modern satire

I made a recent comment about how powerful an educational tool satire can be. The comment arose from my reading of Democratic Audit’s recent spoof - The Unwritten Constitution – which purported to be a draft constitution for the UK prepared by a civil servant (complete with some memos). On the basis that the document should be a formalisation of present practices, the draft mercilessly exposes the iniquitous system that is the British political system. You can find it at -
http://www.democraticaudit.eu/download/Unspoken_constitution.pdf

But the best satirical piece on the British system remains, for me, Anthony Jay’s priceless “Democracy, Bernard? It must be stopped!” which is some "tongue in cheek" advice from the retiring Sir Humphrey (of the famous BBC TV series "Yes Minister") to the guy we knew in the series as innocent young Bernard who, some decades later, inherits his position. Written some ten years ago, it exposes in some 6 pages all the mechanisms which ensure that politicians never challenge systems of privilege. You can access it from my website only!
http://www.freewebs.com/publicadminreform/key%20papers/Democracy%20_Yes%20Minister_.pdf

And today I came across another short spoof which I can add to my library – an apparent leak of a first draft EU Directive on standards for literature. This is so well written (and so plausible) it took us some time to conclude that it was in fact a satire! Perhaps, however, it was real – and the leak killed the idea?? See for yourself at http://www.eurozine.com/pdf/2005-10-03-spiro-en.pdf

The other good modern satire I know is Susan George’s The Lugano Report – which seems to be a confidential paper prepared for some multinational businesses on the major global threats and how they might cope with them. http://books.google.com/books?q=lugano+report&btnG=Search+Books&uid=9404005052714784916 By the way, this link allows you to access the entire stock of my googlelibrary (650 books!)

I’ve spent some time in the last couple of days downloading articles from Wiley journals which are on a special free access. There are almost 2,000 journals in their stable – and many show the problems of over-specialisation. As I said in my other blog a month or so back, the British Public Administration journal seems to have fallen into the hands of post-modernists and is rapidly becoming the home of gibberish. Its US colleague - Public Administration Review – offers much better writing (although recent issues also seem to show some deterioration).
Government and Opposition remains one of the best examples of clear writing.
Governance is also interesting.

miscellaneous

A busy 2 days – Friday was the day I was closing the mountain house for the winter. During the night I noticed what I thought was fog outside. It turned out to be snow – and, by morning, was a good 7 cms. Fortunately it was soft – so no problems with the side road connecting the village to the main road after I had disconnected the water and placed the booby traps. Then an enjoyable drive to Bucharest – although not the last hour negotiating the traffic into the gridlocked city.
I didn’t therefore have much time for the internet – but enough to surf for “managerialism” and find an interesting short paper “In Praise of Managerialism” http://www.ashridge.org.uk/website/IC.nsf/wFARATT/In%20Praise%20of%20Managerialism/$file/InPraiseOfManagerialism.pdf

This morning I read Colin Talbot’s all too rare blog Whitehall Watch – which had a reference to one of my old favourites – the development economist AO Hirschman of “Exit, Voice and Loyalty”. He was a real original (still alive at 94) – a rare interdisciplinarian who celebrated the “trespassing” across disciplinary boundaries. “A Propensity to self-subversion” is a good example - http://books.google.com/books?id=LlvD47cU-qAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=&f=false
That, in turn, led me to “Government and Opposition” - one of the Wiley publications to which I have a month’s free access – and several hours downloading articles from others in their stable such as Public Administration and Development. I generally don’t have much time for this journal – but was impressed to find a couple of articles in a 2006 issue on the theme of spiritual values in the workplace. “Growing numbers across many sectors feel an unprecedented crisis of identity and integrity. In international development, institutions often find themselves subordinated to the military in ever increasing conflict situations (the ‘development-security complex’). Locally, the global tendency is for public administration to be ‘re-engineered’ on the basis of so-called ‘market’ values (the ‘New Public Administration’). Private sector management models are, nevertheless, hardly exemplary. Corporate greed and scandals proliferate in a world featuring increasing poverty extremes, resurgence of old or advent in new diseases (e.g. HIV/Aids), environmental degradation and racism. This article takes, as its starting point, the fact that the workplace has become an insecure and alienating environment.
In pursuing the relationship between spirituality and religion, the article next distinguishes between, the dogmatic, institutionalised and potentially dangerous characteristics of many religions and the more intuitively contemplative character of spirituality with its stress on awareness of self, impact on others and feeling of universal connectedness.

Bearing in mind the often extremism as well as variety of religions (as distinct from spirituality), the second section examines the interrelationship between the two. A number of models are advanced concerning relationships between belief, belonging, salvation and ritual. It is argued that attention needs to be given to the inner side of religion, which requires individuals to embark on a spiritual journey through contemplation and reflection, rather than the more visible side of religion expressed in ritual. In sum, spiritual dialogue is offered as a way forward and as a mechanism for building spiritual community through engagement.

The final part of the article focuses on a trans-Atlantic spiritual engagement initiative. Faith-based discussion groups have been formed amongst business executives and professionals in USA (theWoodstock Business Conference promoted out of Georgetown University) and more recently in the City of London at the St Paul’s Cathedral Institute (the Paternoster Pilot Group). These aim to develop more meaningful work orientation: rediscovery of higher purpose and its relevance to restoration of ethical business and public service values, as well as better integration of personal and social domains”

Well said! This links to an earlier post ("living each day" Oct 22). I will let you know more once I have read the article!

managerialism as ideology

I asked why we had so easily forgotten the caution against hubris in the work of Karl Popper, James Scott etc Bit of a naive question! One obvious answer is that career incentives have developed in the last few decades for public managers, consultants and politicians who could sell the latest fashions in the private sector. Unfortunately this has tended to happen just at the moment the deficiencies of those ideas were becoming obvious (at least to those in the private sector). But the private consultants who were losing their market were only too happy to recycle their product. In the 1980s – when it was so difficult to get the public administration system to change - the key words in the field of commercial management were “reengineering”, “total quality management”, “transformation”; “reinvention” “culture change”.
Incremental change was for wimps! Suddenly, it was all or nothing!
And look at the number of Labour local politicians who were absorbed in the mid 1980s by private consultancies. Time was when the George Robertsons of this world were seduced by the American Atlanticist think-tanks. Management consultancies did the same business a decade or so later. Margaret Hodge was one of the most prominent. No wonder – as David Craig’s books so vividly show – that the spending by New Labour on such consultancies increased by a factor ten!
Nature abhors a vacuum - when old Labour lost its ideology, New Labour found managerialism!

Trust

Basically Labour (despite all the brave words) is no different – it simply does not trust people. And let there be no bones about it – this is an issue of trust.
The delivery of public services involves different groups of people – political, administrative, professional (at national and local levels) and the citizen. Time was when local professionals were trusted to do the job - that's changed in Britain over the past 30 years as a layer of public managers have been inserted between the professional and central government.
In Scandinavia, however, local professionals and local politicians have seen their responsibilities increased in structural changes in the past few decades. It's well known that the excellent Finnish educational system gives large autonomy to the local actors. Is this coincidence - or cause and effect?
In other countries again managers in the private sector have been trusted to do a better job – and functions such as water, transport, health and social policy have been transferred to the private sector. And, in some countries (Switzerland, Germany), citizens themselves are trusted to play an important role.

I’m now beginning to understand rather better one of the quotations on my masthead - "We've spent half a century arguing over management methods. If there are solutions to our confusions over government, they lie in democratic not management processes" I liked this quotation but I have to say I never quite understood it. Was he really arguing that politicians knew best?
Clearly not – his reference was to the process by which a society deals with its problems. By central diktat – or by dialogue? People like Will Hutton tried to sell a different, more European, approach to Blair before he came to power – the name they used (the Stakeholder approach) clearly didn’t resonate.
Twenty years ago, Robert Putnam started a debate about trust and "social capital" which too rapidly got colonised by academics and international organisations. But there is an issue there we have to return to - how come that, within Europe, such different models of social trust exist? Is this in fact (as people like Leopold Kohr argued so eloquently 60 years ago) a function of scale? If so, does the recent Scottish experience thrown any light on this issue?

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.