rustic charms

Suddenly it's more than 20 degrees - so various noises - melting snow; the thump as it lands on the terrace at the back; the gradual exposure of the grass; the dogs luxuriating in the earth and sun. A new calf born yesterday at Viciu's.....
Earlier blogs complained about the backbreaking work involved in having wood as the main heating - but my flabby and fattening body was grateful for the physical toil involved in having a rural retreat.
There must have been a vicarious strand in me since amongst the books I have collected in the past couple of years are quite a few which celebrate nature and isolation. I started with Robert McFarlane's amazing "Mountains of the Mind", then found Roger Deakin's "Wildwood - a journey through trees" and then Richard Mabey's "Beechcombings - the narratives of trees". The latest were McFarlane's "The Wild Places";"Song of the Rolling Earth: A Highland Odyssey" by John Lister-Kay; and Deakin's Notes from Walnut Tree farm.
We all enjoy books about the joys and frustrations of rural living. Peter Mayle made it all fashionable - but there are so many accounts I have in my great library here - Harry Clifton's poetic "On the Spine of Italy - a year in the Abruzzi" (1999); Peter Graham's superb "Mourjou - the life and food of an auvergne village" (1998); Michael Viney's "A Year's Turning" (1996) about life in a remote Irish location to which they moved in the late 1970s. And I've just found Tahir Shah - whose "Caliph's House" and "In Arabian Nights" take us further afield to Morocco. I reamain pretty impractical - just noticing that the toilet is leaking from a crack it has sustained from the cold (I drain it when I'm not here in the winter so I don't understand how that could happen) - and now dreading the repair. But I have a marvellous new axe as a back up in case I bury the head of the one I have irretrievably in a log!
The combination of economic crises, urban pressures and crazy management systems have made "simple living" a more attractive option. Ghazi and Jones's "Downshifting - the guide to happier, simpler living" appeared 12 years ago (1997) - and it was in 1998 that the sociologist Richard Sennett published "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism" in which he saw soul-destroying consequences in our new work habits,endless hours spent at flexible jobs, performing abstract tasks on computer screens. Last year, in "The Craftsman" Sennett suggested that skilled labour could be a way to resist corporate mediocrity. The environmentalist writer Bill McKibben proposed something similar in "Deep Economy" which condemned the ruinous effects of endless economic expansion and urged readers to live smaller, simpler, more local lives. This artisanal revival has been particularly pronounced among foodies, thanks in part to the writer Michael Pollan, who helped popularize an American variant of the Italian culinary-agrarian movement known as Slow Food. In "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defence of Food" Pollan surveys and explains the excesses of the industrial food chain and praises small farms and local produce.
These ideas have crept farther toward the mainstream in the wake of the economic collapse, which inspired calls for a return to "real work", a return, in other words, to activities more tangible (and, it was hoped, less perilous) than complex swaps of abstract financial products.
Of course, it's easy for me to talk - I'm comfortable financially (as long as the banks don't go bust) - and can always jump into my car and do the odd bit of consultancy in Bulgaria or Macedonia; or take in a concert at Brasov or Bucharest. And, if I had only the village gossip for social contact (rather than the internet) I might be driven up the wall! But for the moment, let me indulge my fancy and be one more small voice arguing for a return to more natural living.
Just in case you haven't noticed, I've cheated - and reproduced my blog of exactly a year ago!

mansions and wine

At last to the mountain refuge - I was discouraged a couple of weeks back by the forecasts of snow. So this is the first visit since mid January. The snow is still thick around the house – but melting fast. Bottles of tap water which I left in the bathroom are frozen and also upstairs – but not, curiously, in the kitchen (although the water in the kettle was). Apart from a leak sprung by the bath tap, the house has survived the winter in excellent shape – the books unfazed and most of the paintings well protected. Each spring, here in Romania where the seasons are still very distinctive and well….central European… is an amazing rebirth.
Yesterday we visited two superb Romanian mansions – one in a hill above Urlati (a very poor town on the road from Ploiesti in the direction of Buzau) which was the home of one of Romania’s first photographers at the end of the 19th century and gives a marvellous sense of that period.
The other in Ploiesti itself. Excellent guides in both – the first of which had actually helped restore the place (and others). On the way back from Urlati – which is in on the wine foothills – we had some wine-tasting on the main road at the Domeniile Dealu Mare Urlati whose young proprietor Alexandru Marinescu was on hand for a chat – the Merlot rose and Pelin were fragrant and worth buying - at 1.5 euros and 2 euros a litre respectively. It’s interesting that the large Prahova area of Dealu Mare is the current brand name for the good reds in Romania but that they don’t yet really sell on the basis of the regional areas such as Tohani and Urlati – let alone specific vineyards. His wines are available at the Matache market in Bucharest - more here.
Six books waiting for me - including The End of Revolution - China and the limits of modernity by Wang Hui.

investigative journalism

One of the basic claims of democracy is based on free expression. That, in turn, hinges on a free media. Study after study shows how little of that remains in the US – and how investigative journalism has been driven out by the power of corporate capital which now controls so much of the world’s media. If the previous link doesn;t work, try here It is, therefore, good to know that in at least one country an independent investigative journal has a strong financial record ie France’s Canard Enchaine. Der Spiegel has a good article on how old-fashioned values are still alive and well in one journal – and have governments quaking in their collective shoes. The E-journal Scottish Review (in links on right-hand side) is an example of what can be done with minimal resources on that medium.

At the other end of the scale, you have to read abstruse academic articles to get some insights into the corrupt practices in this part of the world – see this piece on how privatisation and decentralisation strips Romanian forests for private advantage.

And a reminder about the hypocrisy and lies of the US on matters relating to free trade. The painting is another early 20th century Bulgarian one - this time Kodjaimanov

For 30 years, Washington has been shopping a trade-not-aid based economic diplomacy across Latin America and beyond. According to what is generally known as the “Washington consensus”, the US has provided Latin America loans conditional on privatisation, deregulation and other forms of structural adjustment. More recently, what has been on offer are trade deals such as the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement: access to the US market in exchange for similar conditions.
The 30-year record of the Washington consensus was abysmal for Latin America, which grew less than 1% per year in per capita terms during the period, in contrast with 2.6% during the period 1960-81. East Asia, on the other hand, which is known for its state-managed globalisation (most recently epitomised by China), has grown 6.7% per annum in per capita terms since 1981, actually up from 3.5% in that same period.
The signature trade treaty, of course, was the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). Despite the fact that exports to the US increased sevenfold, per capita growth and employment have been lacklustre at best. Mexico probably gained about 600,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector since Nafta took effect, but the country lost at least 2m in agriculture, as cheap imports of corn and other commodities flooded the newly liberalised market.

A champion at last

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

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

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

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

back to social change

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

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

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

harlots of the aid business - part IX

I was today reminded of a useful EC forum for those interested in capacity development – capacity4dev – which has a special section on the ongoing reform to technical assistance I have spoken about. Two years ago it published Guidelines for Delegation staff about this - which is useful for outsiders like myself.
Insofar as I understand the EC reform, it seems to boil down to one analytical statemenent and four injunctions (or am I being unfair??). The basic analysis is that the system is fine; it’s people (implementation) that are screwing up. The four injunctions are -
• avoid supply-driven solutions - make sure it's the beneficiary who defines the project
- „Get the project design right”
• „select the right consultants”
• „Allow them flexibility” (at least in the inception period)

The strategy (and the Court of Auditors’ 2007 Report) does actually answer a lot of the complaints which I’ve been making about the EC system of technical assistance. I should be happy - but find myself deeply uneasy. I am trying to explore why this is so. Basically, I think, because the document hardly mentions (let alone analyses) the commercial companies and the (freelance) consultants on which the entire system hinges. On the few occasions consultants are mentioned, it is with some embarrassment – as if we were harlots.
Not surprisingly therefore, the Backbone strategy - which is now the bible for the staff of the 81 European Delegations throughout the world - fails to explore its own role in ensuring that people like myself have the relevant information, knowledge, skills and…attitudes. I’ve been 20 years in this game – and only once has a company involved me in a sharing of experience. And once too a desk officer in a European Delegation asked me to attend on their behalf a conference about decentralisation. Their Guidelines say nothing to encourage such practices – nor to ensure that the methodology of the company bids add any value. At the moment these are prepared formulaistically by staff with little or no experience on the ground – and yet are considered part of the contractual obligations which bind new Team Leaders. If the design and individual experts are indeed critical – then why award so many points in the evaluation for a methodology which is just a paper exercise in which the consulants play little or no part?
And trying to measure the breadth of the professional experience and/or understanding which experts have about “good practice” is a futile exercise – except when the beneficiary expressly (but rarely) asks for that. There is no magic bullet – that’s why the Bliar slogan “what works” was so wrong – so technocratic – reflecting the illusion that, if only we look hard enough, we can find the technical solution to governance problems. “What works” is, first, someone’s judgement. If it’s a fair judgement, the success will reflect a particular context; a set of actors; and a particular script. Elsewhere that script may not translate; some of the actors (or props) may be missing. (Although sharing of experience does encourage and help us all to think more critically and creatively about what we are doing. And it is rather odd that the EC shows so little interest in the impact its institutional reform efforts have had……)
Skills and attitudes are the key - whether the consultant is sufficiently sensitive to the local context and networks to be able to identify opportunities and networks and has the skills to use them at the right time and manner. I have tried to give some examples in the latest draft of my paper for the next NISPAcee Conference.
Again, I don't see that as one of the criteria recommended in the Backbone strategy for selecting an expert - and how, in any event, could that be measured in a way to satisfy the procurement system???? One of the wisest comments I have seen on this whole issue is this - Bryn Tucknott comment on Robert Chambers' paper

I have long given up on the quest to find the one universal tool kit that will unite us all under a perfect methodology… as they will only ever be as good as the users that rely on them. What is sorely missing in the development machine is a solid grounding in ethics, empathy, integrity and humility.

training in despotic countries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

wooden language of reform

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

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

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

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