Two model blogposts

Two model blogposts – the first giving a superb example of the total undermining of the once great reputation of the British media. If this is what is happening in Great Britain, then imagine what the situation is elsewhere!
The second great post is on current aspects of Hungarian education. Amidst all the reengineering of administrative systems, we let the "political class" blunder around without any attempt at preparation. It's like the old Coronatation ritual - they are annointed with God's (The People's) blessing and so feel permitted to do what they want.
If only what we read could always have this depth!!
And, finally, an interesting angle on current Chinese political developments.
Moutafov is one of my favourites

The state of the state - part II

I've been silent the last couple of days simply because I have been surfing on the subject of state-building which I realised I had not mentioned in my paper on how the European expert system is supporting the development of institutional capacity in transition countries. I was started on the trail by an interesting article by the much-maligned Francis Fukuyama which caught my attention because it used the phrase "intellectual silos" - a hobby-horse of mine as my regular readers will know. I haven't read his 2004 book on "state building" but was able to read some of the interesting and critical articles he has produced on various aspects of governance assistance - and have suitably referenced them in my Varna paper, a final version of which I will shortly put on my website. But the matrix he has developed (with "scope"and "strength" as the 2 axes)is a useful framework for thinking. And complements Colin Talbot's blog which, serendipidously, appeared at the same time.

We live not in one state, but five. Our modern British state has evolved over time, adding new layers of activity. As each layer is added, the old ones are retained but become part of a larger whole. In this case, the five layers are: the security state; the judicial state; the fiscal state; the economic state; and, finally, the welfare state. Let’s use these five to compare the coalition government with its predecessors.
The security state encompasses the basic organs that allow the government to exercise a monopoly of force at home and abroad, and maintain the peace – the armed forces, intelligence services, police, and so forth. The security state prospered under both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, if for very different reasons. For Thatcher it was principally ‘the enemy within’ that had to be fought; for Blair it was terror and crime. Both continued to expand the security state and extend its powers, and did relatively little to reform them. Neither took much notice of civil libertarian objections.
The coalition, in contrast, has set about cutting back the security state, radically reducing its funding and launching widespread reforms to the armed forces, police and prisons. This is the opposite of what Thatcher did as she squared up to the unions, especially the miners. It is either a very brave, or very stupid, approach to weaken the security state just when a government might need it most.
The picture on the judicial state is rather more mixed. Thatcher tried to weaken it in most areas but strengthened it in others (trade union laws). Blair somewhat strengthened it, especially through the Human Rights Act and the creation of the Supreme Court. The coalition seems bent on rolling back some of these reforms.
We all know what is happening to the fiscal state. For the first time a government is seriously trying to do what Mrs T never really tried and Mr B never even attempted – a permanent rolling back of fiscal expenditure. For an excellent picture on this see here.
The economic state, meanwhile, was significantly rolled back by Thatcher, and only very partially reinvented under Labour, through regulatory extension, until the financial crisis of 2008. Suddenly the economic role of the state moved centre stage again, in a very big way, to save the banks and re-stabilise the economy. But even flagship projects such as high-speed rail cannot hide the fact that the coalition is trying to erode the economic state again, through re-privatising the banks, avoiding major bank re-regulation, scaling back supply-side labour market interventions, abolishing regional development agencies and the like. They also want to carry out the biggest privatisation of all – turning the NHS into a provider marketplace.

And, finally, the welfare state. Thatcher tried to curtail it, but largely failed. New Labour expanded it – though not by as much as is often supposed. The coalition is clearly trying to roll back what it sees as the dependency state. It is doing this by marketising the NHS, reducing benefits, ‘freeing’ schools, and cutting welfare services across the board. Moreover, it sees these cuts as permanent. It is clear that the aim is to reduce taxes before a 2015 election in such a way that, like the privatisations under Thatcher, the cuts become politically impossible to reverse.
The coalition – or at least David Cameron – offers the alternative of the Big Society. But this is merely a post-modern version of Victorian do-gooding – charity and philanthropy dressed up in ‘crowd-sourced’ clothing.
So across the board this is a government seemingly intent on rolling back the frontiers of the state in virtually every area – a far more ambitious agenda than even the fabled Thatcher ever attempted I'm not sure about the distinction between the fiscal and economic states - but, given what the UK Coalition Government seems to be attempting in the way of a shrinking of the state (and how the UK always seems to be blazing fashionable governance trails), this is clearly a space worth watching!

The town of Sliven on the Thracian plain has produced (and inspired) quite a few good painters (home town of Dobre Dobrev). This is a painting of the area by one of the other artists I admire - Vladimir Manski.

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making sense of what we seem to be saying

I’ve reached the point with my Conference paper of being able to read it as a critical outsider – interjecting, every now and then – a pointed „So??”. And, at this point, the old advice about the three-part structure of effective presentations becomes very helpful – „tell them what you’re going to say; say it; and then summarise what you’ve said.” It’s the last which is particularly useful. You read your paper through – and then try to summarise what it seems to be saying. Sometimes the results can be surprising! And, after yesterday’s post about Impact Assessment (part of the consultant’s toolkit) and a skypechat, I realised that I had left the discussion about the toolkit up in the air. If you looked at any of the IA papers I linked to yesterday, you will have realised how difficult member states such as the UK have found it (15 years and still not working) – let alone the European Commission itself. Why, then, is is something which the Commission has been pushing hard on new member states and accession countries? Perhaps simply that those pushing it (in the Development arm of the EC) don’t have the experience to understand that few countries have actually got it to work for them? Or is it a case of „cast-offs” being sold on – to the greater benefit of consultancy companies? The present version of my summary therefore reads as follows -

My argument so far has been that Technical Assistance based on project management and competitive tendering is fatally flawed – assuming (as it does) that “expert services” procured randomly by competitive company bidding can in a short period develop the sort of trust, networking and knowledge on which lasting change depends. I have also raised the question of why we seem to expect tools which we have not found easy to implement to work in more difficult circumstances. At this point I want to suggest that part of the problem is the hierarchical nature of the assumptions which underpin the whole TA system. The very language of Technical Assistance assumes certainty of knowledge (inputs-outputs) and relationships of power – of superiority (“experts”) and inferiority (“beneficiaries”). What happens when we start from different assumptions? For example that-
• Technical Assistance built on projects (and the project management philosophy which enshrines that) may be OK for constructing buildings but is not appropriate for assisting in the development of public institutions
• Institutions grow – and noone really understands that process
• Administrative reform has little basis in scientific evidence . The discipline of public administration from which it springs is promiscuous in its multi-disciplinary borrowing
• When we try to make public institutions work better for their citizens in transition countries, we are all working in unknown territory. There are no experts.

Once one accepts the world of uncertainty in which we are working, it is not enough to talk about more flexibility in the first few months to adjust project details. This is just the old machine metaphor at work again – one last twist of the spanner and hey presto, it’s working!

At this stage in the paper I introduce Robert Chambers’ great table which shows different roles and relationships for development work – and the move to a more humble and collegial working. But one has to ask what stops this - and here I am brought back to my experience in 1992 with the EC Energy network which I realised was simply a front to allow Western companies to caapture the new Eastern European market. The late lamented Peter Gowan had a lot to say about this - and this, I think, is where the conclusion of my paper should be heading. A proper critique of TA is that it is seeming to help transition countries while in reality ensuring that their state system will never agaion have any capacity to challenge the prevailing European ideology.
The painter is the great mid 20th century mountain painter Cyril Mateev. All miountain associations should buy his stuff - available generally for about 500 euros

Good Friday's new norms

My father would have been initially horrified (if not altogether surprised) that this morning – Good Friday – found me reading papers about, first, Impact Assessment (IA) and, then, Project Management (PM)!! But in many ways, it is appropriate. After all, these are some of the central elements of the new secular religion which we have learned to worship in the last 4-5 decades (I’m not joking). But, in redemption, let me pray that –
• I was last night cursing Google for the way it feeds the frenzy of the contemporary and dishonours the nobility and wisdom of so many of our immediate predecesors (I could trace no reference to my father or any of the great teachers I had – save one memorable English teacher (Mabel Irving) who died recently and was very nicely remembered.
• I have been tuned (as usual) to BBC 3 Classic Music – in particular Through the Night whose choice today has very much respected the date and theme of death and resurrection.
• The readings of IA and PM have been critical (as distinct from adulatory) ones.

Let me explain. I first began to hear of this powerful medicine called Impact Assessment about ten years ago and, frankly, found it very difficult to understand (which is entirely appropriate for a wonder ointment). My background is political science and policy analysis (I had one of the first postGraduate Degree courses in the latter subject in the early 1980s). At one level, therefore, IA seemed to me to be common sense – enjoining us to think about the various ways which proposed legislation would impact on social groups and the costs (if not counterproductive consequences) it would bring. But, of course, it came from a specific political agenda – which was hostile to government intervention. And it did require us all to pay particular attention to the costs which Regulations would have on business – particularly the Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) which have been the West’s holy grail of the past few decades. Fine – and so were the „ex-ante impact assessments” which also became all the rage a decade or so ago in the European Commission. I met a Bulgarian Professor recently who was apparently a specialist in this (as she had been of Stalinist planning a couple of decades ago). Fine. I decided therefore to read the 2006 book which I had found recently on the internet about the subject - Andrea Renda’s Impact assessment in the EU - the state of the art and the art of the state. I found this a bit, well…Stalinist …but her more recent slides for the OECD seemed a bit more critical and provocative ; and also here . And this academic paper threw even more light on the matter.

I alighted today on project management because of a last bit of cleaning up to the Varna paper – and had an incomplete reference to a paper by Roger Lovell on civil service reform which used the dimensions of “agreement to change” and “trust” to distinguish the very different roles in the change process of allies, adversaries, bedfellows, opponents and fence sitters.
Project Management is what I did not have enough of in the 1970s and 1980s - and have had a surfeit of since! I was then led to some good papers here, here and here.

Der Spiegel has a disturbing picture of what Europe means for some Bulgarians and this article remiinds us of how life is lived elsewhere.
Glory indeed to God!
The painting (Maglitz Monastery) is by one of the most famous Bulgarian "Secessionists"(as the Nouveau Art is called here) - Milev. Maglitz has great wine!!

Writing

Writing seems to be even more a tool of power than it was in 1947 when George Orwell wrote his Politics and the English Language. University specialisms have multiplied; professions have developed and expanded their empires; management has developed its own language. Obfuscation in the pursuit of an unchallenged life is the name of the game.

I’ve spent a significant part of my life writing papers – but only recently recognised this. This blog tries to explore the reasons why I have spent so much time struggling in front of a keyboard. I started by writing quasi-academic papers simply because I was looking for ways to improve the way local government in my country worked.
I had become a local councillor and was horrified at the way the municipality (staff and councillors) treated the (low-income) citizens who had elected me. Instead of responding positively to their efforts at self-help, they ridiculed and undermined them. And this seemed to be systemic – something to do with the assumptions which came with the bureaucratic structures we used.

 This was the early 1970s and these structures were under fire (from writers as varied as Bennis, Fergusson, Toffler and most memorably by Donald Schon whose 1970 Reith lectures (published as Beyond the Stable State) had me riveted in front of my father’s radio. I was summarising the more interesting books and papers – trying to apply their open, participative processes to my situation – and describing what happened in Occasional Papers in a Local Government Unit I established. No “peer review” – so perhaps I fell into some bad habits! I was writing for myself – trying to make some sort of sense of the confusion I felt. On the other hand, it gave me the freedom to develop my own “voice” – and adjust my style in the light of direct feedback from readers as distinct from academic custodians of good writing norms!

At the time I was a lecturer – but being a politician forced me to simplify my language to make myself understood by colleagues and the electorate! That was a great training! I had to “unlearn” a lot of big words and complicated phrases which university life had given me; and to learn to call a spade a spade!

Then I wrote a short book to try to explain in simple terms why some major changes being experienced by local government were necessary and also trying to demystify the way the system worked. That made me realise how few books were in fact written for this purpose! Most books are written to make a profit or an academic reputation. The first requires you to take a few simple and generally well-known ideas but parcel them in a new way – the second to choose a very tiny area of experience and write about it in a very complicated way.

After that experience, I realised how true is the saying that “If you want to understand a subject, write a book about it”!! Failing that, at least an article – it’s amazing how what was a clear understanding in your mind is mercilessly exposed as deficient when you put it on paper! Gaps in your knowledge are exposed – and you begin to have the specific questions which then make sure you get the most out of your reading.

My first real publications were chapters in other people’s books and national journals – which described the experiences in community development and more open policy-making processes some of us had introduced into Europe’s largest municipality. I was “sunk”, however, when one journal then asked me to write one page every 4 weeks. I just couldn’t compress my thoughts that way. Although I was reading a lot, I couldn’t write in abstract terms – only about my own experiences, trying to relate them to the more general ideas.

Since I became a consultant in Central Europe and Central Asia and have written less passionately and more analytically for very targeted (and narrow) audiences. Basically what I have been trying to do in the last 10 years is to summarise our experiences in Europe of changing systems of government (eg decentralisation) and indicate what it might mean for the countries in which I was working. It has always been the HOW – rather the WHAT – of change which has fascinated me. One of the things which has disturbed me in the last decade or so is the way complex processes have been reduced to simplistic formulae in subjects such as the management of change and government accountability – their ethical dimension being sucked out in the process. British Governments have become impatient and have imposed one (centralised) fashion after another – in the process making us cynical about both change and the specific nostrum of the moment.

At one stage I wrote a short paper about the writing process – and presented it to some students. I was intrigued to learn that many of the ideas reflected a paper I had never heard of written by C Wright Mills - On Intellectual Craftsmanship

The painting is an Ivanov - I think Savi

In praise of mugwumps

I think I stumbled on an important general insight yesterday when I said that most of my written work is done as a non-specialist, an outsider, trying in my writing to tease out some problems I felt about the particular conventional wisdom I was facing in my work.
Heroes generally have heroic aspects – strength, valour. But my two heroes are innocents – Voltaire’s Candide who is increasingly puzzled by the contradiction between the optimistic philosophy of his tutore Dr Pangloss and the viciousness of life he experiences. And the little boy in the Hans Christian Andersen tale who dared to say that the Emperor had no clothes.
And they are my heroes, I have to recognise, because I have always felt a bit puzzled by the certainties of others. Psychologists would doubtless trace this back to my growing up on the class border – living in a mansion (belonging to the Church) in the West End but going to a state school in the East End. Playing the games (rugby, rowing and cricket) of the richer kids – but becoming a young socialist and, later, Labour councillor. And, as a politician, I chose to spend my time in the curious interstices of community groups and street bureaucrats at one level and, as a strategist, with senior bureaucrats at another level. Not for me the world of Party Conferences and ideologues!
By spending time with such different groups (and even trying to bring them together), I realised how deficient our various perceptions were.
And, for 17 years, I tried to reconcile academic work with politics – impossible at the end – but, while in academia, I was ploughing the unfashionable furrow of inter-disciplinary activity (and also trying to bring academics and practitioners together).
In short I have been a full-blown mug-wump (someone on a fence with his mug on one side and wump on other!). Not generally a comfortable position! But I liked the metaphor of a bridge – particularly the Central European joke that, in peacetime, horses shit on them and, in wartime, they are blown up!

From my personal experiences, I developed a theory about politicians and their behaviour by pointing out that they are pulled in four different directions – by their party (or funders in the US case); by their voters (if the system has geographical constituencies); by the government officials who give them the info and advice; and by their own colleagues with whom they spend so much time. Few politicians can put up with the problems of trying to reconcile the very different messages they receive from these 4 worlds and choose to become servants of one of them – hackmen, populists, bureaucrats and ?? respectively.
But I felt that the effective politician is the one who remains open to all the signals – and tries to craft a synthesis.
And I suppose I’ve continued this perspective in my new role of consultant in the last 20 years – both in how I interpret my role and in how I approach the various papers I have written on such various subjects as decentralisation; civil service reform; implementation of the European acquis; training; or capacity development.

Most people write (however unconsciously) as members of a particular group – be it organisational, political or professional. This affects both the language they use – and their perspectives. I have spent time with most groups but don’t belong to any (I recognised in my 2006 paper that it was not unfair to use the word „mercenary” of us) – and can therefore better appreciate both the strengths and weaknesses of the specialists.

At last the temperature shows some sign of getting above 6/7 – here in Sofia only 200 kilometres above the Aegean! What is this? God’s vengeance on Greek debt??

Today's painting is by Russi Ganchev whose work is rather mixed. Occasionally a bit pedestrian,an exhibition I saw in 2008 showed some like the above. I know nothing about him except that he was a landscape painter who was born in 1895 and died in 1965

Capacity development

In fact I didn’t think much of the OECD Guidelines paper on Fragile states I mentioned yesterday. It seems a good example of technocracy – full of jargon and giving little sense of the moral and existential issues involved in this work. I was more stimulated by a paper I was sent last week from the Learning Network on Capacity development entitled Training and Beyond; seeking better practices for capacity development by Jenny Pearson. Her paper echoes many of the points in the definitive paper I wrote on training in late 2008 after my three years of experiences of leading training projects in Kyrygzstan and Bulgaria. It was the former work which introduced me to the concept of capacity development.
It’s one of the pleasures - indeed privileges - of my work that it has given me the chance to learn about subjects about which I know so little. Academics, for example, think that training is a dawdle – so they generally make bad trainers. At least I knew I wasn’t a trainer – I find it difficult to shake off the habit of pontification (I call it brainstorming!) which both academia and politics developed in me. So I chose to look at what my training specialists were saying (and sometimes doing); at what the books said; reflected; encouraged experimentation; had it discussed; changed direction; reflected; wrote it all up; and, if I was lucky, was able to build on whatever insights emerged in my next project.

And I was lucky after I wrote this paper on the development of municipal capacity in Kyrgyzstan to be able to build on the insights for my next project in Bulgaria (where I learned the literature of implementation of the European Acquis - which uses the giveaway word "compliance"!)
Capacity development was in fact the focus of the critical 2007 European Court of Auditors’report on EC Technical Assistance – and I’ve made the comment that the EC response (its Backbone strategy) indicated they had not really grasped the importance of this concept.

I will be taking a final copy of my Varna paper to the printers here in a few days – so that I can distribute the paper to the NISPAcee conference participants. And there is one issue I have not yet properly resolved in my thinking. Everyone seems to agree that there are too many cowboy companies getting business from the EC’s multi-billion euros Technical Assistance budget. Most companies allowed to tender have a „take the money and run” attitude. I can name the number of companies who have a serious interest in knowledge development and transfer on the fingers of one hand. The Americans have an interesting model which has allowed a high-quality think-tank (The Urban Institute) to win long-term contracts in several countries to assist municipal development. This approach has several advantages
• You are buying proven quality
• The contractor’s basic asset is their reputation – fear of losing it acts as powerful incentive to ensure it recruits and offers good experts (unlike the present system)
• the contract gives the flexibility to negotiate adjustments from time to time.

This perhaps gives us some clues about a possible alternative to the present procurement system the EC is currently using - which arguably gives us the worst of all worlds.

Today's Bulgarian painter is one of my favourties Dobre Dobrev (1898-1973). Born in Sliven and graduated 1925 from Prague Fine Arts Academy. Until 1938 he had lived and worked in Republic of Czech. Afterwards he came back to Bulgaria and to 1954 he lived in Sliven (then highly industrial) and afterwards in Sofia. He created paintings revealing the life in villages. He painted landscapes, daily scenes, figurative compositions. His preferred topic are the markets in his native town of Sliven

The painting passion

By what process did I become a passionate collector of painting – let alone of Bulgarian realist painting of the mid 20th century? And what drives me now to work to try to craft a small book on the subject – let alone seek out the specific genres which I now feel I lack? I find I have sufficient landscapes (seascapes also grow apace) – but lack people and scenes of normal human activity. I would like some of the amazing heads pencilled by Boiadjiev (Nikola) and Uzonov. As well as populated landscapes. Also some signs of industrial and commercial activity; and some unusual still lives (not flowers but Rembrandt meat!) And more aquarelles. But why what process do these signals come to me? It’s a totally mysterious process.
I had no paintings in my home in Scotland – although I do remember vividly the large print which adorned the dining room/study of my father’s manse. It was of a leafy, rocky shore at Roseneath where my father was born – with a glimpse of the River Clyde beyond. I lived in Berlin for a couple of months in 1964 and was stunned by what I saw in the galleries there. Georg Grosz and Kathe Kollwitz made a big impact – and later the less well-known people such as Wilhelm Lehmbruch whose sculptures I stumbled on by accident in what turned out to be his home town. On the various trips I made for European meetings in the 1980s, I started the habit of visiting the art galleries – the Belgian realists of the end of the 19th Century on display in the main Brussels Gallery charmed me. After my (limited) sense of British artists, the European paintings I encountered during that period showed me something very different – reflecting I now realise as much the selection process of british art custodians as the different British experience. Too many British custodians of art in my time were high-class people whose style was discouraging to the ordinary person. It was ironic but typical that I first encountered sketches of British miners of the 1930s not in Britain – but in a German town which was honouring the work of an 80 year old German artist Tina von Schullenberg who had managed to inveigle her way down Nottingham mines in the 1930s and produce great stuff. She was gracious enough to send me some of the sketches later. Of course, I was familiar with (and fond of) the Lowry stick men of Manchester mills of the 1940s; with Ralph Steadman’s contemporary satire and had a copy of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing – but nothing had prepared me for the originality of the European realist works of the early 20th century. So I suppose that’s when I first opened up to art.
But it was only when I started my nomadic life in the 1990s that I started to acquire some paintings – initially some very cheap oils in Romania. Surprisingly for me, two still lives were my first (and last such) acquisitions – bought I suppose for their colour and composition.
But still my passion lay dormant. For a few years (1999-2005) oriental carpets became my passion - as my assignments in Central Asia gave me access to the glory of the silk and other carpets of not only Afghanistan but Turkmenistan. So much labour going into this work.
It was a visit to the Phillipopolis Gallery in Plovdiv in May 2008 which really activated my painting passion. This is a private gallery housed in a magnificent old Bulgarian house in the old heart of the town which was rescued and brought back to its glory by the new owners. Now you can view their collection; contemplate possible purchases; eat in a wonderful restaurant in the basement; or have a quiet coffee on the terrace which overlooks the town. See for yourself here. The atmosphere and reception was so gtreat that, without knowing anything at that stage about Bulgarian painting, I bought a small Zhekov and a large Mechkuevska and two contemporaries. So, be warned!

Today’s painting is by Vladimir Dmitrov (The Master) 1882-1960. Born near Kyustendil which is half way between Sofia and the Serbian border, he started his career as a clerk. He is considered one of the most talented 20th century Bulgarian painters and probably the most remarkable stylist in Bulgarian painting in the post-Russo-Turkish War era. His portraits and compositions have expressive color, idealistic quality of the image and high symbolic strength. Many consider his artwork a fauvist type rather than an expressionalism set. Vladimir Dimitrov Art Gallery of Kyustendil has more than 700 of his oil paintings.
The OECD has just published a small book I need to read before the Varna Conference. It’s on the issue of „fragile states”. As the blurb says

Recent events in the Middle East and North Africa – where the legitimacy of the reigning power-holders has been seriously questioned by popular protest – bring home the threats to global stability posed by the world’s 30 to 40 fragile states. State fragility threatens the livelihoods of one in six people on the planet. It poses particular challenges for donors, who have witnessed the hopelessness of trying to graft Western institutional responses onto fragile contexts.
Viable solutions need to take into account the particular distribution and dynamics of local power; they need to recognize the trade-offs between development objectives, the fine grain of social expectations and the evolution of regional dynamics.

Finally a great new voice for me - Jasmin Levi