return to the future

My resolution to give a daily link to a couple of the books in my Google library has clearly fallen by the wayside. So let me try again. And first with a name from the past which one is hearing more and more these days - Karl Polanyi. He wrote in the 1940s about the rise of capitalism and its tension with democracy – big themes to which we are now returning. And here is an intellectual biography
The recent interest bears out the comment in a recent Compass (leftist British Think Tank) pamphlet that

Historians like Arthur Schlesinger and theorists like Albert Hirschman have recorded that every thirty years or so, society shifts - essentially, from the public to the private and back again. The grass, after a while, always feels greener on the other side. The late 1940s to the late 1970s was a period of the public, the late ‘70s to now, the private. Now the conditions are right for another turn, to a new common life and the security and freedom it affords, but only if we make it happen by tackling a market that is too free and a state that is too remote

I was so taken with this quotation from that I used it to introduce the table in which I tried to summarise the key political debates of each of the decades since the 1940s which is the last part of my Sceptic’s Glossary
Of course, reading such books is pretty useless unless we can in some sense exert some collective control over the madness which surrounds us. But our cynicism about politics makes this difficult which is why the second book is so important – Why we hate politics by Colin Hay.

As a bonus, these throughts from Stuart Weir on how power is exercised in UK.
I'm very tempted by this 1940s Vulchev painting - of Kavala and Thassos

worthwhile briefings

I mentioned yesterday a site which has tracked over the past decade the performance of commercial companies which have been given the opportunity to run public services both in Europe and globally. I’ve now had a chance to download and glance at the various briefing papers on its site about the costs to governments and consumers of allowing commercial companies to get involved with the management of services such as water and health – and it’s one large eye-opener. Privatisation has become a term to avoid – hence the proliferation of new terms such as PPPs. The various papers on the site give a blow-by-blow account of the breakdown of services; the government bailouts; the contractual complications – a never-ending list of disasters from around the world. I hadn’t realised that basically 2 giant companies dominate the water market. Nor that Czechia, Slovakia and Poland refused to take any more – and passed legislation recently to limit the role of the private sector in health services. And the Slovak Government has been hit with a 2 billion law-suit from one of the companies denied access to what they clearly regarded as rich pickings. The report of September 2010 on private water companies is a typical example of a great briefing.
And a good tough article from Stiglitz on the scale of greed in the USA The painting is one by the famous Ivan Christov (1900-87) of whom I know very little

Partnerships

Delegation is a great thing! Yesterday morning a cameo role at the start of one of the many workshops being held in Bulgaria by the project of which I am (nominal) Team Leader – a one-day one on Private Public Partherships (PPP). All I have to do is to turn up at the odd workshop and check all is going well – and, in the process, I learn a bit about the subject matter in hand. Take yesterday’s. In the 1970s and 1980s we blazed a trail in Glasgow on PPPs with various regeneration projects bringing a variety of public agencies together with community groups and the private sector. I remember speaking at places as far apart as Colorado and Maastricht about what was in the 1980s still an unusual structure and experience. But the term has changed its meaning since then – and, in EC hands, it seems to have become a neo-liberal tool to prepare the ground for the commodification of public services. This is, for the moment, a suspicion on my part – so I limited myself to a comment to the the two Bulgarian trainers and will now do some catch-up reading eg a critical review of a 2004 EC Green Paper on the subject from the
Public Services International Research Unitat Greenwich University which has been doing a good job over the last decade of tracking the privatisation bandwagon.
Another good public admin resource which I have come across is this wiki page created by a graduate student from which you can download quite a lot of useful articles – eg on the concept of „public value” which was flavour of the month a few years back when NPM was apparently going out of favour (emphasis on „apparently”) and even attracted a UK Cabinet paper on the subject.
Political scientist Gerry Stoker probably gives the best assessment
This time last year I was musing on departmental silos.

Pride and humility

The mornings are still surprisingly cold here in Sofia. But, by the time I was ready to go for some of the delicious bread in the Dutch shop, the sun was offering some warmth. The wind, however, was still strong as I took advantage of the cycle path which runs in parallel with the small stream which forms the thread of the city’s inner circle. As I came back, I noticed teenagers bagging the debris around the path and stream. “Is this voluntary or compulsory work” I asked one. “Voluntary” he answered positively. “It’s linked to a media campaign – but we’re doing it here in our local area rather than where the main campaign is focusing its efforts. I go to bed with a better feeling that I’ve done something positive”. I congratulated him. I couldn’t see this happening in Bucharest!

I’ve just uploaded a relatively coherent version of the paper I shall present to the Varna Conferebce in mid-May to my website(updated 28 April). It's now called Flesh and Blood - the EC's Backbone strtagey meets impervious power. (updated on 9 May)
I’m not the only person with these concerns about Technical Assistance. My friend David Coombes also wrote a powerful piece for the 2006 Conference to which I submitted my original critique.
I’ve been wrestling with the conclusion for which I am drawing on the text of a recent blog which suggested that those international consultants in institution-building who have been using British experience might well wish to consider whether in fact the rest of the world has much to gain from its particular version of New Public Management. It’s too much to expect any breast-beating or sackclothes from them - but a bit of humility would be appreciated. I’m now trying to make the link in the conclusion back to the quotation with which I start the 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

This time last year I was posting some useful stuff about the process of change – this post summarised the key roles which Malcolm Gladwell identified for change in his best-seller - The Tipping Point
The painting is one of a series available on The Guardian website by women artists active during the world wars whose work has been forgotten.

Cowboys, bodyshops and backbone

I’m on the home strait now for the paper I shall be presenting (insallah) to the Conference of the Network of Institutes of Schools of Public Administration in Central and East Europe (NISPACee) on the Black Sea coast here in Varna 19-22 May. It’s now in two parts – with the first part dealing with the EC’s recent attempt (The Backbone strategy) to make its Technical Assistance more effective. The second part explores the absence of any theoretical basis to its institution-building efforts in those countries with regimes which share the feature I have decided to call “impervious power”. In 2006 I had made a critique at the same Conference which was mainly concerned with the procedural aspects of how the EC found experts for its institution-building work in “transition” countries – but which ended by suggesting that neither the EC nor the experts really had much of a clue about the process of administrative reform in such contexts. This new paper is a much more solid version which takes account of what the EC itself has been doing in the intervening period to sharpen up its act – what it calls its Backbone strategy.
I find it significant that that 2008 strategy failed to give any analysis of the commercial companies and the (freelance) consultants on which the entire multi-billion euros EC system of Technical Assistance hinges. Companies (but not experts) are scrutinised by the EC before they are allowed to tender but only for the volume of their business – not for the quality of their work. The result is that many „cowboy” companies are in operation – who skilfully manipulate the rather simple evaluation system used for the competition for projects. There are two basic tricks. The first is to have a few excellent project writers at HQ – and to name as experts high-quality people who just happen to be ill when it comes to taking up their appointment! The second is to slip a few thousand euros into the hands of some locals.
And, as far as experts are concerned, the only thing that counts for companies is the extent to which the experience shown in the CV matches the particular job requirements. The quality of the work done by the experts in the past is irrelevant. During my 20 years in this game, a company has interviewed me just once - BMB Arcadis (now Mott MacDonald).
Working on this paper has made me realise that the continuity which capacity development requires cannot be provided by a procurement system which tries to carve knowledge and skills into commodifiable products and which allows in companies which are little more than "body-shops". Profit-oriented companies simply take the money and run. I can name the number of companies who have a serious interest in knowledge development and transfer on the fingers of one hand. And twinning isn’t the answer – nor the latest wheeze of „south-to-south” institutional links.
The Americans have an interesting model which has allowed a high-quality think-tank (The Urban Institute) to win a long-term contract within which it has the flexibility to negotiate adjustments from time to time.
The sketch is by Alexander Bozhinov whose house next door here in the heart of Sofia is still kept in his memory

Back in Sofia

Bucharest and Sofia are only 350 kilometres apart – but two European capitals could hardly be less alike. Nowhere in Romania could you find the street life of the neighbourhood of my rented flat in the heart of Sofia. We left Bucharest at 08.30 and reached the flat six hours later after a leisurely drive. It’s just around the corner from one of the galleries with old painting – InterNos - and we paid a visit while we waited for Blago to come with the keys. An elderly lady and a tousled artist were sharing a raki on armchairs with the owner. The flat is in the quiet old area (with narrow streets) between Vasil Levski Bvd and the circle road Evlogi Hristo Georgiev VI just before it hits the huge expanse of greenery on which the vast brutal Cultural Centre squats. We’ve spent many happy hours cycling these parks - which stretch from the University down to the Viktoria Gallery on Yuri Gagarin Street (ever had the sense that socialism once rules here?) on the east.
The flat is the bottom storey of an old house still occupied by the descendants of a dramatist in whose memory a plaque adorns the wall – and next door is a very gracious if crumbling classic house in which the cartoonist Alexander Bozhinov lived and belongs now to the Ministry of Culture who let it out for painting classes etc. Typically for Sofia, tiny shops (many hardly more than a hole in the wall!) are scattered in the neighbourhood which offer services such as dress makers and repairers (haberdashery is an old word which springs to mind), pedicure, pet food (yes some specialise in that!) and products such as coffee and cigarettes (real Bulgarian specialities!), painting and the suberb Bulgarian vegetables. Some of their owners are young – some are old – and often they have pulled a table and a couple of chairs out on the pavement and are smoking a cigarette with a friend. I see this as the essence of the Sofia I love – individuals determined to have their own existence – living a simple life at their own pace. A rarity these days! I almost added “candle-stick maker” to the list of services available in the neighbourhood as I actually went out to look for candles since we weren’t sure if the electricity would be reconnected before nightfall. It was. A sunny evening allowed us to enjoy a bottle of delicious Sliven Chardonnay in the small garden as we tried to entice the various neighbourhood cats to our garden. And then a brief walk across the small burn which acts as a moat around central Sofia looking for the old house which boasts a Restaurant (“The Wall” is I think its name) and encountering instead good food en plein air in a pub/restaurant called Cactus.
The sketch is a Tanev which wasa up for sale here recently

Thinking of posterity - a guide for the perplexed

OK I’ve done it! The promised new paper is now on the website – with the tentative title “Living in the present but thinking of posterity – another guide for the perplexed” Be warned - it quickly grew from the original 7 pages to 24 and is really more of an annotated bibliography! And this is just the first part - the analysis and synthesis have still to come!
And you’re now seeing my new Chokanov acquisition before I even pick it up – on Monday in Sofia all going well.

Impervious power

The good news when I went online during the night was that I had gained three more Bulgarian paintings – I’ve actually lost count of how many I have now but it must be more than 50 (scattered in 5 locations). This one claims to be 100 years old – an aquarelle by Kabakchiev (know nuttin' about him/her) – and its eastern interior decoration features (carved wooden ceilings, tiled stove and carpet) represent those I fell in love with more than a decade ago in the swathe of land which stretches from Transylvania to the Central Asia plains. I also added a Chokalov and Vasilev to those I already have. The Dobre Dobrev got away (see next week). I was too mean in the upper limit I gave the auctioneer who bid on my behalf –although I got two of them for the starting price. Given that I wasn’t physically present, three out of four old paintings for a total of 1,000 euros is a very good result.
Creativity cannot be controlled – so today I ignored the paper I had promised yesterday to update for the website (whose tentative title has now become “Living for Posterity” and focused, instead, on the Varna paper for the NISPAcee Conference whose final version has to be submitted within the week. It was time to print out what I had – and skim the physical pages in the sun at Bran as I waited for the car to be put into trim for its journey to Bulgaria. I’m able to see things more objectively as I turn the pages physically and scribble notes and arrows on them.
But, as I got home and sat at the PC to try to transfer some of the ideas on to screen, I continued to struggle with the precise nature of (and terminology for) the regimes of which, I argue in the paper, the Technical Assistance industry has neither understanding nor prescriptions. Feedback suggested that my term "Kleptocracy” was too general and emotional. “Autocracy” was also too much of a cliché. “Sultanistic” had been suggested by Linz and Stepan in their definitive overview of transitions in 1995 as one of the systems into which totalitarian regimes could transmogrify - but had never caught on as a term. “Neo-feudalism” popped up recently to describe the current Russian system – and “proliferating dynasties” was a striking phrase in a book edited by Richard Youngs to which I recently referred. Suddenly I found myself typing the phrase “impervious power” – and felt that this was a great phrase which captured the essence of all of these regimes. Impervious to the penetration of any idea or person from the hoi poloi. The imperviousness of power leads to arrogance, mistakes on a gigantic scale and systemic corruption. How does one change such systems? Can it happen incrementally Where are there examples of „impervious power” morphing into more open systems? Germany and Japan in the aftermath of war – and Greece, Portugal and Spain in the 1970s under the attraction of EU accession. But what happens when neither are present???
The great Perry Anderson continues to capture the essence of countries – his latest essay on….Brazil
And, somehow, I alighted on what must be simply the best Central European Blog (sorry Sarah!)– this one on everyday political events in Hungary as they unfold. She is a Hungarian who let the country in 1956; achieved academic distinction in America; and is probably now retired. I particularly appreciated her description of the contributions from the floor at a recent meeting in Mioskolc, the town in North-East Hungary where I lived for 2 years in the mid 1990s. Quite frightening picture she portrays!
A final comment – the 2001 paper I uploaded yesterday to the website had tried to identify the organisations I then admired. Since then, however, (as regular readers of the blog will have noticed) it is individuals who impress me – not organisations (my anarchistic streak perhaps?) It was interesting that my recent correspondent asked me about the organisations I admired. Last night it was the late lamented Tony Judt whose words reverbated in my ears as I tried to get back to sleep.