classic organizational stereotypes

	Military Stereotype	Business Stereotype	Religious Stereotype
Slogan	Run it like the army	Run it like a business	Run it like a monastic order
Work force	Limited career	Hired and fired	Service for life
Motivation	Fear of punishment Hope of honours	Fear of dismissal Hope for money	Fear of damnation Hope for salvation
Control	Audit of war	Impersonal	Faith; social acceptance
Objective setting	Orders of day	Profit	Worked out at length in discussion and reflection
Belief	Obedience to leadership brings efficiency	Incentives to reduce waste and search for innovations	Lifetime internal commitment limits rash selfish ideas

Hood and Jackson  (1991)

The third column actually anticipates the various efforts which have been made in the past decade to find a new synthesis to PA and NPM

To be continued…..

Microcosm of a post-industrial town

It was exactly 50 years ago I ran my first successful election campaign in what was then a shipbuilding town (in its heyday, the yards kept 10,000 souls employed - if and when, that is, there were enough orders) and still remember the scorn with which my remarks at one meeting - about education being the future core of work in the town - were greeted. 
In 1968 it was only those of us who kept an eye on the United States who had a glimmering of the world that lay ahead. Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock may not have been published until 1970 and Daniels Bell’s The Coming of Post-industrial Society until 1973 – but Warren Bennis had written his “Coming Death of Post-Bureaucracy” in 1966

I’ve just looked at the latest employment statistics for this Scottish District which tell me that by far and away the largest source of employment in the area I was raised in - and represented politically for 22 years - is that of ……health!!! (and social work) - with a figure of….. 7,000 (no less than 23% of the total). 
Next, perhaps surprisingly, is the retail trade (at 4,500) – with education coming in at what I find is a surprisingly low figure of 2,500. I made that 1968 prediction in a room of what was then the town’s new Further Education College – clearly having a sense of what was to be the phenomenal (and global) rise of the further and higher education industry… 

Only 1750 people are still working in manufacturing industry……That’s 5.8% compared with about 70% in the 1950s. The town was selected by IBM as the location for an industrial plant which opened in 1954 to great ceremony; grew in its heyday to about 3000 employees – but now employs precisely zero!!! There is a fascinating video here which starts with that opening before suddenly cutting to the desolation on the site when it completely closed a few years ago

“Public administration” has its own separate category (basically the town hall and social security office) and also has a surprisingly low statistic of 1500 people – although there are 3500 jobs in another curious category of “administrative and support services. Significantly only two thirds of the 30,000 jobs are full-time......

I know that these days talk of “real jobs” and “dependency” is old hat – if not politically incorrect. But there is not a single job in the agricultural sector (the area used to have some farms) – and electricity, gas, water and sewage have only 90 workers.

This is simply not sustainable! The talk about “resilient towns” needs to get louder – particularly with the frightening picture which is emerging of the effects of automation…..

Tales of journeys around Britain have attracted readers since at least Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). The 1980s and 1990s saw that interest grow – think Bill Brysen and Jonathan Raban (by boat) to which the most recent addition was JD Taylor’s superb tale of a bike tour – Island Story - whose political commentary takes us back to the writings of Cobbett’s Rural Rides. George Borrow and George Orwell…

Writers such as Owen Hatherley have added a new dimension which builds on the architectural writings of Ian Nairn. I am just waiting for his New Kind of Bleak – journeys through Urban Britain (2012) which does not, however, include Greenock  

Those interested in tracing the rise and fall of a typical Scottish town should have a look at - 

- this collection of photos of the town in the 1960s (by a Frenchman)

- the collections here of the municipal museum (art and photographic)

- a rather grainy black and white of the town in 1959 

- a collection of old photos here; and here

- a short video montage of the town in the 1960s  

- a drone view of the contemporary town 

How did administrative reform get to be so sexy?

After some months of inertia but now back in the mountain house, I’m now able to take a fresh look at drafts which have been lying untouched since the end of last year eg the material on the global efforts to make state organisations more effective which I’ve been working on for quite some years. So I have to be ruthless in my editing – particularly since a lot of new material was I introduced last autumn – both a series of posts in the autumn and reflections from my last 4 projects. A method I’ve found effective in this editing is to -

·         stop reading when the text breaks away to pursue another idea

·         reduce the argument of that section to a short and distinctive statement

·         develop a table whose middle column reproduces those statements

I find this both helps sharpen the text and ensures the material flows more smoothly. I applied the method to the autumn series and got this result -

·         At least 8 very different groups have been active in shaping our thinking about “reform” efforts

·         These are - academics, journalists, politicians, think-tankers, global bodies, senior officials, consultants and an indeterminate group

·         each uses very different language and ideas – with academics being the most prolific (but tending to talk in jargon amongst themselves; and therefore being ignored by the rest of us)

·         In 1989 “the state” crumbled – at least in eastern europe…   20 years on. how do we assess the huge efforts to make its operations more “effective”??

·         15 question offer a key to the most interesting writing on the matter.  

·         Different parts of the world have their own very different approaches and ways of talking about reform. English language material has tended to dominate the literature; but Scandinavians, Germans and French let alone South Americans, Chinese and Indians have also developed important ideas and experience - of which English-speakers tend to be blithely unaware.

·         Two very different “world views” have held us in thrall over the past 50 years….a “third” and more balanced (eg the “new public service”) has been trying to emerge

·         We seem to be overwhelmed by texts on reform experience – but most written by academics. Where are the journalists who can help the public make sense of it all ?

·         Some old hands have tried to summarise the experience for us in short and clear terms. The lesson, they suggest, is that little has changed…

·         Perhaps the time has come to give the doers a voice?  

I’m still working on the material – which is currently about 110 pages long and called How Did Administrative Reform get to be so sexy? 

"With a little help from my Friends"

Friends of this blog have noticed my silence these past few months….and I’m grateful for signs that readers haven’t completely given up on me…

And it’s not just writing that I’ve found difficult – these past few months I’ve found that books have also become a big turn-off.

Perhaps it was the burst of reading and writing I did in the autumn for the blog series about the State and pubic management literature which finished me off - somehow I can’t take any more the dry, reified technicalities which most non-fiction work offers these days.

That, you may say, surely leaves the way open for novels – a genre I’ve admitted I rarely feel partial to (it’s 8 years since I last tried to give a sense of my favourites in that genre) And indeed I did reread with interest last month Alan Massie’s classic A Question of Loyalties and Bordeaux trilogy as well as some John le Carre novels last week……

It was perhaps a hopeful sign this week that some authors actually started to speak to me again…

-       Yanis Varoufakis’ And the Weak Suffer What They Must? – Europe, Austerity and the threat to global stability was the first voice to try to cajole me out of the lethargy which has been like a funeral pall these past few months. I had started the book last year, rediscovered it in a friend's house in April and found it a gripping read - effectively an update of his "Global Minotaur", I then moved onto the more autobiographical “Adults in the Room – my battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment” (2017) which is a "kiss and tell" about his 6 months' spell as Greek Minister of Finance (the phrase "Glasgow kiss" comes to mind!). The reviews contained in the 2 links give some of the essential background if you’re not already familiar with this controversial writer. I like the historical sweep and biographical tone of his writing but know that many find him a bit...well.... "showy"….I've attached at the bottom a short Varoufakis resource which includes important critiques of this latest book (and also Varoufakis' response to the more significant critiques)  

-       And a book about healthy eating and living which has been lying on my shelves for more than a decade also had the tone and voice I seem to need these days - and led me back to the little library I have of Michael Pollan’s superbly written books eg In Defence of Food and Food Rules – let alone his The Botany of Desire (2001) a foretaste of his latest book - How to Change your Mind – the new science of psychedelics

These days, I need writing which jolts me – not for its own sake but to help first identify minds which look at the world in original ways but which also understand that clear language is an essential tool for such originality…Recently deceased essayist Tom Wolfe was a favourite of mine ever since I first read his Mau Mauing the flak catchers in 1970 but the “creative writing” courses which have contaminated journalism in the past few decades have made me suspicious of even good journalists these days. James Meek remains an exception for his ability to reduce economic complexities to 5 or 10 thousand word essays – ditto Jonathan Meades for his forensic analyses of cultural issues.

Varoufakis and Pollan are, for me, all too rare examples of the sort of writing which is needed if authors are to stand out against the verbiage and noise which assails us everywhere these days………

The title is that of a famous Beatles song whose lyrics can be read here -https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/beatles/withalittlehelpfrommyfriends.html

A Varoufakis Resource

https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/; his website

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/paul-tyson/varoufakis-%E2%80%93-new-kind-of-politics (2015); a profile of the man

Reviews of "Adults in the Room"

https://www.adamtooze.com/2017/07/01/reading-varoufakis-frustrated-strategist-greek-financial-deterrence/ a sympathetic review 

https://adamtooze.com/2018/02/24/europes-political-economy-reading-reviews-varoufakiss-adults-room/; a good overview of reviews of "Adult in the Room", structured by ideological slant

https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2018/03/07/was-defeat-inevitable-a-review-of-adam-toozes-meta-review-of-adults-in-the-room-1/ Varoufakis’ detailed reply to these critiques

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/paul-tyson/adults-in-room-by-yanis-varoufakis-london-bodley-head-2017; a good review of the book

http://www.cadtm.org/Yanis-Varoufakis-s-Account-of-the; an important serial critique of "Adults in the Room" from someone on the Syrizan Left. Its first part contains one of the few exposes of Varoufakis' basic negotiating strategy you will find in the English language

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/yanis-varoufakis-greece-greatest-political-memoir; Paul Mason's review of Varoufakis' expose

https://verfassungsblog.de/losing-to-the-european-union-a-review-of-yanis-varoufakis-book-adults-in-the-room/; a critical assessment from a Greek centrist

https://www.ft.com/content/65e5c4ee-2ffc-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a; FT review

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/06/yanis-varoufakis-latest-eurogroup-statement-keeps-greece-on-the-austerity-rack.html; an example of some of YV's doodles!

For those who want an independent "take" on the greek economy of the past decade or so, I strongly recommend this blog from a retired German banker whose marriage takes him frequently to Greece,,,,

Naked Economists spill the beans

Despite my 4 years of economic studies (and some years actually teaching it to others!), I make no claim to understand the nature of the global plague that has befallen us in the past few decades. I start to read the books which promise to clear my confusion but find that my eyes soon glaze over….

I toiled during my studies in the early 1960s to make sense of its focus on marginal calculations and “indifference curves” but can remember only the following lessons from my four years engrossed in economics books

- the strictness of the various preconditions which governed the idea of (perfect) competition – making it a highly improbable occurrence;

- the questionable nature of the of notion of “profit-maximisation”;

- the belief (thanks to the writings of James Burnham and Tony Crosland) that management (not ownership) was the all- important factor

- trust (thanks to Keynes whose work was dinned into me) in the ability of government to deal with such things as “exuberant expectations”  

- the realization (through the report of the 1959 Radcliffe Commission) that cash was but a small part of money supply. Financial economics was in its infancy then.

For someone with my education and political motivation and experience, however, my continued financial illiteracy is almost criminal but not, I feel, in any way unusual. Most of us seem to lack the patience to buckle down and take the time and discipline it needs to understand the operation of the system of financial capitalism which now has us all in its thrall.
We leave it to the "experts" and have thereby surrendered what is left to us of citizenship and political power. Like many people, I’ve clicked, skimmed and saved – but rarely gone back to read thoroughly. The folders in which they have collected have had various names – such as “urgent reading” or “what is to be done” – but rarely accessed. Occasionally I remember one and blog about it.

The version of Dispatches to the next generation – the small version I posted a few days ago offered 4 recommended books which gave what I considered an alternative account of modern economics –. But I realised that I had omitted not only the best written one (Keen) but an old favourite (Douthwaite); one that is causing a quite a stir (Raworth); as well as the one I would probably rate the best for the interested citizen needing an up-to-date and easy to follow explanation of what is wrong with most economics textbooks (Weeks). 
So my more considered recommendations are -

- Almost Everyone’s Guide to Economics; JK Galbraith and N Salinger (1978) quite inspiring from one of the world's best writers and economists quizzed by a young French woman. I discovered it in 2022 thanks to a great biography of the man by Stephen Dunn.

- For the Common Good; Herman Daly and John Cobb (1989). The book which inspired a different approach to economics – written by a theologian (Cobb) and Herman Daley who for 6 years was the principal economist of the World Bank. But, by virtue of being a train blazer, not the easiest of reads

- Short Circuit – strengthening local economies in an unstable world” - Ronald Douthwaite (1996). Very practical – but also inspirational….22 years on, it hasn’t really been bettered. Full text available at the link

- Debunking Economics – the naked emperor dethroned; Steve Keen (2001 and 2011) Written before the crash. it might be called the first alternative textbook (except it’s much greater fun to read!). Can be read in full.

- Economics for Everyone  – a short guide to the economics of capitalism”; Jim Stanford (2006) is a very user-friendly book and has an excellent “further reading” list which was probably the best there was at that time….Once upon a time it was freely available on the internet but now I can find only excerpts…..

- Zombie Economics - how dead ideas still walk among us; by John Quiggin (2010) is a great read – with a self-explanatory title. He is an Australian author currently completing a book called Economics in Two Lessons…
- 23 Things they didn’t tell you about capitalism; Ha Joon-Chang (2010) superbly-written demolition job on the myths perpetrated on us by economists

- Austerity – the history of a dangerous ides; Mark Blyth (2013) written by a political scientist/political economist, it shows how old theories still affect the contemporary world profoundly   

- Economics of the 1% - how mainstream economics serves the rich, obscures reality and distorts policy; John F Weeks (2014) One of the best introductions to the subject - which can't be faulted for being over-diplomatic! 
- Credo – economic beliefs in a world of crisis; Brian Davey (2015) An alternative approach to economics which situates it in its cultural and historical context. It may be long (at 500 pages) but is definitely worth persevering with....

- Vampire Capitalism – fractured societies and alternative futures; Paul Kennedy (2017) A sociologist’s treatment which earns high points by stating in the very first sentence that it has “stood on the shoulders of so many giants that he is dizzy” and then proves the point by having an extensive bibliography with lots of hyperlinks…

- Doughnut economics – 7 ways to think like a 21st century economist; Kate Raworth (2017). This Oxford economist has made quite an impact with this book

A Priceless Guide to the writing about the Global Crisis

The last post tried not only to identify what it was that had so impressed me about the “Defending Politics” book but also to generalise possible lessons for the hundreds of thousands of writers whose titles and marketing blurbs shout at us from the bookshops and internet.  

I have always loved Oscar Wilde’s aphorism – “I always pass on good advice; it’s the only thing to do with it”. But, on this rare occasion, I actually took on board the advice – in an effort to try to reduce the 200 plus pages of a draft I’ve had for some years - Dispatches to the (post-capitalist?) future generation - to more manageable proportions.

It’s a book which takes the form of a series of posts which were more like letters to my children (and their generation) who were very much in my mind as drafted them. Perhaps that’s why this “giving of account” (with all the religious overtones that term carries!) has been so difficult to complete in a satisfactory way…….

                                      

I’m quite proud of the shortened version which has emerged this week - Dispatches to the next generation – the small version. Just 70-odd pages (excluding the annexes) - about 20 pages of them an annotated reading list of “key” books about the global economic crisis which give a brief sense of more than 100 books published in the second half of the 20^th century worth further study

I’m experimenting with the following marketing blurb - 

The author does not pretend to be an economist – although he lectured in that capacity in the late 1960s and early 70s before he saw the error of his ways.

Nor is it easy to pin a political label on him – although he did spend 22 years of his life as a Labour councillor with responsibilities for devising and managing unique strategies for opening up the policy process and for social enterprise in Europe’s largest local authority (The political compass test, however, placed him in the libertarian left quadrant).

The subsequent 25 years he spent as an adviser on institutional development to governments in central Europe and Central Asia.

So he knows the enemy!

I‘ve always kept notes on the books which impressed me…and the arrival of electronic files and hyperlinks have made the task of collecting and retrieving these lists a positive pleasure. I still find it amazing that my blog can find and present within seconds ruminations about a book I read almost a decade ago. 

Academics are good at throwing bibliographical references at us. Indeed they overwhelm us with them – whether in footnotes, brackets or end-pages. It’s almost a virility test with them. I get very frustrated with this – since all these lists do is to flaunt their superiority – they don’t actually tell us anything interesting about each book.

The Annexes include a little section on some of the great books of the past century and also a favourite of mine – “Just Words – a Sceptic’s Glossary”

Books on Big Issues - Prefaces and marketing blurbs

I did a rare thing yesterday – I went back to the "Defending Politics" book I had just finished and reread it from beginning to end, this time more carefully marking the key sections with a pencil.

I had started my last post by saying that it was a “model of the sort of writing we need in these times” - and then went on to create a table which explored different aspects of the 8 basic arguments the book presented. 
I would now like to try to identify what it was that so impressed me – and to use that hopefully to make a wider point about the craft of publishing our thoughts

What I liked about “Defending Politics”…

- The book was short (180 pages) – almost an extended essay. You felt the guy had a thesis – and knew how to hone it down to its essentials

- The text was broken up – every third or fourth page or so had a heading or an indented section which signalled a movement in the argument. My eyes glaze over when I see a chapter of 30 pages of densely-written text - with no graphics, tables or pictures to relieve the pressue….

- each chapter gave an early hint of the basic argument it would present. This was clearly someone who had reread his text with a reader’s eye; asked himself what it was saying; and then ensured that the words actually expressed his intended meaning!

- there were lots of book references – but not of the normal sort in footnotes; or end bibliographies (which often leave me with the feeling of one up-manship!). These were, rather, short lists in the body of the text – generally exemplifying different sides of an argument.  

I readily admit to being a policy geek - and have therefore too readily exposed myself to turgid academic prose. But my patience started to wear thin some years ago with books on important topics which were simply unreadable. Life is simply too short to waste time on writers who feel they have to use clumsy sentence structure and/or pad their material with verbosity. 

A year or so ago I revealed some litmus tests I used whether to buy/read a book on any of the "Big Issues of the Day" – as well as my ten tricks for fast reading and comprehension – which are worth repeating –

How to get the most out of a non-fiction book

General

- Read a lot (from an early age!)

- Read widely (outside your discipline)

- Read quickly (skim)

- If the author doesn’t write in clear and simple language, move on to another book asap. Life’s too short……Bad writing is a good indicator of a confused mind

For each book

- before doing anything else - read the reviews (surf)

- identify the questions these suggest – you should never read a book without knowing what you want to get out of it!

- Mark (with a pencil) passages you both like and don’t like – with underlines, question-marks, ticks, comments and expletives

- Write brief notes to remind you of the main themes and arguments (this will help you remember better; and also helps build up an archive)

- see whether the author explicitly recognises and properly discusses other schools of thought than the one (s)he is pushing

- Check the bibliography at the end – to see if there are any obvious names missing (I grant you that this requires some familiarity with the subject)

This, of course, puts the onus on readers - but the real problem rests with authors and publishers...It is they who swamp our minds with thousands of titles and excessive verbosity. Greater self-discipline is needed..I suggest that, when they come to draft their Prefaces and marketing blurbs, they consider the following -  

- tell us what’s distinctive about your book; ie why you feel you need to add to what is already a huge literature on the subject

- “position” your book – at best this will require you to offer a typology of the different schools of thought on the issue
- convince us that you have not only read the “relevant literature” but that you have done so with a reasonably open mind; At best, offer an annotated list of key reading - with your preferences. This will give us a sense of your stance and fairness

- give a “potted version” of each chapter. Most think-tank reports have executive summaries. I don’t know why more authors don’t adopt the same approach. Amazon, some publishers and Google offer free access to excerpts – but the selections are fairly random.

- use more tables….and graphics