Hay, rain, Windows and democracy

A mixed bag of goodies this morning.
I did indeed do some scything yesterday morning – before the rains came yet again. And this morning also dawns wet – very unusual weather for here.
Now a moan about Microsoft and PC producers. I never expected to pay 600 euros tor a laptop boasting it had the latest Windows 7 – only to discover that it gave me Word only for 2 months (and requiring a special downloading) and that I am then expected to pay for it. By all means make us pay for the frills (as they do on cut-price flying) – but Word is so basic that it must surely be illegal to offer a PC which boasts it has Windows when it lacks Word?

The short visit I made recently to China (and the preparatory reading I did for it) opened up some interesting perspectives for me. I have never been a simplistic human rights advocate – but was appalled to read of the scale and nature of the continuing repression of those, for example, who dared to try to defend citizens against the injustices perpetrated by rapacious municipalities. However the Chinese authorities at various levels do try to take account of public opinion in various ways (they have to since they live in fear of losing their monoploy of power)– I and am a realist about how little power citizens of western democracies actually have to change things. I was brought up on the Schumpeterian diction about democracy only being a method choosing between competing elites – and that is certainly the case in American and Britain.
Last week an iconoclastic lecture was delivered in the august British Academy of Sciences by James Fishkin, director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, which related to this issue.
I excerpt the key sections below in italics. For the full article (and paper) go here Professor Fishkin claimed that we’ve known that liberal democracy doesn’t work since 1957, when Anthony Downs published his ‘rational ignorance’ theorem. Put simply, Downs proved that there’s no point in voters taking the considerable trouble to study the issues in sufficient depth to vote intelligently as their individual vote has a negligible effect on the outcome of the election. Or, as Russell Hardin memorably put it: ‘Having the liberty to cast my vote is roughly as valuable as having the liberty to cast a vote on whether the sun will shine tomorrow.’ Even after Schumpeter’s demonstration that voting is just a way of alternating elites, we still hang on to the illusion that liberal democracy is democratic. Fishkin and his colleague Bruce Ackerman are delightfully rude about our tendency to ‘vote for the politicians with the biggest smile or the biggest handout’, and are equally scornful of computer sampling models which enable politicians to ‘learn precisely which combinations of myth and greed might work to generate the support from key voting groups.’
Fishkin’s solution to the problem of rational ignorance is random selection by lot to create temporary deliberative assemblies to debate the issue(s) on hand and vote on the outcome. Like most people working in the field (including Anthony Barnett and the present author) Fishkin thought he had invented this system (known technically as ‘sortition’) only to discover that the Athenians beat him to it 2,400 years ago The Stanford sortition experiments have demonstrated that, given balanced advocacy and careful moderation, ordinary people will take the time to study and deliberate the issues before making an informed decision (via a secret ballot). Fishkin is opposed to the pressure to consensus that afflicts the Habermasian model of deliberative democracy and also claims that his institutional design overcomes the polarising tendencies of group deliberation recently outlined by Cass Sunstein.
Step forward China - Fishkin was contacted in 2004 by the party leadership in Zegou township, Wenling City (about 300 km south of Shanghai) who had a problem prioritising infrastructure projects – they had identified thirty potential projects but only had funding for ten. Although party leaders had their own preferences they commissioned Fishkin to introduce a randomly-selected deliberative assembly (235 members), who deliberated for a day over the various projects and voted on the outcome. Although the winning priorities on the deliberative poll were very different from those of the local leadership, the results were duly implemented. Coincidentally, I then came across a very useful booklet which has just been published exposing the way big business has intensified its penetration of EU policy-making.

can neo-liberalism be defeated?

The aftermath of the death of a laptop and the purchase of a new one may be annoying and time-consuming - with all the software downloading and file and website transfer it involves. It does, however, also has its positive side. It makes you look at many of the papers, files and websites which were just lying in the database! One of the papers I came across was a Compass pamphlet Breaking out of Britain's neo-liberlism produced in January 2009 and written by Gerry Hassan and Anthony Barnett (the latter the editor of the admirable Open Democracy website).
Given what I said in my last post, I thought it was worth excerpting some of it -
Across British public life, in public institutions and discourse, the last decade of New Labour has been characterised by the debasement of values and meaning. To talk about the future of our society we have been obliged to walk through a linguistic supermarket where sterile, vacuum packed in-words are provided by the supply-lines of the new elite. This has had many casualties, as government white papers and documents once renowned for their plain English have become inflated by gobble-de-gook obesity. Economic development agencies have abandoned talking seriously about political economy, and instead invoke “creativity”, “innovation” and “doing the step change”. Think-tanks evacuated any efforts at considering political economy. University departments scrambled for research funding by peer assessing each other’s publications in journals of barely-read-studies. City-wide and regional bodies stressed their aspirations to be “world class cities” basing their growth forecasts on shopping and tourism while discarding the solid revenues of manufacturing provincialism. In all parts of the UK, from London to Liverpool, Glasgow to “Newcastle/Gateshead”, this has been an age of gloss and superficiality and financial considerations based on “neverland”.
This debasement of our language and public discourse has been mirrored by the triumphalism of our political classes. The belief in “the end of decline” in the political elite has seen the shift from Britain being seen as “the sick man of Europe” to a country which from the mid-1980s “put the great back into Britain”.
Neo-liberalism bent and contorted all of Britain’s political parties, institutions and philosophies, while changing the notion of “the self” as personal neo-liberalism psychologised and individualised every issue and concern. These developments have seen the slow, gradual entrenchment of the neo-liberal order across all British public life, to the extent that people advocate and voice its values often without realising it.
The current set of events, uncertainty and instability shows the failure of the world that neo-liberalism brought about. This is an historic opportunity and challenge to all of us: whether we be progressives, liberals, conservatives, nationalists, or just concerned about the future of Britain and the world.

SEVEN INITIAL STEPS TO BEGIN TO CHALLENGE NEO-LIBERALISM:
1. We need to identify “the official future” – the mantra of globalisation wherever it is – nationally, internationally, in the public and private realms, and critique it, defeat it and supplant it;
2. The world view of the bloviators – the Malcolm Gladwells and others – who have offered themselves as voices and apologists for the winners and the global order, needs to be seen as part of the problem, along with the damage they have done and their role in legitimising the “new conservatism”;
3. Government and public agencies need to fundamentally rethink how they conceive and think of policy, the language and values in documents, and whose voice and interest such processes are serving;
4. The British “public” overall does not see itself in the language of “consumers” and “customers” in relation to public service. For the last thirty years, the public have been force-fed a diet of New Public Management, choice and privatisation, and still they don’t find it attractive or buy it. Sadly nor do people see themselves in the idea of “citizens”. We need to think, nurture and organise public services in new ways which are neither New Right nor the technical fixes of co-production;
5. There is a direct link between the micro-policy and management of the Blair-Brown years – legislation “overload” and command and control – and the suffocating consensus of the mainstream, which shuts down open discussion of the macro-questions about the economy and society;
6. The nature of the British state is fundamental to the current crisis and laid the basis for the acute nature of the problems Britain faces in the global downturn. The British regime formed over the thirty years of Thatcher to Brown has seen an inter-twinning of the economic, social and political into a neo-liberal state and polity that commands the loyalty of all the main parties. An escape route has yet to be discovered given the closed nature of the British system.
7. Any such escape needs the people of the United Kingdom to make their own claim upon public power with a modern form of citizenship which aids an emancipatory state, culture and society. This will involve a political culture and system which recognises the centrality of fundamental human rights that protect minorities as well as a modern liberty that stops the development of an authoritarian, database state. All of which will require a way of retelling and reimagining the stories of the peoples and the nations of the UK.

OK the first steps are rather shaky and tentative. The writings of David Marquand are relevant to point 6 - and the Power2010 movement to the last point. I hope the two come back to these issues - soon and more coherently - and with a braoder European dimension.

UK's new coalition government

I realise that I have said nothing in the last month about the political developments in Britain – the first real peace-time coalition in the UK since the 1920s. What England does (like its football team) is, frankly, of less and less significance to the world. Aggressive, adversarial... choose whatever epithet you like, its systems have been for some time dysfunctional and, increasingly, in bad taste. And the United Kingdom is less and less united – since 1999, the Scottish parliament and devolved government have bucked the English trends both in policy and voting aspects (Labour increased its share of the vote in Scotland in June). The coalition process which UK people are amazed to find themselves with has been the norm in the rest of Europe for the past half-century. London Review of Books issue of 10 June had a good overview of the situation – led by Ross McKibbin’s magisterial piece - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n11/ross-mckibbin/time-to-repent
So far the focus of the new government has been public spending cuts – and there has been little indication of where the new government stands on the management structures and culture of the public service. New Labour had continued indeed intensified the strange combination of neo-liberalism (marketisation) and of central controls and targets of their predecessors. The results had been widely critiqued – by academics and consultants such as John Seddon http://www.thesystemsthinkingreview.co.uk/
I have already mentioned the detailed critique by Allyson Pollock of how this approach has impacted on the health service. However, none of this critique seems to have found political expression – since New Labour had outflanked the Tories on the right on this (and other) issue. True, the Parliamentary Select Committee on Public Administration had looked at these issues of choice, targets and control – but their various reports lacked rigour.
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-archive/public-administration-select-committee/pasc-inquiries/
A quick skim of the UK Think Tanks to see what advice the new coalition is being offered unearthed only one report – The Reform of Government – from the right-wing Policy Exchange. http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/pdfs/TROG.pdf

scything days and the state of universities

The day has dawned idyllic - and no further excuses therefore for avoiding the scything which the tall grass around the house demands! Elsewhere in the village yesterday, the work was getting underway - the occasional sharpening of the blades echoing around the place.
Eurozine is a useful European (electronic?) journal which selects articles and themes from offbeat cultural journals throughout the region and focuses in its latest issue on the discontent which is apparently rife at the moment in European universities - see http://www.eurozine.com/articles/article_2010-07-01-editorial-en.html

what football performance tells us

Don Paskini's blog (http://don-paskini.blogspot.com/) had a powerful point recently about the lessons from the performances of the English and German teams in the World Cup which I reproduce in full.
English football is run in the interests of very wealthy people. Ticket prices are extremely high and unaffordable for many families on middle or lower incomes. There are even regulations which tell football supporters that they are not allowed to stand and watch their team play. Fans of top teams pay huge sums of money to watch live football, money which goes to multi millionaire footballers and owners of football teams. Those who choose instead to watch football on the telly pay hundreds of pounds per year to Rupert Murdoch. Many clubs have seen their budgets for investment slashed, and their revenues spent on servicing the debts which their owners have run up. A tiny fraction of this money trickles down from the millionaires to grassroots football clubs, and clubs at all levels of the game have been caught in a financial crisis, with many threatened by closure.

German football is run in the interests of the supporters. Ticket prices are kept low so that supporters can go and watch, and can even stand if they want. Regulations mean that at least 51% of every football club is owned by the supporters, unless a company can show that it has invested in the club for at least twenty years. Those who choose to watch football on the telly have benefited from the most competitive free TV market in the world. German football clubs made a profit, rather than running up debts, thanks to lower spending on players' wages. In recent years, German clubs have massively increased their investment in youth academies, and the national team has benefited from the liberalisation of the immigration laws in 1999, to the point where they proudly talk about how they are the "multicultural" or "liberation" generation. The Bundesliga is more unpredictable and exciting than the Premier League, and we all know what happened on Sunday.

English society is run in the interests of very wealthy people. The cost of housing, child care and social care is unaffordable for many families on middle or lower incomes. There are all sorts of petty regulations which tell ordinary people what they are and aren't allowed to do. People pay huge sums of money for basic services which goes to multi millionaires. The media is dominated by a small cartel of multi millionaires, most notably Rupert Murdoch. The government is slashing its budgets for investment, and our revenues are spent on servicing the debts which the bankers have run up. A tiny fraction of this money trickles down from the millionaires to grassroots community groups, and charities and small businesses have been caught in a financial crisis, with many threatened by closure.

If we want to improve our chances in the next World Cup and stop many of our clubs from going bankrupt, we could learn a lot from the Germans. We could organise the game around the convenience of fans, rather than the Glazers and other multi millionaire owners. We could slash ticket prices, and scrap petty regulations on supporters. At the same time, we could impose new regulations to stop rich people from buying football clubs in order to asset strip them and stop them from paying their debts by squeezing fans dry. We could break up media cartels and increase the amount we invest in our young people, as well as welcoming people from all around the world who have chosen to come to live and work here.

But it strikes me that these same principles which have made German football better than ours - putting ordinary people first, making sure it is affordable to go and watch a football game, regulating the anti-social activities of rich asset strippers, investing in developing young people and being proud of multiculturalism and tolerance - are also ones which are more generally applicable to how to improve our society.

access at last

A trip into Brasov got me a new laptop (Windows 7 and also extended keyboard which I find a nuisance) - and fast internet connection - as well as garden instruments to help deal with the overgrown grass.
One of the few things I've lost is my collection of photographs - so bear with me while I build up a new stock. I am amazed at how little the PC producers understand about our needs - namely to have the same keyboard configurations! How much it fucks us up to ahve these new elements!!!!
The rainy weather continues - yesterday I consumed poet Gyurgy Faludy's incredible My Happy Days in Hell about his life in pre-war Hungary, France, then Morroco and USA before he returned to Communist Hungary for inevitable torture and imprisonment. A stunning prose poem of the 20th century!

words are important

Great frustration – my windows system won’t open and I have lost the recent material I hadn’t saved on hard disc. Fortunately I noticed some warning signals and had copied individually most of the hundreds of websites I have. And, equally fortunately, we have a spare notebook.
Interesting discussion triggered off by "transparency" - another bit of technical jargon which serves wider political purposes which the foreward to Tony Judt's Reappraisals touches on namely the amnesia which overwhelms current society.
The Compassionate Mind (which I'm struggling through)suggests that, as individuals at any rate, we don't live enough in the present. But, arguably, as a society we live too much in the present and don't try to lean the lessons of the past. "Transparency" covers the issues once covered by participation (1960s); consultation (1970s) and open government (1990s). Why do we need a new word? Partly to pretend that we've just discovered a new issue; to cover up the fact that previous efforts failed; and to make sure that the new efforts will also run into the sand. Here is an example of collusion between elite interests and those of the academic scribblers and technocrats whose specialisations are a form of product differentiation to secure their incomes.

appreciative inquiry

The World Bank is actually beginning to produce readable documents! Some time ago, they started a newssheet called People, Spaces, Deliberation which is sent out bi-weekly. It aims to explore the link between public opinion and governance issues – and its publications look in detail at the communications process. Most often it is outsider practitioners who contribute. Today’s issue has a piece on appreciative inquiry on which I had downloaded recently a couple of google books – but to which I had not paid proper attention. I found a good short summary of the AI approach in this paper -
I hadn’t appreciated that it rejects the “problem-orientation” approach – choosing to identify and work on the positives of an organisation. This took me back to discussions we had in the late 1970s when those of who developed Strathclyde Regions’s deprivation strategy anguished that our selection of areas of multiple deprivation could compound the negative forces at work.
Google scholar actually gave me a 300 page book Locating the energy for change – an introduction to appreciative inquiry; Charles Elliott (1999). Incidentally you can sign on to the WB newssheet by writing to commgap@worldbank.org

I've chosen this photo of one of our sessions in 2006 in Atbashi, north Kyrgyzstan - partly as a homage to those who are suffering in that country at the moment and partly as an illustration of the process of dialogue and change.