A champion at last

Things are looking up. I’m glad to report on a good-looking Association for independent consultants which is in the process of forming – TA-Consultants United. The list of problematic practices it identifies in the awarding and management of tenders surpasses even mine. It talks strongly about the cowboy companies and has a powerful critique of the drawing up of project specifications -

ToRs are often lacking quality in terms of:
• Prerequisite investments and/or structural changes in organizational development and capacity building are ignored, making it impossible for the project to succeed,
• The relation between tasks to be performed and required competencies of experts
• Expert profiles in ToRs tend to be rigid, standardized and quantitatively focused, rather than actual competence-based
• The selection procedure does not allow for the selection and deployment of the best team
• The current processes block contractors from becoming competitive on the basis of their actual skills and experience
• Bid-evaluators lack technical competence for assessing key methodological issues
• Bid evaluation is not related to modern management insights, for instance in selecting teams rather than individuals

The current CV system/assessment of experts is inappropriate for assessing the quality of an expert:
• Acquired competencies are not identified
• Quantities (years of “experience”) are more important than the quality of experience
• There are apparently no systems to assess and value comparable experience
• There is currently no acceptable system of performance evaluation
• Referees collection and proof of employment are arbitrary and bureaucratic rather than functional

It needs 300 paid-up members to get off the ground. Very well worth support - for less than 200 euros a year!
The graphic is one by the great Boris Angelushev I discovered earlier this year in Sofia. He was trained in Berlin in the early 1920s at the same time as Kathe Kollwitz

back to social change

Time out from technical Assistance – for those interested, my further thoughts of the last few days on what more the EC should be doing to sharpen up its effectiveness in institution-building in the sorts of countries I've been working in are posted as a key paper on my website
Serendipity is the great things about libraries and second hand-bookshops. The hard commercial sells are absent – and we alight instead on the old books brought in by accident. Last week I rejoined the British Council library here (which, unlike the Sofia branch, is still stocking books!) and took home a 2004 paperback Spiritual Capital – wealth we can live by (Danah Zohar) on the basis of its promising opening pages. The author’s 5 year old son wanted to know why we had a life – and that brought home to the author the pointlessness (if not poison) of so much modern living – and how the selfishness of modern capitalism might be modified. Like a lot of people now, this has become a central issue for me.
The book itself disappointed – not least for the reasons I have criticised so many books for - failure to mention other relevant texts. Although the book mentions “stewardship”, it completely fails to mention the writings of Robert Greenleaf and also, despite its subtitle, Paul Elkan’s Natural Capitalism (2000) – let alone such green texts as Richard Douthwaite’s (whose latest can be read here)
As befits a psychologist, Zohar focuses on motivations – and has indeed some very interesting stuff on that. For the last few years I’ve been struggling with this subject (neglected I feel in the literature on public management) and had identified 7 different motives in table 1 on page 15 of this paper. Zohar has 16! Of course it is good for political scientists and Institution Builders like myself to be reminded that all change comes from individuals. But, as the literature on capacity development recognises, behavioural and social change operates at two other levels as well – the organisational (which is shaped by a combination of corporate governance and management systems); and societal. In November I posed four questions about social change.
• Why do we need major change in our systems?
• Who or what is the culprit?
• What programme might start a significant change process?
• What mechanisms (process or institutions) do we need to implement such programmes?

That blog also indicated some relevant texts. I need now to return to these questions – and make the link between the malaise in overtly kleptocratic regimes and the malaise from which so many western societies are now suffering. Most of the literature about social change is written from one of the three perspectives I have mentioned (micro; macro or meso) – Robert Quinn is one of the few who has looked at the area between two of them. His Change the world; how ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary results is an excellent antidote for those who are still fixated on the expert model of change – those who imagine it can be achieved by “telling”, “forcing” or by participation. Quinn exposes the last for what it normally is (despite the best intentions of those in power) – a form of manipulation – and effectively encourages us, through examples, to have more faith in people. As the blurb says – “the idea that inner change makes outer change possible has always been part of spiritual and psychological teachings. But not an idea that’s generally addressed in leadership and management training. Quinn looks at how leaders such as Christ, Gandhi and Luther King have mobilised people for major change – and suggests that, by using 8 principles, “change agents” are capable of helping ordinary people to achieve transformative change. These principles are -
• Envisage the productive community
• Look within
• Embrace the hypocritical self
• Transcend fear
• Embody a vision of the common good
• Disturb the system
• Surrender to the emergent system
• Entice through moral power

Is it people who change systems? Or systems which change people? Answers tend to run on ideological grounds - individualists tend to say the former; social democrats the latter. And both are right! Change begins with a single step, an inspiring story, a champion. But, unless the actions “resonate” with society, they will dismissed as mavericks, “ahead of their time”.
I am now working on a simple task which I haven't seen attempted before - to identify in one short paper the various texts which seem to me relevant to the issue of social change (covering all three levels mentioned in this blog)and to look at the interface between them.

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.

training in despotic countries

Having personally spent five years living in countries such as Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan and working with senior people in their governments, I am following with interest the discussion about university involvement with training civil servants and leaders in despotic countries.

If you ever needed proof about the populist depths to which the press has sunk in Britain, just look at the media coverage of the resignation of the LSE Director over the Libyan money which the School had been receiving (largely as a result of the pressures the Bliar and other Governments have put Universities under to build commercial links). Almost to a (wo)man, their comments condemn the involvement but fail to ask some basic questions. Colin Talbot has a more balanced reaction - I totally agree with this line of argument. I felt privileged to be allowed to stand in a classroom of the Tashkent Presidential Academy for Reconstruction and present to civil servants the sort of perspective about power enshrined in Rosabeth Kanter's Ten Rules of Stifling Innovation - and also to lay out the European experience of developing local government over the centuries.

Of course, the LSE Director (who came from the financial sector) was particularly unethical in his approach and deserved to go. But he is the easy scapegoat whose fate seems to absolve the rest from their guilt.
The late Fred Halliday (Middle East expert) seems to have been about the only academic to make public criticisms of the LSE acceptance of donations from various unsavoury despots - just before his death last year. It’s easy to be wise after the event - but the moral courage and nuanced judgement of people like Fred Halliday is in very short supply these days.

Many western universities have also run all sorts of training and education programmes in these same states. Does anyone seriously doubt that these encounters with democratic, open, education systems has not been a positive factor in helping to ferment the current revolt that is sweeping across the Arab world?

I have made this positive point in several BBC radio interviews over the past two days, against a tidal wave of criticism of the LSE. But I think that, in that context, the resigning LSE Director Howard Davies was absolutely right to defend the LSEs educational work with Libyan public servants, of which I was briefly a part in June 2008. As long as these programmes are not censored by the regimes in question, their impact can only be to the good.

Of course, in the real world it is not as simple as that – those of us who have worked in non-democratic states like China or Libya know that there are always pressures to compromise and self-censor, something we always have to guard against.
Rather more complex is whether Universities should accept money to establish research centres and programmes – like, for example, the Said Business School at Oxford (funded by a Saudi arms dealer). Here the issues of complicity with dodgy regimes or individuals become much more acute and potentially morally dubious.

It is in this area that Howard Davies and the LSE tripped up, but I’m still not sure it really merited his resignation. After all, these links were encouraged and supported by the then British government. And those on the right now attacking Tony Blair for pursuing this diplomatic strategy should ask themselves – would Libya be revolting now if it hadn’t been opened up to all sorts of western influences? Perhaps they should reserve their indignation for a Prime Minister who trots around the Gulf selling arms in the middle of all this?

But on balance, engagement with education organised by western Universities has had a huge, positive, effect on the Arab world and is probably not an insignificant factor in the current uprising. We in the University sector should be much more aggressive in defending this record – especially against media empires run by family-based autocracies that bear striking similarities to some Arab regimes I could mention.

wooden language of reform

„Various types of interorganizational arrangements, many of which are referred to as partnerships, alliances, or multiple stakeholder groups, are emerging in numerous contexts as a method of negotiating diverse interests, goals, resources, and knowledge in decision- and policy-making processes. Such organizational relationships do not rely primarily on market or hierarchical forms of authority or control but rather on a commitment to realizing and negotiating innovative solutions to complex social problems collectively”.

How on earth can people write this way? The language of reform is so awful – I tried to explore why this should be so in Just Words? Of course there are some for whom it is deliberate obfuscation but, for the most part, it’s the old adage „those who can, do; those who can’t, write (or advise)”. The academics and think-tankers producing the material, for example, on health reform have rarely had the experience of managing things – for the most part they have absorbed theories and the words they use relate back to those theories rather than the real world in which doctors and patients interact.
A recent review in London Review of Books drew attention to the meaningless language which the British coalition government is using for its brutal restructuring of the health service and contrasts it with the clarity of the langauge when the health service was introduced all of 60 plus years ago by Bevan the left-wing Labour Minister.

Aneurin Bevan argued like someone willing to go to the wall for what he was saying. He spoke belligerently. He spoke as though to oppose what he was saying would be to offend against common decency. British politicians don’t talk that way any more, even when it matters. Take Andrew Lansley, the secretary of state for health. Like so many of his cabinet colleagues, and so many of those student politicians in the shadow cabinet, he appears to grasp the bullet points of an argument without ever grasping the argument. There’s a little moral seasoning to his dinner party rhetoric, a little dead-eyed flutter of words like ‘innovation’ and ‘commitment’, but Lansley has no feeling for the needs and fears of people who go to the doctor. He has no idea, but plenty to say.
Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill will summarily abolish 152 primary care trusts in England, and GPs themselves will have to choose where to buy services from. The NHS thereby becomes a stimulus to energetic competition in the private sector, and the notion of universality goes out the window. Even GPs, who are not known for hating power, don’t want power this way: turning them into commissioners is a category error. Lansley’s proposals borrow the sound of freedom in order to usher them into a financial prison. It won’t work, and GPs know it. Yet Lansley’s department continues to show a peaky disregard for sound paragraphs. ‘Liberating the NHS’ – see what I mean? – is said to be the result of the consultation process. Here’s a typical block of text:
To further incentivise improved outcomes and financial performance, consortia will receive a ‘quality premium’ based on the outcomes achieved for patients and their financial performance. Some of the outcomes from the Commissioning Outcomes Framework will inform the premium – but not necessarily all, since some may not be suitable for translation into financial incentives. The Bill introduces the powers necessary for the quality premium, and we will discuss further with the British Medical Association and the wider profession on how to shape it.
By way of contrast, let’s look at Bevan’s speech to the House of Commons on 30 April 1946, on the occasion of the second reading of the National Health Service Bill. ‘In the last two years,’ he said, there has been such a clamour from sectional interests in the field of national health that we are in danger of forgetting why these proposals are brought forward at all … Many of those who have drawn up paper plans for the health services appear to have followed the dictates of abstract principles, and not the concrete requirements of the actual situation as it exists.So far, so clear. Today’s conjurors with ‘paper plans’ might hang their heads. Then, this: It is cardinal to a proper health organisation that a person ought not to be financially deterred from seeking medical assistance at the earliest possible stage … The first evil that we must deal with is that which exists as a consequence of the fact that the whole thing is the wrong way round. A person ought to be able to receive medical and hospital help without being involved in financial anxiety … If it be our contract with the British people, if it be our intention that we should universalise the best, that we shall promise every citizen in this country the same standard of service … the nation itself will have to carry the expenditure, and cannot put it upon the shoulders of any other authority.
You can hear the putter of hope and the crank of disgust in that very plain speech. Orwell would have liked it – its lilt, its flow and its moral transparency. But it is the quantity of solid civic ambition that resounds now.

The phrase "wooden language" is aa bit of an insult to a beautiful thing - trees and wood - hence my photo (a Targoviste verandah from Mandache's collection)

exploring local government

Scholars of government and administration have reason to be grateful to the British Parliamentary tradition of Committee and Select Committee investigations, hearings and publications. Not only officials and politicians but academics, think tankers and journalists offer their insights verbally and in writing – all of which are reproduced and available online. With a stylistic elegance and clarity of language which is often missing from other sources! The Select Committee on Public Administration has been a particularly good source of information – and I now see that there is, after the General Election of 2010, a new Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform which is now inquiring into the desirability of codifying relations between central and local government. It has posed the following questions - Various answers to these questions are already available on the site as well as a report I missed a couple of years back on the Balance of Power between central and local government – this time from the Communities and Local Government Committee.

Also a powerful article on the scale of change which the coalition government is smuggling into public services in Britain

1. Should the relationship between central and local government be codified?
Should codification of the relationship between central and local government be considered in the context of a wider constitutional codification?
2. If codification is appropriate, what degree of independence from central government and what powers should local government be given?
3. How, if at all, should the status of local government be entrenched, or protected from change by central government?
4. What consequences should codification or other change in the relationship between central and local government have on the accountability of local authorities to elected local politicians, local people and central government?
5. Does the devolution settlement provide a relevant model for a possible codification of the status of local government?
6. Are there examples of constitutional settlements between central and local government in other countries that are relevant to an appropriate model for the UK?
7. What is the value of existing attempts to codify the relationship between central and local government, through: the Central-Local Concordat or the European Charter of Local Self-Government? Should this Charter be placed on a statutory footing?
8. How would the “general power of competence” for local authorities proposed by the current Government affect the constitutional relationship between central and local government?

Romanian painters

On an artistic roll at the moment. Saturday popped into an exhibition at the small gallery at Military Circle and was very taken with the style of Adina Romanescu who can be seen here presenting some of her work. Good to see some younger artists still celebrating the human figure. Romanescu’s colours are also fascinating – ranging from bright pastels to subdues hues.
And Sunday saw the eventual visit to the beautiful Pallady Museum – which is actually a bit of a misnomer since only a few of his paintings and sketches are on show in this superb house, reckoned to be Bucharest’s oldest and which is located in one of the most run-down and (therefore) charming part of the city. It actually houses the collection of the original Armenian owners - Serafina and Gheorghe Raut – which is of charming small European paintings, furniture, ceramics, wall hangings. You can see a lot of Pallady’s paintings on the great website which seems to go by the formidable name - Mobile Cultural Objects Classified in the National Cultural Heritage. In between times, great art books picked up for a song have included British Art - a walk around the rusty pier by Julian Freeman (which looks at the different "ethnic" inputs to painting; The Impressionists' Handbook by Robert Katz which gives me for the first time a real historical insight into this genre; and Van Gogh's Imaginary Museum - using his diaries to illustrate the painters who influenced him.
Today we’re visiting the atelier of an old artist not far away - Vladimir Zamfirescu
During the internet search I came across a good-looking blog I’m more Romanian than You

Chinese repression

A year ago, I was waiting impatiently to make my exit from Beijing. Everything I’ve read about events there since then confirms me in my judgement that this was a society in which I simply could not live – despite the enthusiasm which my young German colleagues seemed to have for it. Last week it was first this amazing Open Letter- then an outline of the scale of the Securitate control system which governs people's lives in China. And today it was the touching final blog of a frequent blogger before he disappeared into the Chinese prison system. For an interesting debate about the current Chinese situation see here.
I’ve shared my enthusiasm here for the detective stories from Qiu Xiaolong based on Shanghai in the 1990s which give a better sense of political realities (systemic corruption) than most social science writing about the country. Yesterday my visit to the Anthony Frost English bookshop unearthed the 1930s detective mysteries of the Dutch diplomat Robert van Gulik who celebrated the work of Judge Dee, magistrate of Han-yuan in 666AD – followed by today’s discovery of someone even closer to power and corruption (in Beijing) who has turned his experiences into detective stories.

another EC rethink

The criticism I have been making foe some years of EC Technical Assistance has related to hhe relevance of project management philosophy in the context of what I have called "non-accession" countries eg those who have been the focus of its Neighbourhood Policy. This was launched in 2003 and aimed to create a “ring of friends” by extending aid and benefits, such as access to the single market, in return for economic and political reforms. Yet the EU has little to show for the billions of euros it has spent. Belarus remains Europe’s last dictatorship, Ukraine is moving backwards, the Arab-Israeli conflict is unresolved and punctuated by violence, and north Africa has languished, until this year, under the rule of autocrats. In the south the EU has focused mainly on economic development; this area gets the lion’s share of neighbourhood-policy funds.
A report this week tells us that The Economist tells us that

Europe has a wealth of experience in helping to reform former totalitarian states. The democratisation of eastern Europe, though incomplete, is a striking success for the “soft power” of the EU, a body without much of the hard sort. But if enlargement has been the EU’s most successful foreign-policy tool, the attempt to promote reform in borderland countries with little hope of joining has largely been a failure. Nicolas Sarkozy’s vanity project, the “Union for the Mediterranean”, a political club that has been paralysed since its inception in 2008, has if anything boosted Arab monarchs and presidents-for-life.
Stability has been paramount for many reasons: preserving Arab-Israeli peace treaties; fighting jihadist terrorism; curbing weapons of mass destruction; protecting oil and gas supplies; and preventing mass migration to Europe. These are not trivial concerns. Europe must deal with the neighbours it has, not the ones it would like. Its mistake was to lose belief in their ability to change for the better. But now that the Arab world is being remade from within, European policy must change too.
The EU’s foreign-policy chief, Cathy Ashton, is being showered with ideas: Germany says EU support (including lifting barriers to agricultural trade) should be linked to democratic reforms. Italy wants more “carrots” to encourage orderly but rapid change, including an upgrade of relations with Egypt and Tunisia and a new system to manage migration. France, Spain and four others plead for more spending in the south and boosting the Union for the Mediterranean, with few or no conditions.
Remember 1989
The end of communism in the east was a great blessing for Europe. The fall of dictators in the south could be too, though the transition is bound to be more uncertain. In 1989 western Europe’s communist foes collapsed; the people rose up against the resented Soviet occupier and were attracted by the West. In the Arab world it is the West’s awkward allies that are falling, and the people there have long resented Western overlordship.
So far the revolts of 2011 have been strikingly free of Islamist, anti-imperial and even anti-Israeli ideology. Such sentiments could yet be stirred if Europe appears to be colluding with hated rulers. The uprisings have removed Europe’s dilemma over pursing stability or democracy—its interests against its values. Stability is gone; interests and values are the same. The only answer is to embrace, help and protect those who want democracy.

I have a feeling that this word "democracy"is misleading us again. Another blog puts a more realistic gloss on things.
We really do need to unpick this term "democracy"! One of the thoughts I am trying to develop at the moment is the artificiality of the distinction the EC has bmade in its TA work between democracy assistance and administrative reform. I don't think you can't separate the two.
graphic is Tudor Banus againwith critics saying that recent events in north Africa have highlighted its ineffectual nature. Stricter "conditionality" attached to EU funds and greater "differentiation" between how much target states receive are two ideas due to come up in a forthcoming review of the policy, a commission spokeswoman said on Thursday (24 February). In a letter to EU high representative Catherine Ashton this month, France, Spain and four smaller EU members said the Union should give less money to its post-Soviet neighbours in the east and more to southern neighbours on the Mediterranean rim. An analysis paper attached to the letter noted that out of the €12 billion set aside for the European Neighbourhood Policy from 2007 to 2013, just €1.80 is being spent per capita in Egypt and €7 in Tunisia compared to €25 in Moldova. But two-thirds of overall ENP money already goes to the south - since the countries in question are more populous.
„We do recognise that lessons need to be learnt," Natasha Butler said of the recent turmoil in north Africa. "There has been a sea change in the region and we are ready for a sea change in terms of our approach," she added. "That means we are ready to strengthen differentiation, we are ready to move more on conditionalities."
Devised in 2004 as a means of building better relations with the Union's closest neighbours, the ENP has recently taken flak from a wide range of people. British Prime Minister David Cameron this week said it needed "radical reform" after EU financial assistance worth around €1.7 billion for countries such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in recent years failed to bring about the political and market reforms they were supposed to.

The European Commission has promised a "sea change" to the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP),

Fiddling while Bucharest....builds

In her recent blogs, Sarah has been giving great coverage to the destructionivists who occupy all positions of power and (apparently influence) here in Romania – and the Ceaucescu tendencies in particular of Mayor Oprescu (a surgeon no less) in relation to old Bucharest buildings.
The inclusion of buildings on a list of protected patrimony means nothing to him – nor laws which forbid eviction of people during winter months.

Today, we are witnessing a second 'systematisation' of Bucharest, which has accelerated since 2005. Its new face sees towers rising up to twenty floors in architectural zones replacing buildings of historical and architectural value. They are spilling into neighbouring areas - look no further than the recent Roman Catholic Cathedral, St Joseph's.
The segment affected by the demolitions included a mass of buildings of traditional architectural heritage representative of the capital. Now they are gone. Hotel Marna, the Nicolae Dobre House, the Constantin Radulescu House, The Dacia cinema, the house where the national poet Mihai Eminescu lived with Veronica Micle to name just a few...all gone. Gone forever. Irreplaceable jewels impossible to rebuild, impossible to replicate. Hala Matache comes next if it hasn't gone already. Twenty storey eye-sores will replace them. Bucharest is being deleted. An inestimable cultural value belonging to the Roumanian people has disappeared in the hands of the Mayor of Bucharest, Sorin Oprescu. The man has no Roumanian culture and no respect for it. This is how City Hall 'manages' historic Bucharest.
Dinu C. Giurescu is named after his grandfather, Constantin, who lived,as previously mentioned, at str. Berzei, 47, destroyed by Ceausescu. He carries the 'C' in his name proudly in memory, and spent his childhood in this house. He said, "We know the roads are congested but that does not justify returning to Ceausescu's demolition process of the few remaining historic streets left in Bucharest. There are monuments on str Berzei - noble, nostalgic and beautiful. The street is a sample of Old Bucharest which, by some miracle, survived [zic Nicolae Ceausescu's urban planning]." Indeed they did survive Ceausescu - but they have not survived Oprescu.
Does Oprescu realise what he is doing? Does he have any idea how loathed he is? Does he not give any thought to what he has done to Roumanian culture, history, architecture and patrimony? To the Roumanian people? Does this man have any conscience?.I think not. He is blinded by money and his own self-importance. Indeed, Roumania's latest urban dictator in a Mayor's position. How could this cardiologist break so many hearts?

The reaction of my Romanian partner is interesting – despite her admiration for European conservation she’s none too sympathetic to the few local protestors who turned up when the bulldozers crushed the old shell which has been standing for years on the corner across from the Mandache market (and the hotel next to it). “What have they been doing in the last 20 years when the old buildings have been empty and crumbling?” she asks. Clearly people like Valentin Mandache have been trying to develop an appreciation of the charm of the Romanian architectural tradition - his website gives us every day a delightful feature from the older buildings here. But he has said nothing about the demolitions which have, rightly, aroused Sarah’s ire. Protestors such as are a forlorn minority. And I came across a publication yesterday which may explain this passivity. Produced by the Romanian Architectural association Arhitect, it was a nicely bound 2 volume collection (in Romanian and English) of articles from their professional journal over the past 20 years – entitled After Twenty Years. I was initially excited to have a chance to follow the thoughts of the profession but was surprised to note an absence of diagrams, sketches, drawings or pictures. And, when I settled down to read the text, I was quite horrified with its abstract gibberish – all drawn, it seemed, from Western semiotics and having little or nothing to do with the tactile business of buildings. Of course, in a country where everyone builds their own houses, Romanian architects are in a curious position!
As I was writing this, I remembered an article Simon Jenkins had written last year on how close Britain came to the same destruction of its history-

We have forgotten, who ever knew, how close familiar Britain came in the 60s to going the way of eastern Europe. Those who regarded themselves as in the van of taste wanted British cities demolished. The architecture and town planning professions, led by the Royal Institute of British Architects, were almost universally destructive. Victorian Britain was derided as ugly, largely because it stood in the way of fees. Scorn was heaped on Gilbert Scott's Foreign Office and his St Pancras hotel. The only Victorian buildings mostly left sacrosanct were places of worship. Nobody could afford to rebuild them. To celebrate its 50th birthday, the Victorian Society has published Victorians Revalued, a book recalling its battle honours. It is a noble record. Back in the 60s the society was the SAS of the conservation movement. It was founded after the demolition of the Euston Arch in 1961, a vandalism personally approved by the philistine Harold Macmillan, desperate to appear modern. Two environment ministers, Geoffrey Rippon and Peter Walker, planned to demolish the "government precinct", including the Foreign Office, and the entire eastern side of Bishopsgate in the City. The architects Leslie Martin and Colin Buchanan proposed to flatten the south end of Whitehall from Downing Street to the river, and the houses of parliament.
Five years of relentless campaigning by the Victorian Society defeated most of these plans. At the same time, with Nikolaus Pevsner and John Betjeman in lead, the society saved St Pancras. Next came a signal triumph over the Greater London Council at Covent Garden. In Liverpool, battle was joined against Graeme Shankland's plan to demolish the entire city centre, at the same time as T Dan Smith's Newcastle started to vanish under the wrecker's ball.
The story of these campaigns reads like a history of the Great War. Lost were the battles of Eaton and Trentham halls, the Coal Exchange and Barings bank in the City, the Imperial Institute in Kensington, Birmingham's Central library and Leeds's Park Row. Won were the battles of Carlton House Terrace, Covent Garden, King's Cross and Liverpool's Albert Dock. A climax came in 1974 with the V&A's sensationally successful 1974 exhibition, The Destruction of the English Country House. Before then a house was being destroyed almost every week; afterwards destruction virtually ceased. Never was art more potent.
It is hard in retrospect to appreciate how cliff-edge were these David and Goliath contests, and how desperately alone were the Davids. Against them were big money, big government and big architecture. The RIBA represented not a profession, let alone an art, but a financial lobby. At public inquiries, developers and architects called witnesses to argue for demolition – often corrupt art historians – whose payments were never revealed. Those whose sole concern was public aesthetics had to use their own time and money. Time and again they won. The survival of Victorian Britain was their reward. The story was not just public against private interest. It needed a revolution in taste.
Many factors brought about a change. The charm of Betjeman's poetic propaganda depicted the 19th century not as grimly Dickensian but as quaint and loveable (helped by ITV's Upstairs Downstairs). Clean air and restoration revealed the decorative subtlety of the Victorians' gothic and classical themes.

Norman Lewis - the quiet explorer

I’m discovering that truth is stranger than fiction – or rather that (some) biographies can make for more gripping reading than novels. A few months ago, the book which stunned me was The Orientalist – in search of a man caught between east and west. This is the incredible tale of one Lev Nussimbaum - born into Baku and a world subsequently destroyed by Communism and Fascism and the ideologies of class and race. The book vividly describes the 'wild west', oil-rich city of Baku in the 1920s, the cabaret of Weimar Germany and a whole host of strange and eccentric characters: Viereck, the writer and Nazi sympathizer, Ernst 'Putzi' , Hitler's Harvard-educated press secretary, Baron Omar-Rolf, Erika Lowendahl, a Jazz-age poetess whom Lev marries, Varian Fry whose mission it is to save two hundred of Europe's top intellectuals and artists from the grip of the Nazis and Italo Balbo, founder of the Italian Air Force who sets up a futurist experiment in the deserts of Libya. Through one largely unknown man we learn so much about that lost world.

And these last few days I’ve been reading Semi-invisible Man – the life of Norman Lewis by Julian Evans. I have read enough of Norman Lewis to recognise that he was up there as one of the inspirations for the new breed of travel writers but had not properly appreciated his other writing – nor the sort of life he had, right until his 90s. Norman Lewis spent his life foraging around some of the world's most dangerous places, from civil-war Spain to remote corners of Asia and drug-ravaged Latin America. From all of them Lewis returned vividly-written accounts which found their way into more than 30 books and many pieces of inspired journalism. Some see Lewis as the equal of Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell. He was a superb reporter of the civilisations being crushed by modernity. After an arduous jaunt around Spain just before the civil war he produced Spanish Adventure . It was followed three years later by Sand And Sea In Arabia. The outbreak of war found Lewis in Cuba, where he left his wife and son (for their safety, he said) and returned to England to enlist. He found a slot in the Intelligence Corps which dispatched him to French North Africa and then to Italy, where he found the inspiration for Naples '44 (published in 1978), the book that many regard as his masterwork. It tells the story of people scraping a living in a half-ruined ancient city that had been overrun by conquering foreign armies.
After the war Lewis seems to have found his voice. For 30 years he travelled incessantly and published book after book. Among the better known: The Volcanoes Above Us (1957); A Small War Made To Order (1966); The Sicilian Specialist (1974); An Empire In The East (1993); In Sicily (2000). All this was interspersed with journalism for titles such as the New Yorker, the Sunday Times, the New Statesman and Granta. In most of his writing, he gave voice to the outrage which people like John Pilger have subsequently made a vocation.

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.

catalysts to change

I’ve been remiss in making so little mention of the momentous events going on in the north of Afirca and in Yemen. Others more expert than I are covering the issues very well – I was particularly interested to see the discussion about the role played by outsiders in guiding the protestors. An 83 year old American citizen - Gene Sharp – has emerged from the shadows and seems to have played a role in various recent revolutions and his website has some useful guidance for citizen activists in autocratic regimes. Serbians also seem to have been active tutors
The Guardian’s development blog had a very useful post on the catalysing conditions -

Tertiary enrolment – school leavers going to higher education – in Egypt has risen from 14% to 28% since 1990, and in Tunisia from 8% to 34%. Egyptian high school graduates account for 42% of the workforce, but 80% of the unemployed. According to the global employment trends from the International Labour Organisation, Arab countries need to generate more than 50 million jobs in the next decade just to stabilise employment. These conditions have created a large body of disaffected youth, a boiling pot of frustration that is now spilling over at governments that have failed to provide employment opportunities. But the reasons for unrest aren't all economic. Increases in literacy and education, alongside urbanisation and the expansion of the media, have extended political consciousness and broadened demands for political participation. Despite national increases in living standards, the region's repressive, authoritarian regimes are often plagued by corruption and nepotism. Dani Rodrik, a development economist, points out that economic growth does not buy stability unless political institutions mature at the same time. This shows that widely used measures of development such as the MDGs and the HDI are, by themselves, insufficient to determine development priorities: much greater attention needs to be played to inequality, but not only inequality of income.
Middle Eastern countries have had, at least until recently, one of the most equal income distributions in the world. Egypt, for example, registered a Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality) of 32 in 2005, far lower than the 47 achieved by the US in the same year. This suggests that access to gainful employment and acute inequalities in political power also need to be considered. These issues are not unique to the Middle East. But the histories of countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria demonstrate that as societies transform and urbanise, aspirations grow and people expect more of their governments.
However, economic inequalities within, rather than between, countries are becoming more important as the proportion of middle-income countries grow: research from the Institute of Development Studies shows there is a new "bottom billion" of 960 million poor people – 72% of the world's poor – who live not in low, but in middle-income countries. This is a dramatic change from just two decades ago, when 93% of poor people lived in low-income countries.

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.

Part V - Court of Auditors' 2007 Report

I have a discovered a great Report from the EU Court of Auditors on Technical Cooperation (2007) here and recommendations which very much fit the drift of my arguments.
eg
Recommendation 3; Design of capacity development projects should be improved, by facilitating effective ownership and leadership of the national part of the process, by better defining specific capacity development objectives and related technical assistance requirements, by avoiding overly complex implementation structures, by being more realistic in terms of objectives to be achieved and by planning longer implementation periods.

Recommendation 4; The procedures governing the project preparation and start-up phase, including the procurement of technical assistance, should be reviewed, in order to create more time for implementation, and more flexibility should be allowed during the inception phase to adjust the project design and/or the Terms of Reference for the technical assistance to changes in circumstances.

Recommendation 5; The evaluation criteria in technical assistance tenders should be reviewed, in order to better reflect the quality and previous experience of the experts and the consultancy company.

Recommendation 6; More options should be considered regarding procurement possibilities to allow the best possible choice of technical expertise, including expertise from public institutions and expertise available in the beneficiary country or the region.

Recommendation 7; The Commission should increase its use of technical assistance through coordinated programmes and apply, where possible, implementation arrangements which encourage local ownership.

Recommendation 8; Technical assistance performance by companies and experts should be assessed systematically and a management information system for recording, reporting and consulting this performance should be developed.

And I now remember the EC's Backbone strategy of July 2008 which followed that report

Part IV - strengthening the backbone

If I’m so unhappy with the EC’s approach to institution building in kleptocratic countries, how would I improve it?"
The first steps in any such change are, of course, to assess the situation – describe how the systems works and assess how well it works – and then find out what the various stakeholders think.

The 2007 European Court of Auditors' assessment of the EC Technical Cooperation programme was a good start. It spurred the Commission to produce its "Backbone strategy" which my present draft to the NISPAcee Conference in Varna currently assesses here .

Given the bureaucratic constraints on policy change (particularly given the upheavals involved in creating the External Service), it is hardly surprising that the Backbone strategy says that the strategy is OK and that it is the staff of the 81 EC Delegations which manage it who need to wise up.

These staff are well trained in procurement issues - but not so knowledgable about the substance of the sectoral work they manage; nor particularly skilled in contractual management. The EC has been publishing Manuals and Guidelines for its Delegation staff in recent years to help them understand the conceptual issues involved in institution building - see this one on capacity development in 2009.

Basically the Delegations are enjoined to -
- get better ToR
- select consultants more carefully
- allow them more flexibility

Easier said than done? And still they hardly mention the people who actually do the work - the independent consultants like myself. Strange!

The European Centre for Policy Development Management in Brussels published in 2007 one of the very few papers I know which focuses on the people actually carrying out TA – and asks how their work can be supported and improved

For more on the Court of Auditors' Report - and the EC response, see tomorrow's post


My recent visit to Sofia set off a paean of praise to that city which should be extended to the whole country – at least as far as its landscapes and townscapes are concerned. And, compared to Romania, it is possible to travel around the country and taste this varied scenery in superb ethnic houses remarkably cheaply. In 2007 I discovered by accident a small book on these places produced by the Bulgarian Association for Alternative Tourism – and was very pleased to come across the 2010 version on my last trip.

The Guardian has a good story about some fundamental changes the Conservatives want to make to public services in Britain which were never mentioned in the manifesto. Democracy is in shambles in that country. The previous government commissioned a paper on this issue to a fairly right-wing body which failed to produce convincing evidence of the benefits of further contracting out of public services. See also here an article about the likely effect on the health service.

The painting is Stanley Spencer's wartime "Welders"

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

Success in spite of the logframe - Part II

I'm revisiting some of my projects - trying to show how the successes came in spite of rather than because of the project management system the EU uses.


In February 2005 I arrived in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to start an 18 month project working with a Minister (without Portfolio) to develop the local government system. We actually had three offices – one in the capital and 2 in our 2 pilot Oblasts – and our job was to a mixture of policy advice and training. It also required us to produce a Roadmap for the development of local government (although there was already a decentralisation strategy). Just as I was finishing the Inception Report, I had to flee the country because of unrest which swept the President from power. I returned after a week to a bit of a political vacuum – but the municipalities were still there so we proceeded with the initial needs assessment which we did through focus group discussions.
I had a basic question – we were a short project in a field where there were already 2-3 donors (eg UNDP; Urban Institute) who had carved out an important role over the past 5 years and more. What, I wondered, was the distinctive contribution our small and brief project could make? The project design did not seem to have considered this question.
The first answer was that, unlike the other donors, we had a base in the field – 2 local offices – which gave us some special insights into the needs of remote village municipalities. Our intensive focus group sessions (see para 6 of this paper) and the drafting of the Roadmap also helped keep our minds constantly open to new ideas – and made me realise that one of our potential roles was to help ensure that the voice of remote people was heard in the capital. I got a bit angry, for example, with all the talk there about the “lack of municipal capacity” – and therefore wrote a whole new 100 page document on the issue of capacity development, turning the argument into one which rather questioned central commitment and capacity How do people measure municipal capacity? I asked and then suggested

that question can strictly be answered only in relation to the delegated tasks – since patently municipalities do not currently have the resources or the personnel to begin to perform “affairs of local significance”. And state bodies may therefore seem to be in the best position to answer the question since they delegate so many of their tasks to municipalities - for example the task of collecting national taxes . But it is hardly fair to give an organisation tasks it doesn’t want and for which it is not paid - and then blame it when it doesn’t carry them out “properly” (in the view of state bodies)! We argue later that the capacity of an organisation is built as it has the opportunity to take decisions for itself and learns from doing. It is exactly the same process as good parenting. Of course inexperienced young people will make mistakes – but it is the job of responsible parents who care about their children to create the conditions in which their children learn for themselves – at minimal cost to themselves and others. And some of the qualities therefore needed in those purporting to offer support to local government are care and compassion.

We held 70 workshops for the municipalities – with 1,500 participants. Motivation and appreciation was very high (the photo is a session in Atbashy). Early on in the project’s life, however, we took the view that training activities were transient events and that we should attempt to encourage a local learning capacity. Training is sustainable only if we work with motivated people – if they can then apply what they have learned and have follow-up. Initially we wanted to focus on target groups (eg newly-elected municipal Heads) but the elections took place in December 2005 and events meant that we were unable to start that particular work until May 2006, a few months from the scheduled end of the project (although I got a 6 month extension). We therefore started to focus on the entire (village) municipality – and in April 2006 experimented with a new more holistic approach to training
• A practising and successful German mayor carrying out interviews the day before the workshop with both municipal people and community activists
• His then making an initial presentation at the workshop to all staff, councillors and activists about the issues which had emerged from those interviews – and some examples about how these issues had been dealt with in other places
• Participants then going into working groups to develop options
• The full group then assessing which options to develop
• The project then organised regular follow-up, monitoring visits

This proved to be a very successful formula – with its focus on practical problems; encouraging people to work together on them; giving examples of where and how successful initiatives had been taken; and following up with regular visits to discuss progress. The spirit this created contrasts with that which often accompanies traditional training courses. The project’s Developing Municipal Capacity publication identified 10 factors which made it difficult to practice traditional training – and offers a typology of learning.
We did not initially understand the significance of the concept of a Roadmap – and it is one also which our beneficiaries also had some initial problems with. But, as we explain in the introduction to the readers of the document,

“A road map does not suggest a route – YOU choose the route. A roadmap simply locates the key features (mountains, rivers and swamps) you need to be aware of when trying to travel from the A to the B of your choice. So this is not an attempt to force foreign models on the local situation. Another point about a road map is that it cannot cover every changing detail nor tell you how you should approach certain situations – sometimes a large bump in the road or impatience can have fatal consequences. So a road map is only a guide - local knowledge, judgment and skills are needed to get you to your destination! And, like a map, you don’t have to read it all – only the sections which are relevant for your journey!”

The Roadmap contains powerful insights into the difficulties being experienced by the country in policy implementation.
To be continued