the wrong model of government

I’m now trying to explore the wider implications of the thoughts I posted earlier this morning – both on the blog and on the Guardian’s article comments pages - for the issue of getting government systems to deliver better value to their citizens.
The question which the Guardian article confronted was how society (not just teachers) can best deal with disruptive pupils. And parental satisfaction with the schooling system is as reasonable a test as one could imagine for how well a governance system is operating. (In Azerbaijan, I suggested the basic test was how easily people could cross the street!) Those who study and write about government and public administration over-complicate things - we need some simple tests like these!

So let’s explore what this example of the tools available to deal with disruptive pupil behaviour tells us about the British “governance” system.
The British political, professional and legal systems have made a lot of interventions over the past 30 years into the affairs of the school. Laws, targets, national curricula, guidelines, procedures and outside groups (such as police, social workers and a new breed of auditors) now constrain what teachers can and cannot do. Schools cannot easily get rid of unruly pupils – and have to deal with them in normal classes.

And yet the results of all this effort appear to have made the situation worse. This is ironic – since the NewLabour government boasted in its early years of having found a wider range of policy tools which could be used to fine-tune social behaviour.
I remember so well some of the chapters in Geoff Mulgan’s significantly-entitled “Life after Politics – new thinking for the twenty-first century” (1997). In particular Perri 6’s “Governing by cultures” – which classified the various tools government had to change social behaviour.
Douglas Hague’s title was also interesting – “Transforming the Dinosaurs”. That was strong language to use about schools and universities!
And, in 1999, we had the Modernising Government paper – and the Cabinet Office (under Geoff Mulgan) produced fascinating papers on policy-making and the development of effective strategies. Part of the new weaponry was “evidence-based policy-making”.
The tools of (central) government seemed so clear! This was social engineering with a vengeance!
I realise that this does not appear to be very helpful to the parent whose child’s education is suffering from the disruptive behaviour. But bear with me......

Knowing Labour as well as I do (having been a paid-up member since 1959 and a leading regional councillor from 1974-1991), I was disappointed but not surprised that local government did not appear as one of the possible mechanisms of change. New Labour had already absorbed that power ethos which was revealed when Hartley Shawcross spoke in 1946 the famous words - “Now WE are the masters”. That phrase gave the game away – that voting was simply to facilitate “the circulation of the elites” who knew best. The ratonale was superbly set out in Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.

Sixty years later the assumptions of the British system have not changed - those at the centre know best - so central targets are set; laws are passed; and complex and invasive control systems established. John Seddon has been one of several recent critics of this "command and control" model which the recent Cambridge University report on primary education rightly called Stalinist.

And just look at the mechanistic language we all find ourselves using - policy "tools"; "machinery" of government! For God's sake, don't we realise that we have allowed ourselves to be classified as machines - subject to a few people pulling levers. It was Gareth Morgan (Images of Organisation http://books.google.com/books?id=h-f429ueNRYC&printsec=frontcover&lr=&rview=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false) who made us realise the different metaphors we use to describe organisations - and how much they affect our thinking and awareness of options.

Morgan suggests there are eight basic "images" viz organisations as "political systems", as "instruments of domination", as "cultures", as "machines", as "organisms", as "brains", as "psychic prisons", as "flux and transformation" and as "instruments of domination". And the machine metaphor is the most primitive!

Have we utterly forgotten the powerful critique about the counterproductivity of state measures eg James Scott's classic Seeing like a state - how certain schmes to improve the human condition have failed? (1999)

OK this is long enough for the moment! What I am trying to say is that dealing with an issue like disruptive behaviour requires us to step out of the centralist, machine model of government - and go to a very different way of thinking. Are the British people up to this? I shall try to develop this theme in subsequent blogs

the new Weimar Republic

The painting which heads the last posting (“rotten from top to bottom”) is, of course, Georg Grosz’s famous “The Pillars of Society” which has been a favourite of mine since I first saw it – epitomising as it does the greed of those who rise to positions of power.
Painted as Germany descended into the despair of the 1920s, it was (in 1926) am amazingly prescient picture of the moral corruption which would overwhelm its elite and people. The sketch is another Grosz - a vivd portrayal of the social isolation which is a natural product of greedy elites.

Both images are now, sadly, a very apt logo for Britain. I will write more about this - and what disruptive pupils tells us about the state of "policy sciences", experts, politicians, consultants et al - in my next post.
For more on Grosz see the link on Olga’s Gallery which is always so pleasant to visit - http://www.abcgallery.com/G/grosz/grosz.html

rotten from top to bottom

Today’s Guardian has a good piece on the experience of 2 teachers who were recently charged with assault for manhandling in class an aggressive and persistently disruptive child. The whole force of the system was arrayed against them – one was cleared (after a year of suspension), the other found guilty and has lost his job. Amazingly there were already (06.00 UK time) more than 140 comments on the whole issue of school behaviour. The article had appeared last night – and people had been scribbling furiously throughout the night! As I scrolled through the comments, I was appalled at how emotional and polarised they were. Guardian readers, after all, are supposed to be reasonable people! Was this, I wondered, the evening wine and whisky talking? One contributor put it well – “just because you were abused at school (by a bullying teacher) doesn’t mean that teachers deserve anything that comes to them!”
The usual culprits were called into action – lack of discipline; the emphasis on rights; end of streaming; social workers; teaching methods; the culture of selfishness; television etc. Only 2 contributors mentioned that other European countries did not seem to experiencing this scale of problem. I then realised that the shallow and emotional tenor of the “discussion” was not just an annoying triviality – but was the clue to the problem under discussion and a pointer to the real answer.
For the first time, I was moved to draft a contribution of my own – here it is (number 147)

Interesting that the more thoughtful comments should come from those with experience of other countries eg France, Germany and Sweden. This is a very serious issue – which goes far beyond the issue of school behaviour – and does deserve more than cabby-driver rants. Britain does have a different culture of power from other countries. Those at the very top have never been held properly accountable; and the power has become more and more centralised. Our politics are conducted in more and more of an adversarial (and childish) manner – and the rhetoric of consumer-friendliness conceals the fact that our organisations are run in autocratic style. We do not talk to one another in a civilised manner because there is no civilised or thoughtful discourse at the highest level – only the exercise (and abuse) of power.
Other European countries have constitutions, legal (and sometimes even company) structures which have forced those at the top to justify and often to negotiate their actions. That, too, has been the Japanese way.
I’m afraid that, until we sort out that fundamental issue, our schools will continue to be the political football they are.

Things can change – the new Scottish parliament was given an electoral base which gave those supporting small parties a voice and required coalitions. And the Parliament gave itself a more inclusive and accountable structure – and has tried to reach out and involve the population.

There are no easy answers or quick fixes – the school issue is a classic example of the need for the stakeholder approach which requires, at all levels, responsibilities and rights to be properly recognised and balanced (and that very much includes the parents).
When people feel powerless and angry – they look for victims – and I’m not talking here about pupils. The country is angry because they have no voice – and those in power have been exposed (yet again) for the abusive and greedy people which the structures they inhabit allow and encourage them to be.
My reference to “abuse” is not a reference to political expenses (see my other blog for a couple of comments on that subject) - but to the much wider and longer abuse which is described so eloquently in Harold Perkins’ The Third Revolution – professional elites in the modern world

Kenneth Roy has described the latest twist of the larceny of the professionals in

health warning - blogging can be good for your mind

Honore Daumier - the legislative belly
OK an example of the benefits of a daily blog - I read a review of Malcolm Gladwell’s (of “Blink” fame) latest book This points me to his website - and allows me to download all the articles from New Yorker which form the content of this latest book. I recognise some of them – eg the review of the small book which classifies the various ways we try to explain (“Why?”) and the critiques of personnel evaluation tests.
I notice how elegantly the essays are constructed – beginning always with a very concrete incident we can all relate to; then introducing us to the arguments of a few authors; and exploring where those arguments take us. I read with great enjoyment (in the middle of the night no less!) a piece about the light which those writing recently about “risks” and accidents throws on the Challenger space vessel explosion.
My mind then takes me to the essay as a form. I remember the impact which the essays of 18/19th century English writers such as Addison, Francis Bacon and Charles Lamb made on me at secondary school. “What is truth, said Jesting Pilot, and would not stay for an answer” is a phrase stuck in my mind - and is apparently Bacon – although the wonderfully evocative piece on burning pork is apparently by Charles Lamb – not Bacon as I had thought! I start to google the various names and find a wonderful website devoted to.....essays! Lamb’s on pork is there. The site, however, has a classic and somewhat American bias (it’s from Brigham Young University – which as I recall is Mormon??) – so there don’t seem many modern examples eg George Orwell. But it’s clearly a treasure trove eg one by AA Milne (of Winnie the Pooh fame) struck a strong chord with my nomadic spirit

It was, of course, Montaigne who started this art form in the 16th Century in his castle near Bordeaux– and his Complete Works stands on a shelf above my study door. As I read Gladwell’s essays, I suddenly hear in my mind the tones of Alistair Cooke - as he read his Letters from America (for almost 50 years). What an institution he was! Weaving a spell as he slowly moved from his opening ear-catching sentences through a charming analysis of part of the American system to a laconic conclusion. I hope they use his texts on the Brigham Young courses. And then I thought of Thom Wolfe – whose 1970 essay “Mau-mauing the flak catchers” was such a merciless description of the funding culture which grew around the US War on Poverty. And thanks to Wikipedia and New York Magazine I could also download his even more famous satire of “the radical chic”. If only someone would do a similar satire on EU funding – someone surely must have!! But it’s beyond a joking matter! Wolfe invented some great phrases - "shit-detector" was his word for someone who can smell out imposters and charlatans.
And so I am led, finally, to satire. And to realise how powerful a tool it can be. I’m not familiar with what the ancients contributed to this genre (some of the Sufi stories have gentle satire) so I generally start with Voltaire’s Candide and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
In our times, Antony Jay is well known for his “Yes, Minister” which showed on BBC in the 1970s. Forty years on we now have the not so subtle “In the Thick of it”. And “The Office” was apparently (the only decent BBC TV series I can access in central europe is Morse and Misummer Murders!!) a hilarious and accurate attack on office politics.

It’s not often, however, you get a management writer spoofing his profession but I discovered recently systems guru Russell Ackoff's Management F-Laws And Stuart Weir wrote earlier this year a spoof on the British political system -
Other examples of modern satire on management and politics would be much appreciated.
Anyway the point of this post was to show the discoveries and rediscoveries which can come from a simple article and surf.

Scots heritage

I learned a lot from re-reading Arthur Herman’s The Scottish Enlightenment – the Scots’ invention of the modern world (2003). He’s an American with no obvious axe to grind. I knew about Adam Smith and David Hume (although not properly appreciated the latter’s arguments eg “reason is – and ought to be – the slave of passions”). I knew about the openness of Scottish universities in medieval times and their strong links with continental universities (not least as a final stage of legal education); about the Scots role in the British Empire (and in exploiting the opium trade); and that most of the stuff with kilts is actually a Victorian invention.
What, however, I hadn’t realised were things such as –
- The speed with which Scotland apparently changed from a backwater of Iran-like religious domination and prejudice to playing a leading role in the development of the “study of mankind”
- just what a galaxy of stars there were in Edinburgh and Glasgow between the last 2 Scottish uprisings of 1715 and 1745. Frances Hutcheson I had vaguely heard of – but not his core argument that “all men of reflection from Socrates have sufficiently proved that the truest, most constant and lively pleasure, the happiest enjoyment in life, consists in kind affections to our fellow creatures”. The pulpit should not be a place to inspire fear and terror; but to uplift and inspire.
- William Robertson whose classification of history into 4 stages apparently shaped the modern approach to history
- The basically English agenda of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” in 1745 – and how both Highland chieftains and the new bourgeoisie in Glasgow opposed him.

Nor have I ever read such a clear exposition of the issues and theories these individuals dealt with in the early decades of the 18th century – nor of the role of the Church of Scotland. My father – as a vicar of that Church and a great historian – will be turning in his grave!
And several times, phrases hit me with some personal force “The great figures of the Scottish enlightenment never lost sight of their educational mission. Most were teachers or university professors; others were clergymen who used their pulpits for the same purpose. In every case, the goal of educational life was to understand in order to teach others, to enable to next generation to learn what you yourself have mastered – and build on it” That helps me understand my drive!!

Several other things the book emphasises –
- How much Scotland benefitted from the 1707 merger with England – from which the Nationalist government now wishes Scotland to cut loose
- How misunderstood Adam Smith has been.
- The role Scots politicians played in liberalising British politics in the 1830 period
- How major a role Scots played in the American revolution – and, indeed (on the downside), in the development of its “revivalist” religious tradition!

I;m afraid that the book is not available in googlebooks.....I'll now try to find a suitable picture....

Is blogging useful only to the blogger?

The last few days have been glorious – I was sunning myself on the terrace yesterday afternoon – and today has dawned bright and cloudless. With the extra hour’s gift this morning from summer-time ending during the night, I skimmed through the blogs I have bookmarked. It made me think about their value. Many books have been written recently about blogging – its nature and its possible social and intellectual consequences The New York Review of Books reviewed some of the books and blogs at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21013 and http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22960

My "About the blog" section tries to explain my motives for this blog - I'm trying to make sense of my professional life and to see what I can usefully pass on to to others! So the blog is a discipline on me - not yet perhaps offering the reader very much (except pretty pictures!)

What about the blogs I look at - how useful do I find them? Of course my bookmarking is a highly selective activity – reflecting the interest I have in books and organisational change. The book-bloggers are a special breed – generally retired people who have the time to pursue and share their passion for reading – generally novels. For a sample see - http://www.britlitblogs.com/
I have, so far, bookmarked a hundred-odd general bloggers whose writing reflects some of my interest in understanding social, economic and organisational forces in the world – and in contributing to “positive change”. Who are they?
The first category is those who are paid to write – journalists, think-tankers, academics. They write well – but generally in specialist mode. They focus on a specific event and then relate this to some more general principles. Journalists (such as Ian McWhirter) and think-tankers (such as Matt Taylor (RSA Head) and Gerry Hassan) find this an effortless task. Academics such as Paul Krugman also have their journalistic side.
Then there are the overtly “political blogs” – politicians and party supporters – most of which confirm how low politics has fallen. So much self-centred and petty comment. Of course there are exceptions and I will add a link when I can find one!!

Then there are more theoretical blogs which have an interest in a discipline such as economics or sociology on theory and are generally written by struggling post-graduates. For example http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/ or http://thesociologicalimagination.com/ or http://www.themonkeycage.org/. They give an insight into the soulless world of academia!

Some blogs are like helpful librarians – referring you on to interesting articles you would otherwise miss eg http://don-paskini.blogspot.com/ And there are digests of blogs eg http://scottishroundup.co.uk/These I enjoy.

Blogging, I seem to be saying, may be good for the blogger - in raising their profile or helping articulate inchoate thoughts - but what does is actually give the reader? The gems I look for are the free-spirits – those not attached to institutions such as the BBC, academia or think tanks who have had some experience of the real-world; are not specialists and continue to have an open mind. One such person seems to be Scott London - see his comments on dialogue http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/61

economics and management - the modern religious doctrine

One of my heroes has always been the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen’ tale "The Emperor’s New Clothes" – the only person able to break the hypocrisy, fawning and lies around him and speak the truth. I was very happy therefore a few days to come across Steve Keen’s 2001 book “Debunking Economics – the naked emperor of the social sciences”. The last decade has, of course, seen many books critiquing the basic assumptions of economics and trying to build a more realistic discipline – but Keen’s seems to go further is being almost an alternative textbook. You can get a good sense of it here
For my sins, I not only studied economics, I actually tried to teach it at a polytechnic for several years. At University I had had the greatest of difficulty with some of the basic ideas (particularly the theory of the firm!) and would, occasionally, feel that I was studying a set of religious texts. )(Incidentally, this is an idea brilliantly explored in 1994 in Susan George and Fabrizio Sabelli's Faith and Credit - the World Bank's Secular Empire).

I stuck with the subject only because of my interest in regional and urban development for which I could see some practical application. Eventually my disillusionment became too great and I switched my work to urban management. The other part of my Degree had been Politics and political sociology - with John Mackintosh (of "Cabinet Government" fame) one of my tutors. Here I felt on stronger ground - and was particularly excited to read books such as Heclo and Wildavsky's The Private Government of Public Money and EH Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis - both of which stripped away rhetoric to expose the realities of power.

But Britain has retained its mythical attachment to its form of "liberal democracy" - and developed a similar mystique around economics. Almost the same day I found the Keen book, I found a marvellous statement of the reality of the British political system - produced a few months ago by the UK Thinktank Democratic Audit
It is easier nowadays to make the point that economics is a religious doctrine - resting, as people beyond the classrom are slowly recognising, on dogmatic assumptions. The same is true of the even more popular field of management - which I have seen grow in my lifetime from a few (American) departments and books to a series of global industries In reality it is a new Roman Catholic Church - with its interdoctrinal disputes. Sad that there are so few demystications available in that field - Zuboff's The Support Economy (2001) was one of the few.
But back to economics - one of the latest Nobel prizewinners, Paul Krugman, asked last month why the economists got it (the finanical crisis) so wrong. He suggests that mathematical modelling is the answer - but the question which should be asked is why noone pays attention to the answers which have been available for 20 years or so? Paul Ormerod wrote his Death of Economics in 1993 - and that reflected a decade or so of private, professional concerns which could not be voiced for fear of losing tenure etc. A good resource for crtiqiues is post-autistic economics which was set up in 2000 by French students objecting to the irrelevance of economics

more recent influential books

The booklist I gave recently was, I failed to mention, of those books which had made a major impact on me at an earlier stage of my life – which, in a sense, shaped my attitudes. For example the powerful Camus and Koestler essays against capital punishment. So far I would add only one to the list EJ Mishan's "Costs of Economic Growth" (1967) which was a gentler Kohr critique and a forerunner to Schumacher’s writings on a different economics.
Tony Crosland’s books were elegant attacks on the inequalities of British society – but with a different “take” on how to deal with them than the build up of the state offered by the traditional left. Popper gave me the horror I have of an overbearing state – and people like Illich gave me my anarchistic streak. However it was Bernard Crick’s "In Defence of Politics" I suspect which persuaded me that politics was an honourable and necessary pursuit.
The collection of books therefore gave me both my political activism (as Brecht said – “So ist die Welt – und must nicht so sein”) – and some of the approaches which might be able to deal with the injustices (and inefficiencies) I wanted to deal with. For the first 22 years of my adult life I chose to pursue a political role – but at a local and regional level with my commitment to community development and community enterprise giving vent to the anarchistic element.
For the past 20 years, I have been operating as a consultant (although critical) – and perhaps reaching the point when I need to change/raise my game.

And I should now refer to the books/authors which have “spoken to” me in that last phase. My publicadminreform website http://www.freewebs.com/publicadminreform/mentions a lot of books – and has indeed several large bibliographies In “key papers”) which are worth looking at. But the following are the first which come to mind -
Stepen Covey; The Seven Habits of Effective People (1991) In the early 1990s this was the only management book which I could find translated into the various languages of central europe in which I was working – and therefore an ideal focus for some discussions.
Robert Greenleaf; On Becoming a servant leader (1996)
Charles Handy; all his writings
Paul Hawken etc Natural Capitalism – the next industrial revolution (1999)
Christopher Hood; The Art of the State (1998)
Will Hutton; The State we’re in; The world we’re in (2002)
David Korton; When Corporations rule the world (1995)
Ronnie Lessem; Management Diversity through cultural diversity (1998) and all his other books
George Monbiot; Captive State the corporate takeover of Britain (2000)
Guy Peters; The Future of Governing – four emerging models (1996)
Susan Strange; Mad Money – when markets outgrow governments (1998) Casino Capitalism etc
Theodor Zeldin; An Intimate History of Humanity (1998)