Public Interest - how innocent we were

One of the really difficult things for people of my generation is to come to terms with is how venal our legislative and legal systems have become (the bankers are simply part of a complex equation). The post-war generation to which I belong was brought up with the tenets of liberal democracy - some of which you will find set out at page 6 of this paper of mine. We believed that government was responsive to public concerns; that our civic input (in whatever form - letters; political membership; political involvement and argument - not least as local councillors) would ensure the system operated in the public interest. The evidence we have seen in the last decade has, however, has forced us to the reluctant conclusion that laws are created generally to protect the rich and powerful; and that the judiciary (despite or perhaps because of its claims of impartiality) is in fact not blindfold but highly susceptible to the interests of the rich and powerful. I leave open the question of whether this is a new phenomenon - or simply one which less deferential a more educated and connected society has become aware of.
The examples I quote are first from a bastion of social democratic values (Canada) and then the better-known practitioner of venality and hypocrisy which happens to be its southern neighbour.The first article identifies the huge inequities in how banks are treated – compared with the rest of us.

They are often protected (from foreign competition); subsidized (for example, in the way capital gains tax worked), and bailed out when needed. But what do banks actually do, in return for all that money? What is their actual economic function?
Let’s cut through the mystification of high finance, and ask that simple question: What do banks do? What do bankers actually produce?
The practical answer, in concrete terms, is simple: nothing. They produce nothing.
In that, the banks are different from the real economy, where hard-working people like you and I produce actual, concrete goods and services that are useful.
Banks, and the financial sector more generally, don’t produce goods and services that are useful in their own right. They produce paper. And then they buy and sell paper, for a profit.
Here’s a little economic lesson. You can’t live off paper. You need food, clothing, and shelter to survive – not paper. And since we are human beings, not animals, we need more: we need education, and culture, and recreation, and entertainment, and security, and meaning. Those are the fundamentals of economic life. Not paper.
What is paper actually good for? You can wallpaper your house with it. You can line your birdcage with it. In a pinch, you can wipe your butt with it.
But other than that, paper is just paper. It is not concretely useful in its own right.
How do banks create that paper? Let me put it bluntly again: They create it out of thin air.
It is not an economic exaggeration to state that the private banking system has the power to create money out of thin air.
Not cash. Not currency. Only the government can produce that.
But most money in our economy – over 95% of money in our economy – is not currency. Most money consists of entries in electronic accounts. Savings accounts. Chequing accounts. Lines of credit. Credit card balances. Investment accounts.
In that electronic system, new money is created, not by printing currency, but through creating credit. Every time a bank issues someone a new loan, they are creating new money.
It’s like a big magic machine, creating money out of thin air. And it’s called the private credit system.
One of my favourite economists, John Kenneth Galbraith, put it this way: “The process by which private banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”
How do they do it? They start out with some capital. Let’s say a billion dollars. Then they lend it out. Then they lend it out again. And again. And again and again, 10 or 20 or 50 times over.
Each new loan, is new money. The economy needs that money, let’s be clear. Without new money, we wouldn’t be able to pay for the stuff we make. So we’d stop making it, and we’d be in a depression.
So the creation of new money (or credit) is as essential function for the whole economy. It’s like a utility. But we’ve outsourced that crucial task to private banks. We’ve given them a legal license to print money – and the freedom and power to do it on their own terms.
Their goal is not providing the economy with a sensible, sustainable supply of the credit we need. Their goal is using their unique power to create money out of thin air, to maximize the profits of the banks, and the wealth of the shareholders.

The second article I owe to a site - Byliner - which offers simply good writing. Out of curiousity I hit this piece which tracks how the American judicial system treated someone outraged with the secretive and iniquitous way heritage land was being sold to commercial gangsters.

WHEN DECHRISTOPHER’S CASE finally went to court last March, 2,000 protesters showed up. So did the Salt Lake police department, federal marshals, and Homeland Security agents. The trial lasted three days, with Judge Benson making a few things clear up front. First, DeChristopher’s attorneys wouldn’t be allowed to use a necessity defense—the argument that he had to disrupt the auction because of his beliefs about climate change (he had successfully bid for about 12 lots of land with no intention of paying). Second, the defense couldn’t bring up the fact that DeChristopher had actually raised money to buy the land; the court’s view was that, by then, the fraud had been committed. Finally, the defense could not inform the jury that past bidders had not been able to pay for their parcels either. Shea and DeChristopher’s other attorney, Ronald Yengich, were left to argue that their client had acted on impulse and hadn’t intended to disrupt the auction. The prosecution didn’t have much trouble refuting this, given DeChristopher’s public statements, and it came as little surprise when, on March 4, DeChristopher was convicted

You can imagine the behind-the-scene discussions which went on to fix that!

Culture corner
And, after these photos of reality, let's have a fix of something more worthwhile in these latest paintings from Its about Time

Comic insights

"We are where we are" was a great phrase I heard for the first time a some 7 years ago – from a very understanding European Commission desk officer. I had expected some swearwords about the cock-up we were facing – instead of which I got this very wise response. You might think that the German “man ist was man isst” (to which I have referred before) is a variant – but, if you do, go back to square one! The German phrase suggests that our behaviour is determined by our diet. I disagree – they are determined to a huge extent by the words we use. "Words", as a left-wing political elder once severely but memorably told the cabinet of which I was a young member, "are important". I didn’t need the reminder – since George Orwell was then (and remains) one of my favourite writers.
All of this is by way of preface to a couple of very funny glossaries I came across yesterday. The first about civil service jargon on a site which contains some great articles tracing the development of the British civil service through its different stages and putting it all into historical context.
The second glossary is a good contribution to the sort of ridicule which we urgently need to start slinging at economists (and bankers). It’s from the website of one of the contrarian economists whose critique of economics has been at last proven so correct - Steve Keen. Curiously, his blog was down all Monday!!
This article from the very readable US Chronicle of Higher Education puts his work in a larger context.

At the start of the year I tried to pull together my various thoughts (and references) about the words which modern technocrats have used in the past 4-5 decades to protect their power and disarm any possible threat from the unwashed masses. It's in what I consider one of the best papers I have ever written - Just Words - a sceptic's glossary?
I realise as I write this that I have always targeted the technocrats (the courtiers) rather than the all-powerful commercial and other elites. Is this simple because I knew them better? Or is it because they supplied the ammunition to allow the real perverts to exploit us all?

As a party piece, this is a good expose of the phrases we Brits use; how our European partners generally understand them; and what the Brits really mean by them. For example - when we say "very interesting", foreigners think we are impressed. What we are actually thinking is that it's a lot of nonsense! Similarly, when we say "with the greatest respect", we are actually thinking "the man's an idiot" whereas the non-English speaker assumes that he is being listened to."Incidentally, by the way" actually means "this is the primary purpose of the discussion" - whereas the foreigner that the issue is of no significance. For those who deal with Brits, the table is useful prepartion and, who knows, sharing it with them might open up new friendships!
Poets are supposed to be the great explorers of verbal nuance – but I’m beginning to suspect it is actually comedians who deserve this accolade. I’ve referred recently to Tommy Cooper and Chic Murray. One of Germany's greatest - Loriot - died recently and occasioned this tribute. One of the most delightful films for me is - A Fish called Wanda – and I was pleased to find a couple of clips - first when Jamie Lee Curtis is overwhelmed by the Russian phrases of John Cleese (co-producer)
and then a clip which contrasts English styles of bedding with (those of!) the Italian.

To round off this treatment of words and phrases, who better to turn to than one of Britain's best writers - Chris Hitchens - who gives here a great treatment of the Ten Commandments

Fiddling in Cannes (and Sofia) while Europe is burning

OK - I agree that fiddling while Athens is burning is not a good way to go down in history (the musical references in my last post). But perhaps, as Europe burns, the only resort is to celebrate what it has at least given in culture. Indeed I realised only yesterday that perhaps why I have, over the past decade, discovered and celebrated (beautiful) paintings is that they represent individual striving for excellence when that is so difficuly to achieve in the field I chose for myself all of 50 years ago when I made the fatal decision, in the middle of my university studies, to forsake the study of French and German and to choose instead the upcoming fields of Economics and Politics. When the shit hits the fan, another coping mechanism is humour and I was happy to come across these wry puns from a great British comic which actually remind me a bit of the vastly underrated Chic Murray from my own hometown.

However two leftists are redeeming my chosen field – today’s post from Cannes (where G20 countries are meeting) by Paul Mason blows my mind away as the most incisive comment on that is currently happening. And another old leftist - Stuart Holland whom I met in the mountain eyre of Erice (Sicily) in the mid 1970s at an (anarchist) Free University seminar – has an excellent paper which coherently spells out the path which European leaders should be taking – if they had any leadership skills.

I haven’t had time to read this article from Nouriel Roubini – but is seems worthwhile amongst all the dross from the usual business and economic commentators who are now exposed ar the brown-nosed charlatans they were.
The painting is a recent purchase of mine here - by Vladimir Dmitrov - which seems appropriately apocalytpic.

Part VIII - All you need to know about capacity development and administrative reform in 5 easy stages

My initial feeling after yesterday’s attempt to summarise the previous week’s thoughts about training in this part of the world was one of quiet satisfaction. I felt I had made a coherent and reasonable summary – all the better for having started, I felt, with the short (and memorable?) statement about “wrong focus and theory"; "context"; and "leadership”. I had made the link not only with the capacity development literature but also with the (very different and more academic) literature which has been following administrative reform in ex-communist countries. I had given a practical example which had come to me as I was wrestling with the question of how one was supposed to make any progress in regimes I had designated, in my paper at this year’s NISPAcee Conference, “impervious regimes” (impervious, that is, to public opinion). And I ended with a word of advice to those who head the various Training Institutes for public servants in the Region – effectively “courage, mon vieux, think big and reach out” – but had also recognised how difficult such cooperation is in the Region. My next step, I felt, was to look at examples of how individuals have achieved in the face of such difficulties and write an inspiring piece around that – drawing on the burgeoning literature of social innovation.

But I hadn’t quite finished with capacity development – after all this was the basic framework which, I had argued, all interventions to improve public services in the Region should have. True, Bulgaria and Romania are exceptional in having Administrative capacity as one of the strands for their Structural Funds – but most new member states would readily agree they have a long way to go before their state bodies are operating as well as they might wish. What, I wondered, does the capacity development literature say about the process of building administrative capacity? Is it different from what the literature of public management (with which I am more familiar) has been saying?

It is at this point that alarm bells started to ring in my head. One of the important points in my NISPAcee paper was that we have a lot of different disciplines looking at the same issues from different perspectives (which is fine), with different names (eg state-building; fragile states; administrative reform; anti-corruption; capacity development; democracy assistance) and each apparently oblivious to and/or careless about the other disciplines(which is not fine). Was this perhaps simply an example of different people coming to the same conclusion using different words? Was it all verbal gymnastics? I began to think so when I stumbled across a free download Deconstructing Development Discourse – buzzwords and fuzzwords which was published in 2010 by Oxfam and which makes a nice complement to my Just Words – a sceptic’s glossary
But, as I puzzled over the two approaches, I began to see some interesting differences. Bear with me as I try to explore some of them.

Those who have been writing about capacity development for the past 2 decades (but particularly in the last 5 years since OECD got into the act) seem to be in the development field and working in NGOs, International bodies or development think tanks. They draw from (and try to contribute to) field experiences. I discovered a good history about capacity development only this morning – written as far back as 1997. Its concerns and focus seem to have been social - rather than institutional - development. Peter Morgan is the most coherent writer on the subject and has an excellent paper here on it. There is an excellent learning network for capacity development which published in January a very useful paper which spells out in details what the approach means in practice . I get the sense that it is change management for social development people. That is to say, they emphasise context and process - the HOW and say llittle about the WHAT.

Those who write about administrative reform focus, on the other hand and by definition, on state bodies rather than social groups (although the anti-corruption literature considers social groups critical); are usually from academia; draw on the classic literature of public administration, management and (to a lesser extent) public choice theory. They are (with the exception of the latter school) more voyeurs than actors. One of the top names is Chris Pollitt whose recent paper Thirty Years of Public Management reform – has there been a pattern? gives an excellent flavour of the topic.
An obvious question then is - If the key writers are voyeurs, who has been behind the explosion of adminisitrative reform of the past 30 years which Pollitt is writing about? The answer would seem to be practitioners, government units and consultancy companies – some of whom have subsequently written up good experiences as models of good practice. The key books are generally American eg the one which started it all off in 1992 - Reinventing Government (see also here for update on its influence in UK) - but also Mark Moore’s Public value. However the main proselytiser of change over the past 20 years has been the OECD Secretariat based in Paris – as Professor Leslie Pal has well described in this paper; a sequel he presented to this year’s NISPAcee Conference; and chapter three of this book. The significance of this is that there is, perhaps, underneath the technical words, an ideological agenda – shrinking the state. Certainly one writer suggests today there is.
At a practical level, the European Institute of Public Administration published an interesting overview of reform efforts recently - Taking the pulse of European Public Administration

So far, so good…..Give me time to look at these various references in more detail and come back to you on the question of the relationship between the two bodies of work. Clearly the latter body of work focuses more on the WHAT than the HOW - and is indeed as guilty as management generally of fads and fashions. At the moment the capacity development stream seems to be the more thoughtful…..

Culture cornerFor those who think I have been neglecting my cultural activities, let me assure that I have not been. On Tuesday I paid an interesting visit to the imposing edifice which houses the National Bank of Bulgaria – to see whether I could access their painting collection. I knew they had one because the Classica Gallery I had visited last week had a beautiful catalogue from the bank which had celebrated its 130 years with 130 superb reproductions from its collection of Bulgarian painters. You ascend a formidable flight of stairs, passing a guard and entering what I could only designate as an alternative cathedral – a design on a scale calculated to put you in awe of those who manage money! Ironically, there seemed to be an exhibition about the euro! I was met with some bemusement by the staff – but, after a wait, I was rewarded with a complementary copy of the catalogue but told that the paintings regretfully were not on public display.

The It’s About Time blog continues to delight - with its rediscoveries of (to us) unknown European (women) painters from the early part of the last century generally – for example a Finn/Belge Helene Schjerbeck and Lotte Laserstein.
And BBC’s Through the Night continues to excel – for example the Romania Radio Concert Orchestra playing Sarasate, Pablo de [1844-1908] Zigeunerweisen for violin and orchestra (Op.20) (you have to move the timing to 4 hours 20 minutes to get the piece – and only for another 5 days!)
For those intrigued by the title (changed from this morning's rather negative one), I am experimenting since I see that I have not so many hits today - and yet it is, for my money, one of the most useful posts for some time (with all these references). I still don't understand what we need to do to get more hits - people tell me I should twitter - but I don't have a good voice. So I'm now trying a more positive title - with some key words.
And the painting is heavily symbolic - Moutafov's "Rescue at Sea" from the National Bank's collection - and chosen with cunning reference to British political philospher Michael Oakeshott's famous metaphor of politics/government as a sea journey. The rescuers are, of course, the consultants. You certainly get your money's worth on this station!

Leadership central europe - part VII

Reflecting further on the 5 posts, my concerns about the effectiveness of training programmes in transition countries can perhaps best be summarised in 4 words – "wrong focus" and "wrong theory"! And the way ahead can be summarised in two words – "context" and "leadership".

Wrong Focus
• The EC has funded (in Technical Assistance) and continues to fund (under Structural Funds) too many training projects in transition countries with insufficient focus on building a training capacity. Indeed it undermines national training institutes by the resources its projects gives to private trainers and companies under its procurement rules.
• these programmes have, in addition, concentrated on the supply side (training individual trainers; drafting course material; and funding course) to the almost total exclusion of the demand side (helping organisational managers define their real needs and building stronger inderstanding of and pressure for quality training)
• they focus on lower rather than higher levels of organisations. (It’s the easy option – senior management will rarely admit its deficiencies and need to learn).
• And the programmes assume knowledge rather than skill needs. (It’s easier to provide – through traditional rote learning).

Wrong theory
Most of the training programmes I’ve seen implicitly assume that the performance of state bodies (insofar as it measured in transition countries) can be improved by better knowledge of junior staff. This may be true of the sort of training project I’m currently involved with – aimed at those municipal staff who handle bids for EC funds and manage such projects – but is not true of the general management course which National Training Institutes run. And the mission of such Institutes is surely to help improve the performance of state bodies.
Poor organisational performance is generally due to a mix of poor management systems, lack of strategic leadership and political interference. And Improving them is more a matter of skills and attitude than knowledge!

I am not alone in questioning the effectiveness of the programmes to train public officials.. I was very encouraged a few months back by the publication of a paper - Training and Beyond; seeking better practices for capacity development by Jenny Pearson - which, in a much more referenced (but sometimes turgid) way, expresses the same concerns and indicates the number of people who now seem to share them in what, in the last decade has become the up-and-coming field of capacity development.

Context, context, context
All interventions should therefore start from proper contextual analysis of existing administrative capacity – and constraints. The focus then should be on organisational change – not training - to ensure that proper consideration is given to the full range of possible interventions, of which training is only a small part (see pages 33-37 of the Pearson paper for a good overview). Of course this is not easy – but, if this is not the starting point, then people will fail to pose the correct questions; to learn the required skills; and therefore to waste a lot of money.
Official documents have begun to recognise this in recent years. The EC’s Backbone Strategy admits that its projects need to be better grounded in the context; in its "drivers of change" work, the UK's ODI has pioneered ways of identifying power constraints; and the World Bank’s recent Governance Reforms under real world conditions is written around the sorts of questions which have given my work as a consultant its real edge-

1. How do we build broad coalitions of influentials in favour of change? What do we do about powerful vested interests?
2. How do we help reformers transform indifferent, or even hostile, public opinion into support for reform objectives?
3. How do we instigate citizen demand for good governance and accountability to sustain governance reform?

The paper I wrote earlier in the year for the Varna Conference (Time for the long game - not the logframe) drew attention to the crumbling of key building blocks of administrative reform in many of the EC’s new member states in the last few years. Francis Cardona’s Can Civil Service Reforms Last? The European Union’s 5th Enlargement and Future Policy Orientation – published in early 2010 - is just the latest evidence. It shows how appointments are becoming politicised again. In 2007 Tony Verheijen had published a paper for the World Bank entitled Administrative capacity in the new member states – the limits of innovation which painted a fairly bleak picture. So in 2009, did Meyer-Sahling’s paper for SIGMA - Sustainability of civil service reforms in central and eastern Europe five years after accession. Sorin Ionitsa and Tom Gallagher have painted a vivid picture of the fate of administrative reform in one of these countries – Romania – and offered different levels of explanation for it.

If that is the context, how does one get around it? Clearly politicians in these countries need to grow up and stop behaving like petulant and thieving magpies. But how does that happen?
Manning and Ionitsa emphasise the need for transparency and external pressures (civil society) to try to get politicians to act more seriously.
Verheijen and Cardona talk more idealistically of the need to establish structures which bringing politicians, officials, academics etc together to develop a consensus. It happened, certainly, in the Baltic states – but there are always dangers in holding up one country as an example. When things go wrong, as they generally do, the corrupt and incompetent use this to damn reform. And one of the difficulties so many transition countries have is the inability of its elites to work cooperatively.

I have to wonder whether there is not a place now for the sort of initiative which impressed me when I visited Pittsburgh more than 20 years ago. As an old industrial city, it was experiencing social and economic dislocation – and someone started a quiet movement which brought the potential leaders of tomorrow in its various sectors (commerce, political, administrative, trade union, religious etc) into a regular academic setting to confront the city’s problems. Leadership Pittsburgh has been replicated across other cities and has had 2 profound effects – it forged crucial personal links of respect and understanding; and it made most of those who attended think about their wider responsibilities and the needs of the city.

Going back to the Director of the Training Institute - my advice to him would therefore be - Think Big! Reach out! Have passion!

Benefits of nomadism

Glorious autumn weather here in Sofia – although the ground floor garden flat is getting ever more icy cold every night and morning. Time to move somewhere warmer!
I started the morning with a long article which touches on one of the most fundamental issues for us all (apart from food and accommodation) – companionship. It’s about the trend (which I’ve noticed here in Europe) for women to choose to remain single. Men are simply not worth the bother! The article in The Atlantic journal starts perhaps in a rather self-centred way but soon proved to a worthy read about contemporary values – backed up with perspectives from forays to other lands, cultures and times. I recommend it.

A trip to the nearest Knigomania bookshop a few minutes round the corner in Vassil Levski St gave a good haul –
• Modernism – the lure of heresy by Peter Gay (2007) – a wonderful-looking 600 page treatment of all art forms of this genre by an historian who escaped with his family from Berlin in 1933 when he was a young boy; one review is here and a more critical and historical one here
• the classic Zen and Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance – an inquiry into values (1977) – which I have from internet but whose electronic format does not invite me in. I need to touch!
• a novel by the highly rated John Cheever from 1957 - The Wapshot Chronicle
• Langenscheidt’s Grosswoerterbuch Deutsch als Fremdensprache – to help me with my reading of the Spiegel magazine which I have taken to buying here. Langenscheidt I remember with some veneration from my father’s study (when he had the voluminous but silky weekly edition of Die Zeit paper dispatched from Germany in the late 1950s and 1960s during his post-war pastoral "reconciliation" twinning with a church in Heligenkirchen near Detmold). With its 1312 German pages at 16 euros, it offered 10 times the value of almost similarly-priced and much smaller dictionaries (half of whose contents are taken with English-German for which I have no use)

This is the great thing about the bookshops here. You are not press-ganged by marketing into buying latest releases. You never know what gem from the past you will find – even if the editions are fairly recent.
Talking of Der Spiegel, it had an incredible story yesterday about the Germans finding a 55 billion mistake in their national accounts because one bank added up wrongly – giving the system now a windfall to that extent!!
When I started this nomadic life of mine all of 21 years ago, I noticed one immediate advantage. I was no longer exposed to British newspapers and the relentless noise of television reporting. This not only released time for other pursuits; it also created greater serenity. I could hear myself thinking – and was more able to choose my own agenda. Television has not been allowed into my Carpathian house – and I have no temptation to open the television set here since it offers only Bulgarian programmes. Of course, I am hit with news headlines when I go onto the yahoo site for my mail – and I do then always check the Guardian website after that – but rarely find myself spending longer than 10 minutes on its articles. The BBC has become my great consolation – particularly the Through the Night programme – which are constantly introducing me to new pleasures eg in the past week Telemann’s Suite for strings and continuo (TWV.55:Es3) in E flat major; Taneyev, Sergey Ivanovich (1856-1915) Symphony No.4 in C minor (Op.12); and Respighi, Ottorino (1879-1936) Rossiniana. I even find myself listening to opera – eg the haunting tones at the moment of the final section of Mahler’s 3rd Symphony which can be heard for the next 5 days.
The BBC’s economic bloggers are always worthwhile – particularly Paul Mason and Stephanie Flanders and I was impressed with the radio series she has started recently which figures key figures (such as George Soros).

I mentioned JK Galbraith recently. His son, James Galbraith, is also a renowned economist who has been highly critical of mainstream economics and has a useful piece on those economists who were warning years ago of the bursting of the bubble and how they were marginalised within the profession. For me this is not a left-right issue – it is about hubris and the need constantly to challenge (in the phrase coined by Galbraith Senior) the “conventional wisdom” .
Finally a good article about the "We are the 99%" protestors

Update - the British School of Government axed! (part VI)

The UK’s National School of Government – which I indicated (in my recent table about such national Institutes) had been reprieved from closure last year – will now be closed next March. According to a Ministerial statement in Parliament in June, it delivered 809 events to a domestic audience for the 12 month period from 1 June 2010 to 31 May 2011. These events were attended by 33,254 UK government officials. But last week its closure was announced (again) with a bland statement that "The new "Civil Service Learning" will focus on work-based approaches, including e-learning, and will directly involve managers in the training process" says the official statement. Previously called the Civil Service College, the facility runs training, development and consultancy courses for Whitehall mandarins. It employs 232 staff and is based at Sunningdale Park in Berkshire, with an annual budget of £31 million.
Quoted on the school's website earlier in the year, the Head of the Civil Service said: "It is clear that the public sector will be confronted with some serious challenges in the future. The National School of Government is a vital tool to help us meet them. The learning and development it provides must be part of our solution." But the Minister (Mr Maude) has claimed a shake-up of training will "improve the quality and impact of training". In his recent Parliamentary statement, he added: "It will also create greater flexibility by sourcing much of the training from external providers, including small and medium-sized enterprises."

I would have to say that the School was always vulnerable to such treatment. For example, it never produced anything that was available publicly. My source of inspiration when I was a young reforming politician in local government was the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) at Birmingam University which was built entirely around the passion of one man John Stewart; which produced a bi-monthly journal; Discussion papers; and books. And to whose seminars one could easily access as a local government person. The revenue came from its local government pmarket - which is politically diverse.
Warwick University has also been home to another such Institute - the Local Government Centre built around one man John Bennington.
The School of Government was more elitist - and political. And therefore vulnerable. So one lesson is not to be too dependent on one market. The recent trend for amalgamating training of local and central government has a lot to be said for it - not least that people from these 2 sectors get to rub shoulders with one another.
There are lessons there - that a sustainable centre needs independence!

The future of public service training - Part V

Imagine yourself the Director of one of the Institutes I have been talking about…. There were periods last year when you didn’t have the cash to pay your staff. You’re not sure how long you’ll have in your position since both it and that of the Institute can be (and has been) affected by political vicissitudes. The only source of money is the European Union – but the bureaucracy is onerous and time-consuming; and the benefits not as obvious as might seem at first sight. None of the cash actually reaches the Institute – most of it goes to private companies and their contracted experts. What do you do in such a situation to try to ensure that the Institute’s activities actually help improve public services and are sustainable?
Most EC consultants would advise the Director to develop a strategic plan. That is to set up a process of identifying and consulting “stakeholders” to develop over several months a new “vision” and “action plan” which would carry with it a new “commitment” from those stakeholders to “make it happen”. I don’t mean to be cynical by the insertion of inverted commas – but I do have some questions about the belief that several months of such an exercise will magically produce an answer that no-one previously thought of or produce a new spirit of cooperation. The first thing I would actually recommend is some strong brainstorming for the Director with some experienced and trustworthy people – to try to identify some realistic options whose feasibility (s)he could then explore in a variety of ways – including a strategic exercise.
And if I were one of those with whom (s)he brainstormed, I would want to explore a central question -

What is the point of having a budget-supported national training centre for public officials?

Running courses is a means - not an end. The end is surely the improvement of state bodies. But this is not achieved by a series of ad-hoc workshops run by trainers who do not communicate with one another and who have no subsequent link with the participants. Of course, despite the claims of management consultants and management gurus, noone really understands the process of improving the performance of state bodies. To some it’s a question of leadership; to others teamwork; to others again, It’s competitive and/or citizen pressures; and to many politicians it’s a matter of targets, transparency and a mix of sticks and stones.

Several things, however, are clear for me –
• each country has its own cultures and needs to find its own way in its own language
• this requires a few experienced people to blaze a trail, providing ways of thinking about issues, presenting and interpreting relevant experience
• sometimes this can be an academic – but they generally have other agendas and an inaccessible language
• A training centre is ideally placed to bring senior managers together to share their experiences, encourage one another and formulate an agenda for strategic change
• A few suitable academics could be encouraged to participate in such sessions (good for their research) and co-produce Discussion papers

Of course this doesn’t immediately bring cash – and does demand time. But it’s time well spent – in building a reputation. It’s not easy to talk about cooperation between education and training institutes (not least because the terminological distinction is not as often made in central Europe as in the UK). The academics worry about a lowering of standards – and the trainers worry about opaque verbosity. But particularly in the field of public management, the distinction is a crazy one. I am not a fan of undergraduate courses in public management – they are shallow pot-pourris; they demonstrate little of value to subsequent employees (save perhaps that those who opted for the course have little ambition); and few who graduate actually go into public service. I think those who find themselves in academic positions teaching and (hopefully) researching public management would be better located in national training institutes – particularly if those institutes had a focus on senior management. I warned in part II that some academic cows would need to be sacrificed!

Can training make a difference? Part IV

Having suggested that few new Member States in central and eastern Europe seem to have managed yet to establish a proper training system for its public officials – and that the European Commission’s type of Technical Assistance has to take part of the blame for this – the following questions seem to be in order –
• Are there any examples of a relevant and sustainable training system in the new member states?
• If so, how did they manage to achieve this position?
• What is the status of such training systems in the older member states?
• Through what process have they gone to achieve their various present positions?
• What lessons would all this suggest for those countries which are still stuck at the drip-feed stage of development?

These are actually very difficult questions to answer – since so little is available - and I have spent the morning wrestling with them. In 1997 SIGMA published a couple of relevant papers – one setting out the various choices and issues involved in setting up a modern training structure; the second giving vignettes of each of the training centres for civil servants in OECD countries. Since then, nothing.
With all the support given over the decades by the European Commission to networks of practitioners, you would have thought that someone by now (eg Christopher Demmke of EIPA) would have recognised the value of a paper on the subject. And NISPAcee is, after all, the Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in central and Eastern Europe but has not undertaken such a comparative (and sensitive) analysis – although its journal does contain the odd profile. There is also the rather elusive Directors of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration (DISPA) whose latest gathering this month in Warsaw was captured on the site of the Hungarian Institute but which, equally, has never risen to the challenge of commissioning a comparative analysis. So I have to venture into this field with all my imperfect knowledge.
The situation of the central PA training institutions in the EU Member States in terms of their role, tasks, funding and other characteristics varies from one country to another. And there have been considerable changes in the legal structure of central bodies for civil service training -
• A Civil Service College in Britain (for senior civil servants) was first part of the Cabinet Office; then became the Centre for Management and Policy Studies; then the National School of Government which was a free-standing Department; was then slated for abolition in March 2011 but was instead transferred back to the Cabinet office.
• The Dutch, Finnish and Swedish Institutes have all been privatized over the past decade.
• Romania’s Institute for National Administration was moved to the Civil Service Agency a couple of years ago after a period of some tension with that body.
• The Bulgarian IPA now finds itself back with the Council of Ministers – having over the past 5 years been part of the (now abolished Ministry for Administrative Reform) and then of the Ministry of Education.
• The Hungarian structure has been subject to major changes recently - with first a university unit being merged with a national training centre and now the integration of national and local government training systems
• The Czech structure was also changed the last year. There were two institutes before: one under the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic, Department of the Institute of the State Administration and an independent Institute for Local Administration in Prague. They merged the last year and now there is only one institute under the Ministry of the Interior – Institute for Public Administration Prague.
• The Estonian IPA seems to have been absorbed into the Prime Minister’s Office

Given that most managerial theorists are a bit cynical about organizational changes, it is perhaps ironic that the training centres which are supposed to be helping state bodies become more effective have themselves been subject to so much structural change.
My recent personal experience of central european training systems is limited to 3-4 countries – otherwise I rely on anecdotal impressions from colleagues. I therefore hesitate to identify success stories. I hear good things about the Lithuanian and Slovenian systems but can say nothing about their trajectories – or the lessons they might have for others. In the next post, I will try, however, to present a "provocation" for those countries stuck at the drip-feed stage of development.
In the meantime I really would welcome comment from those readers who have experience and views in this field. I know you're there! I'm pleased to say that my readership has doubled in the past few weeks - but the blog does need (and appreciates) feedback

Evidence, dear boy? Training - Part III

I have made a lot of assertions in my two recent posts on EC-funded training – based solely on my (limited) experience in 10 countries over the past 2 decades . Before posting the final part of my commentary on EC training programmes for public officials in ex-communist countries, I wanted to check what was available on the internet about the recent experience with, and evaluation of, the EC-funded programmes for developing the effectivness (capacity) of state bodies which Structural Funds have been encouraging in these countries for the past few years. The EC, after all, treasures transparency and it is currently spending hundreds of millions (under its Structural Funds) in projects to develop the capacity of state bodies and their human resource management. In Bulgaria alone, 180 million euros was set aside for the 6 year period for the Admin Capacity theme (significantly this theme doesn't interest the Romanians who have set aside only 1% of their Structural Fund allocation for it). But there are few documents online which give any sense of what is happening. Those few demonstrate the scale of the mountain we have to scale to ensure effective spend of EC Funds. In most cases, of course, the documents are written in a foreign language (English) – for bureaucratic or academic approval – three factors which tend to knock any sense from the text! Key bureaucratic phrases such as cohesion, transparency and inclusion litter the sentences in meaningless ways. There is no experience or critical analysis behind the words – just obedient regurgitation of the required phrases. This academic paper from a Bulgarian in 2007 tries to extract the lessons of pre-accession instruments for future accession states is written clearly but simply presents global figures, organisational carts and some gossip. A 2009 German (GTZ) consultancy report on one of the instruments is more typical of the obtuse reporting style
A document prepared for a small network trying to share their experiences of using EC money for the development of admin capacity gives a useful insight into their world and issues. Finally a more critical 2011 paper from a young Bulgarian academic

Everyone – on all sides(beneficiaries, donors, consultants, academics, evaluators) – plays the same game – everything has to be fitted to the Procustean bed of EC funding. The European Policy Research Centre at the University of Strathclyde, for example, has received hundreds of millions of euros from the EC to explain, evaluate and proselytise the EC’s regional policies since they were a gleam in Bruce Millan’s eye from 1988 when, as EC Commissioner for Regional Policy, he started (under the Delors regime) the incredible expansion of the programmes whose munificence created the real attraction of EC membership for ex-communist elites. Of course it is the last organisation which would dare to blow the whistle on the dubious nature of the ventures. Take, for example, this Greek academic paper it published recently.

One longs for a young boy to shout out that the Emperor has no clothes – and dare to tell it as it is.

making training effective - Part II

Part I suggested that the billions spent by the EC on training public officials over the past decade or so in ex-communist countries have not created sustainable training systems there - ie centres for training public officials whose full-time staff contain both trainers and specialists in the field of public management – and who actually play a role in helping state bodies operate effectively. Most of the new member and Accession states have a central training Institute – but its staff are small and (in all but a few cases) administrators who bring in public officials and academics for a few hours to deliver lectures. Little "needs assessment" can be carried out (an annual schedule is negotiated between the Institute and the Council of Ministers); Ministries have a training budget and pay for the attendance of those officials it allows to attend selected courses (whether at the Institute or other centres). It is virtually impossible for such a system to carry out serious evaluation of course content and of trainers – its staff lack the specialist knowledge (and status) to question, challenge and encourage. Such a system also focuses on individual needs – and is unable to input to discussions about the development of state capacity or help state bodies tackle their organisational problems.
In the older member States, such Institutes have played an important role in setting a vision for the improvement of public services; in monitoring developments and assisting the exchange of experience. At the time, however, such bodies were being established in the ex-communist countries, the new fashion amongst western consultants was for slimline, competitive training; the academic community in the east simply had no relevant experience to offer; and governments were offloading rather than building functions. The result was underfunded training centres.
With budget cuts of the past few years, the EC Structural Funds are being increasingly used to substitute for mainline funding. Given the competitive basis of the procurement, what this means is that private companies (rather than the Institute) are being paid to act as the administrators – undermining the possibility of the national Institute developing its capacity. One other result is an endless repetition of training the trainers programmes and Manual drafting. Whatever happened to the previous trained trainers and drafted manuals?
Of course, the picture is slightly more nuanced. Some countries have Institutes on the French model – which combine undergraduate teaching with short courses and have therefore a core of academic staff. Poland is the prime example (that academic bias can, of course, bring its own problems!) And Ministries of Finance and Justice tend to have their own training centres, staffed by experts in the relevant field. But the general picture stands.

Is there a different model – in these times of crisis? Only on three conditions -
1. if the development of state capacity is taken seriously – by officials, politicians and academics
2. if there is greater clarity about the role of training in individual learning and organisational development
3. if some academic sacred cows are sacrificed

I assume all new member states have the sort of EC-funded Operational Programmes which Bulgaria and Romania have – with themes such as Administrative Capacity and Human resource management (to mention two). Hundreds of millions of euros are allocated to private consultancies to carry out projects of training and capacity building with state bodies as the clients.
In highly politicised countries such as Romania, however, building capacity is not taken seriously. As Tom Gallagher’s most recent and powerful book on the country vividly shows, there are more private agendas at work eg loyalty to the figure who put you in your position. And those academic social scientists who have resisted the temptation to go into consultancy are, understandably, more interested in achieving status with their western colleagues than in making forays into the real world of public administration. Again I speak generally – and from my knowledge more of southern than northern new member states.
As far as training is concerned, it is remarkable (given how much money is spent on it) how little discussion there is of its role and practices in new member states. Training can be effective only under certain circumstances. The very language trainers use – "training needs assessment" – begs the question of whether training is in fact the appropriate intervention. It is the easy option – it assumes that it is the lower levels who are deficient whereas the real issue may be organisational systems or the performance of higher management. I was recently in charge of a project designed to give such an institute the capacity to assist public officials at regional and local levels in the effective implementation of the complex EC Acquis (eg the various legal requirements of safety, consumer rights, equal opportunities, environment). The project was designed as a training project when, for me, the issue was totally different. I tried to develop my argument in several discussion papers but could not, for various reasons, reach the right people for a discussion. Amongst the points I was trying to make were -

• Organisations (state bodies) perform only when they are given clear (and limited) goals – and the commensurate resources and management support. This requires the systems and skills of strategic management.
• This can be developed only through senior management being properly encouraged to prioritise and draft realistic action plans – based on project management principles.
• The core mission of Institutes of Public Administration should be to encourage and help senior management acquire these skills
• But they cannot do this as long as they are trapped in an administrative role – and traditional teaching philosphies

What I remember is the anger I aroused at our final conference from a Professor of Law when I dared to say that state bodies should recognise they cannot implement the acquis in its totality (even with the few opt-outs negotiated) and should prioritise.
I will continue the argument in a future post.

Culture cornerI’m glad to say that art galleries continue to open here in Sofia. I had been disappointed earlier in the year to encounter a nearby gallery which seemed to have closed down but yesterday discovered that it had, some months ago, re-opened under new ownershop and is a charming visit. It is Gallery-Museum" CLASSICA" at 32 Venelin Str., Sofia near the football stadium at Eagle Bridge. Its old website can still be seen here with some of the paintings still on offer. Young Leta and her mother are delightful guides and hosts.

Our Gaddarene swine

This blog generally tries to steer away from crises since there are so many others in the blogosphere who have more insights than me on these – be they economic, financial or political. I try to be a distinctive voice on the things I know best – organisational change in transition countries - and otherwise try to pass on what seem to be sensible comments on ongoing events. The financial crisis, however, which has been rumbling on since late 2007 has, I feel, few real experts – in the sense of both contextual understanding and insights into what interventions would actually help put Humpty Dumpty together again. There are a lot of people, of course, who have the skills, understanding and contacts to exploit this situation for their own benefit but few (like George Soros and Nicolas Talib) able and willing to offer solutions in the interests of ordinary citizens.
Today, however, Paul de Grauwe has a useful comment on Social Europe/ which I would like to share in its entirety -

Imagine an army going to war. It has overwhelming firepower. The generals, however, announce that they actually hate the whole thing and that they will limit the shooting as much as possible. Some of the generals are so upset by the prospect of going to war that they resign from the army. The remaining generals then tell the enemy that the shooting will only be temporary, and that the army will go home as soon as possible. What is the likely outcome of this war? You guessed it. Utter defeat by the enemy.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has been behaving like the generals. When it announced its programme of government bond buying it made it known to the financial markets (the enemy) that it thoroughly dislikes it and that it will discontinue it as soon as possible. Some members of the Governing Council of the ECB resigned in disgust at the prospect of having to buy bad bonds. Like the army, the ECB has overwhelming (in fact unlimited) firepower but it made it clear that it is not prepared to use the full strength of its money-creating capacity. What is the likely outcome of such a programme? You guessed it. Defeat by the financial markets.
Financial markets knew that the ECB was not fully committed and that it would stop the programme. As a result, they knew that the stabilisation of the price of government bonds would only be temporary and that after the programme is discontinued prices would probably go down again. Few investors wanted to keep these bonds in their portfolios. As a result, government bonds continued to be sold, and the ECB was forced to buy a lot of them.
There is no sillier way to implement a bond purchase programme than the ECB way. By making it clear from the beginning that it does not trust its own programme, the ECB guaranteed its failure. By signalling that it distrusted the bonds it was buying, it also signalled to investors that they should distrust these too.
Surely once the ECB decided to buy government bonds, there was a better way to run the programme. The ECB should have announced that it was fully committed to using all its firepower to buy government bonds and that it would not allow the bond prices to drop below a given level. In doing so, it would create confidence. Investors know that the ECB has superior firepower, and when they get convinced that the ECB will not hesitate to use it, they will be holding on to their bonds. The beauty of this result is that the ECB won’t have to buy many bonds.
Why has the ECB not been willing to use this obvious and cheaper strategy?
Part of the answer has to do with the objections that have been raised against the idea that the central bank should be a lender of last resort in the government bond markets of a monetary union. Some are serious (moral hazard); others are phony (inflation risk). I discussed these in De Grauwe (2011) (see also Wyplosz 2011). My impression, however, is that these objections hide another more fundamental reason. The people sitting around the table in Frankfurt continue to believe that financial stability is not part of their core business, and, to use the words of Trichet, that there is only one needle on the Frankfurt compass and that is inflation. As long as this view prevails the ECB will be reluctant to do the obvious.
The result of this failure of the ECB to be a lender of last resort has been that a surrogate institution, the EFSF/ESM, had to be created that everybody knows will be ineffective. It has insufficient firepower and has an unworkable governance structure where each country keeps its veto power. In times of crisis it will be paralysed. As markets know this, its credibility will be weak.
To hide these shortcomings European leaders are now creating the fiction that by some clever leveraging trick the resources of the EFSF/ESM can be multiplied, allowing the ECB to retire to its Panglossian garden of inflation targeting. European leaders should know, however, that leverage creates risk, very large risks. These appear with full force when liquidity crises erupt. Thus when the leverage trick will be most needed, it will fail as it will show how risky the positions are of those who have guaranteed the leverage construction. Governments which now enjoy AAA creditworthiness will take the full blow of a 100% loss on their equity tranches and will lose their creditworthiness in one blow. The whole risky construction will collapse like other clever financial constructions of the recent past.
Academics have the reputation of living in an ivory tower far away from the realities of the world. My impression is that instead of the academics, it is the European leaders who have been living in an ivory tower. Disconnected from the economic and financial realities, they have created an institution that does not work and will never do so properly. Now they are creating a financial gimmick that, in their fantasies, they expect to solve the funding problems of major Eurozone countries. It is time for the European leaders to step back into the real world.

Craig Murray also has a brief and very succinct comment on the issue as does Der Spiegel in its article Politics stupid And I recommend the daily press summaries from Open Europe as the best there are at the moment on this issue.

Is training a waste of money? Part One

Christmas may still be 2 months away but one reputable blog has come with the sort of quiz we play at that time of the year - asking people “which book provides support, or is a book to which one often returns. And the answer cannot be the Bible”. As the participants in the subsequent discussion thread recognise, it’s not an easy question to answer. Most of our reading is novels and specialist stuff. There are, of course, classic novels (both old and new) to which we can and do return but several of the discussants say that it is poetry to which they go back – I would tend to agree. I often turn to TS Eliot, Bert Brecht, WS Graham and Norman MacCaig (sadly BBc doesn't allow me access this last), for example. What about my readers?

My subject today is training of public officials in ex-communist countries.
The European Union has spent many hundreds – if not thousands - of millions of euros on training of public servants in the accession states; in Eastern Europe and central Asia (and continues to do so in the Operational Programmes of its Structural Funds with which I am currently involved here in Bulgaria). Despite the European Commission emphasis on evaluation, I am not aware of any critical evaluation it has commissioned of that spending – nor of any guidelines it has issued to try to encourage good practice in this field of training public officials (It has issued, in recent years, guidelines on “good governance”, internal project monitoring, project cycle management, institutional assessment and capacity development, ex-ante evaluation). And, in particular, there is nothing available for those in transition countries who want to go beyond the task of managing one specific programme of training and actually build a system of training which has the key features of –
• Continuity
• Commitment to learning and improvement

A transition country is lucky if its officials and state bodies actually benefit from a training programme – with training needs being properly assessed; relevant and inspiring courses constructed; and delivered (by skilled trainers) in workshops which engage its participants and encourage them to do things differently in their workplace. Too often, many of these ingredients are missing. But, even if they are present, the programme is usually an ad-hoc one which fails to assist the wider system. The trainers disappear – often to the private sector; their training materials with them. No improvement takes place in the wider system of training public officials.

For 20 years now I have led public administration reform projects in a variety of “transition” countries in central Europe and central Asia – in which training and training the trainer activities have always been important elements. Initially I did what most western consultants tend to do – shared our “good practice” from western europe. But slowly – and mainly because I was no longer living in western Europe – I began to see how little impact all of this work was having. I summarised my assessment recently in the following way-
• Most workshops are held without sufficient preparation or follow-up. Workshops without these features are not worth holding.
• Training is too ad-hoc – and not properly related to the performance of the individual (through the development of core competences) or of the organisation
• Training, indeed, is often a cop-out – reflecting a failure to think properly about organisational failings and needs. Training should never stand alone – but always be part of a coherent package of development – whether individual or organisational.
• It is critical that any training intervention is based on “learning outcomes” developed in a proper dialogue between the 4 separate groups involved in any training system – the organisational leader, the training supplier, the trainer and the trainee. Too often it is the training supplier who sets the agenda.
• Too many programmes operate on the supply side – by running training of trainer courses, developing manuals and running courses. Standards will rise and training make a contribution to administrative capacity only if there is a stronger demand for more relevant training which makes a measurable impact on individual and organisational performance.
• In the first instance, this will require Human Resource Directors to be more demanding of training managers – to insist on better designed courses and materials; on proper evaluation of courses and trainers; and on the use of better trainers. More realistic guidelines and manuals need to be available for them
• Workshops should not really be used if the purpose is simply knowledge transfer. The very term “workshop” indicates that exercises should be used to ensure that the participant is challenged in his/her thinking. This helps deepen self-awareness and is generally the approach used to develop managerial skills and to create champions of change.
• Workshops have costs – both direct (trainers and materials) and indirect (staff time). There are a range of other learning tools available to help staff understand new legal obligations.
• HR Directors need to help ensure that senior management of state bodies looks properly at the impact of new legislation on systems, procedures, tasks and skills. Too many people seem to think that better implementation and compliance will be achieved simply by telling local officials what that new legislation says.
• A subject specialist is not a trainer. Too few of the people who deliver courses actually think about what the people in front of them actually already know.
• The training materials, standards and systems developed by previous projects are hard to find. Those trained as trainers – and companies bidding for projects – treat them, understandably as precious assets in the competitive environment in which they operate and are not keen to share them!

And this last point perhaps identifies one of the reasons why transition countries have found it so difficult to establish public training systems to match those in the older member states. From the beginning they were encouraged to base their systems on the competitive principle which older member states were beginning to adopt. Note the verb - "were beginning". And, of course, there is no greater zealot than a recent convert. So experts who had themselves learned and worked in systems subsidised by the state appeared in the east to preach the new magic of competition. And states with little money for even basic services were only too pleased to buy into that principle. The result is a black hole into which EU money has disappeared.
I will, in the next post, try to set out some principles for capacity development of public training systems in transition countries.
The photograph is of me at the communal table of Rozinski Monastery here in Bulgaria - taken a couple of year ago by my friend and colleague Daryoush Farsimadan, I think there is something appropriate there....

Downside of Sofia Charms?

I’ve talked several times on the blog about the charm of central Sofia – with its parks and buskers with their retro music; narrow streets, small shops and atmosphere, the owners on the doorstep with a coffe and cigarette talking with friends. Of course the downside of such charm is that those who run the tiny vegetable, dressmakers, tricotage (thread) shops and various types of galleries barely make a living. How many of them are rented, I wonder, and therefore vulnerable to landlord rental hikes and commercial redevelopment? And I wonder how many of those who engage in this sort of soulless redevelopment realise what they are destroying. Is there nothing which can counter this Mammon? Do the city authorities realise what an asset they have? If so, are they doing anything about it? The lady mayor is certainly a huge improvement on her predecessor who, I was told yesterday, used to charge significant sums for those who wanted an audience with him to discuss their problems.

In the Yavorov District on Tuesday – a leafy and lively area near the University and just across from the great park which extends from the Eagle bridge and the football stadium for more than a kilometre east along the Express way which starts the run to the Thracian Valley, Plovdiv and Burgas. Looked at an elegant old flat which had housed the middle managers of the railways in the 30s in an area otherwise known as a residential one for the military at the beginning of the last century. And ventured into a small basement antique shop which was a real alladin’s cave of old Bulgarian and Russian stuff. The prize haul was a set of the small, shaped bottles in which rakia used to be drunk.

They seem to be 1950s or early 1960s – with wry humour stamped on to the glass. I haven’t discussed rakia yet in the blog (apart from the blog about the recent visit to Teteven). First time I tasted rakia in 2002, when I sped through the country on the way to the Turkish Aegean, I found it inspid. But I have now had a chance to taste various brands – and compare it with various Romanian palinka – and have become an afficiando. Here is a write up of one brand which won a few years back a silver medal in the International Review of Spirits Award -

Golden salmon colour. Vanilla and toasted nut aromas. nice oily texture. Dryish, vanilla bean oily nut flavors. Finishes with a lightly sweet powdered sugar and pepper fade. A nice texture and finish but could use more on the mid-palate

Finally – a great blogposts about traditional sheep farming by someone who spent a couple of months with the shepherds and cheese makers in the Carpathians.

The power of images

George Monbiot’s post in yesterday’s Guardian gave me some good links to papers trying to encourage a debate which is long overdue -

We think we know who the enemies are: banks, big business, lobbyists, the politicians who exist to appease them. But somehow the sector which stitches this system of hypercapitalism together gets overlooked. That seems strange when you consider how pervasive it is. It is everywhere, yet we see without seeing, without understanding the role that it plays in our lives. I am talking about the advertising industry. For obvious reasons, it is seldom confronted by either the newspapers or the broadcasters. The problem was laid out by Rory Sutherland when president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. Marketing, he argued, is either ineffectual or it "raises enormous ethical questions every day". With admirable if disturbing candour he concluded that "I would rather be thought of as evil than useless." A new report by the Public Interest Research Centre and WWF opens up the discussion he appears to invite. Think of Me as Evil? asks the ethical questions that most of the media ignore – and adopts a rigorous approach, seeking out evidence. Our social identity is shaped, it argues, by values which psychologists label as either extrinsic or intrinsic. People with a strong set of intrinsic values place most weight on their relationships with family, friends and community. They have a sense of self-acceptance and a concern for other people and the environment. People with largely extrinsic values are driven by a desire for status, wealth and power over others. They tend to be image-conscious, to have a strong desire to conform to social norms and to possess less concern for other people or the planet. They are also more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression and to report low levels of satisfaction with their lives.
We are not born with our values: they are embedded and normalised by the messages we receive from our social environment. Most advertising appeals to and reinforces extrinsic values. It doesn't matter what the product is: by celebrating image, beauty, wealth, power and status, it helps create an environment that shifts our value system.

A pamphlet from the Compass Think Tank also picks up the issues. Less measured in its tone than the PIRC publication, it argues that advances in psychology. neurology and technology have given advertising insidious new powers; points to the interventions which governments have been making since the 1960s in relation to tobacco, protection of children etc and makes a series of recommendations – including the banning of advertising in public spaces, a measure introduced recently with great success apparently in the mega-city of Sao Paulo (20 million population).

Advertising may, as Monbiot suggests, have succeeded in the past few years in keeping its head down but there was a time when it was under attack. In my youth, I remember the impact of Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders (1956 or so) and, a few years later, Jk Galbraith’s powerful dissection (in his 1967 book The New Industrial State) of the reality of the market and the way large companies shaped demand. Of course, the downfall of large companies a couple of decades later by the more flexible Apple and Microsoft companies was widely used to discredit Galbraith’s thesis. A more measured assessment of his arguments about corporate power (and indeed contribution to economics) appeared in the Australian Review which said -

Two rejoinders are in order. First, the qualitative evolution of economic systems highlights that grand generalisations are necessarily period-specific. The character of the automobile market after the mid-1970s may be instructive, but it does not vitiate generalisations on its character before the mid-1970s.
Second, Galbraith’s generalisations regarding the unbridled power of the corporate sector retain direct relevance to other segments of the corporate sector—the military-industrial ‘complex’ (including constructors), big oil (centred on Exxon Mobil), the medical-insurance complex, big chemical, big tobacco, big retail (Wal-Mart) and big finance. It is curious that Galbraith’s critics have not sought to juxtapose Galbraith’s focus with current developments that involve corporate actors writing the legislation that governs their sector (medical-insurance), heading off legislation or penalties that adversely effect their sector (oil, chemical, tobacco, etc.), or channeling foreign policy with heinous implications (weapons contractors and constructors).
On the related issue of consumers as pawns, it is true that American consumers belatedly exercised autonomy in electing to buy the automobiles of foreign manufacturers (albeit a sub-sector of the market remains subservient to the US auto giants’ emphasis on sports utility vehicles and the preposterous Hummer). Galbraith rightly asked the rationale for the then vast sums spent by producers on marketing (a question never satisfactorily addressed by mainstream economists)

Most people, however, want to see the world’s economies refloated and jobs returning. Whatever their gripes about advertising, they see it as a means of aiding that objective. Those who see the huge waste and social destruction of our present system have an upward struggle. I was pleased to see people like Fritjof Capra and and Hazel Henderson taking the argument into the enemy camp with a pamphlet published in 2009 by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales – entitled Qualitative Growth. I wouldn’t say it is the most convincing paper for such an audience – and am sorry that its references didn’t give wider sources eg Douthwaite.
The problems of the economic system we have can be best be summed up in two words - dissatisfaction and waste. Advertising creates the first - and the economic machine wastes people, resources and the planet. And yet its ideologues have erected a propoganda machine which tells us that it is both efficient and effective! What incredible irony!

Last evening was spent very pleasantly at one of Astry Gallery’s great vernissajs, celebrating the opening of yet another exhibition. This time the work of Natasha Atanassova and Nikolay Tiholov. Natasha is on the left and Vihra, the gallery impressario, on the right. And the painting at the top of the post is one of two I bought - this one by Natasha. The second is by Nikolay and is here -

Astry Gallery (under Vihra's tutelage) is unique for me amongst the Sofia galleries in encouraging contemporary Bulgarian painting. Two things are unique - first the frequency of the special exhibitions; but mainly that Vihra follows her passion (not fashion). I am not an art professional - but Vihra has a real art of creating an atmosphere in which people like me can explore. I have been to a couple of other exhibition openings here and they were, sadly, full of what I call "pseuds" - people who talked loudly (mostly Embassy people) and had little interest in the paintings (except perhaps their investment value). Vihra and her Astry Gallery attract real people who share her pasion and curiousity. It is always a joy to pop in there - and talk to her, visitors, artists, other collectors and her father.

Is complexity theory useful?

Thirty years ago terms such as "policy failure” and "implementation drift” were all the rage in political science circles – with the implicit assumption that such drift was a bad thing ie that the original policy had been and/or remained relevant and effective. Nowadays we are more sceptical about the capacity of national (and EU) policy-making – and (therefore?) more open to systems thinking and complexity theory and its implications for public management. Certainly Gordon Brown’s fixation with targets was positively Stalinistic – and was progressively softened and finally abolished on his demise. I have blogged several times about the naivety of the belief that national governments (and, logically, companies) could control events by pulling levers – sometimes calling in aid posts from the thoughful blog Aid on the edge of chaos ; John Seddon and his systems approach and Jake Chapman who wrote a useful paper some time ago about the implications of systems thinking for government.
I have never, however found it easy to get my head around the subject. I am now reading the Institute of Government’s recent pamphlet on System Stewardship which is exploring the implications for english Civil Service skills of the Coalition government apparent hands-off approach to public services ie inviting a range of more localised organisations to take over their running – within some sort of strategic framework. The task of senior civil servants then becomes that of designing and learning from (rather than monitoring (?) the new system of procurements. My immediate thought is why so few people are talking about the reinvention of English local government (turned in the last 2 decades into little more than an arm of central government) – ie of inviting/requiring local authorities (rather than central government) to do the commissioning. The logic of complexity theory for collective organisations is presumably to reduce hierarchies and move decision-making as near as possible to individuals in their localities. Neoliberals say this means markets (dominated by large oligopolies); democrats say it means municipalities committed to delegation and/or mutual societies and social enterprises; and many northern Europeans would argue that they have the answer with their mixture of coalition governments, consultation and strong municipalities. But those who write in the English language don't pay much attention to that.
When I googled "stewardship”, I realised it has, in the last few years, become a new bit of jargon – and have to wonder if it is not a new smokescreen for neo-liberalism.
For the moment, I keep an open mind and will be reading three papers I have found as a result of this reading – a rather academic-looking Complexity theory and Public Administration – what’s new?; a rather opaque-looking Governance and complexity – emerging issues for governance theory; and a more useful-looking Governance, Complexity and Democratic participation – how citizens and public officials But I'm not holding my breath for great insights - just seems to be academic reinvention by new labels.

In Memoriam; Ion Olteanu 1953-2010

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

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

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