How do we know what we think?

I notice that I have recently started to use the phrase „corporate interests” – as in "politics in deep thrawl to corporate interests”. I generally don’t like politically-loaded words since, as Orwell memorably expressed it, they so quickly lead to the death of thinking and the tyranny of words and slogans. It also means that we alienate others and end up talking only to those who agree with us. So why have I started to use the phrase – and what exactly do I mean by it?
It started, I suppose, when I first realised the extent to which both the media and political parties have been penetrated by multi-national business money and its perspectives.
It was obvious from the beginning that New Labour policies were shaped to keep the party safe from the attacks of the Rupert Murdoch media empire – but the infamous Bernie Ecclestone scandal at the very start of New Labour rule in 1997/8 was a shock to many (demonstrating so vividly how business people could purchase policy and access to legislative power – on the American model). But I suppose I thought this was just a bit of anglo-saxon distinctiveness.
As, however, other governments followed the path of neo-liberalism - and money and greed became more respectable, scandal after scandal followed (eg Enron). The global financial meltdown opened everyone’ s eyes – not only to the immorality of the big players but their utter shamelessness. And the growing centralisation of the media – and its unreliability – has also hit me hard recently. When I developed my type of gentle socialism (under the influence of Tony Crosland’s writings of the late 1950s and 1960s) we really did have a "mixed economy”. Power was reasonably balanced then in the UK (and the rest of Western Europe) between the various forces of labour and capital – and capital was not so monolithic. The word "„corporate” is another word for multinational (or big) business – and my use of the phrase "corporate interests” was shorthand for my disgust for the extent to which such corporate power is now, literally, out of control.
And its grip of the media means that the onus is on those of us object to the imbalance to demonstrate how little competition actually exists now in huge swaithes of the "market” at whose alter we are all supposed to worship. I’ve mentioned already on the blog a couple of recent publications which have exposed the extent of big business influence on the EU - Bursting the Bubble (Alter EU 2010); and Backstage Europe; comitology, accountability and democracy (2010) by Gijs Jan Brandsma.
Today I came across a summary of an academic treatment of the subject – Quiet Politics and Business Power – corporate power in Europe and Japan.
This is on Daniel Little’s excellent blog – and the article led me on to a previous post of his which is very important in answering the basic question of „how we actually know that things work the way in society that we think?”

The Guardian has an interesting piece about a new European left initiative. But I'm not holding my breath!

And, at last, we have one of the female Bulgarian painters represented! This is one of my favourites - Alexandra Mechkuevska who painted mainly in the 1930s and 1940s(I have two of hers). Not one of her best - but too few of the paintings I show have figures!

are we any better than the Chinese one party state?

This year marks the centenary of the publication by Robert Michels of his great book Political Parties - which set out "the iron law of oligarchy" ie that all forms of organisation, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop into oligarchies (ie rule of the few). The reasons behind the oligarchization process are: the indispensability of leadership; natural self-interest and survival instincts (it’s a good life); and the passivity of the led individuals, more often than not taking the form of actual gratitude towards the leaders. These days we would add the media need for a hierarchical figure to focus on. I haven’t seen any recognition of the centenary yet. But I mentioned in my last post a paper written by a Frans Becker and Rene Cuperus a Dutch political scientist in 2004 - Party Paradox - which is the best analysis of the failings of the modern European political parties (and also the possible reasons for the various deficiencies; and possible ways for dealing with the crisis) which I’ve ever read. It might, with a bit of updating and some more international examples, make a suitable new version of the Michels classic – one hundred years on.
There have been innumerable articles and books bemoaning the state of democracy – but few to my knowledge which have identified the role of the political party in creating this parlous state. I had a long post in November bemoaning this lack of analysis.
So it’s great at last to find a good, solid paper – which I can recommend to others. Here are some excerpts -

Social-democratic politicians – even the local ones – come from a limited circle. Most are well-educated and are professionals in the collective sector. They closely resemble their counterparts in other parties as far as their education is concerned but differ from them in terms of their professional backgrounds.25 They are often well-suited for civil service and the policy-based, bureaucratically-oriented decisionmaking process and are at ease in the small inner circle of politics. The sociologist Van Doorn has described the contrast between the old and new politicians as follows. The old political elites were selected “because they had social standing, and they derived their standing from their leadership of certain social groups and core institutions: employers’ federations and employee organizations, leagues of farmers and small businessmen, dailies, broadcasting associations, and universities. In the 1960s these double offices became suspect and gradually disappeared. The “regents” were replaced by political professionals, who often had more ambition than experience. They became significant thanks to their election. A self-perpetuating cycle began: the inflow of professional politicians eroded the standing of being a member of parliament, and this diminished standing compromised the quality of the MP’s. They were selected from the crowd and lacked any competence beyond that of a low-prestige board. They almost exclusively represented their party and consequently became isolated from a society that is rapidly becoming disaffected with party politics.” Admittedly, some exceptions occur, and the good ones among them deserve their due.

Parties and politicians have come to focus increasingly on policy making. Politicians are like mechanics, tinkering at the engine of society by means of policy, without ever getting away from under the hood, as Anton Hemerijck put it at a conference of the Institute for Public Policy Research in London in 2000. Parties, having lost their social footing, do not appear to have replaced it with new alliances with civil society organizations.33 The isolation of the political parties is the predominant theme in the analysis of the Dutch Labour Party’s defeat in the 2002 elections. In the successful election campaign in 2003, Wouter Bos overcame this isolation and restored the electoral position of the Dutch Labour Party. Both a drastic change of the party culture and more structural ties with social organizations have been suggested as remedies to achieve sustained reinforcement of the party’s position.

The paper finished by suggesting that

three strategies are available to these parties in their quest to retain or reclaim their role in democracy. First, to focus far more on their procedural functions. As political parties become less adept at their representative function, they will need to take on a new role as keepers of transparent and democratic public administration, where access to political and administrative decision-making remains open; private and public interests are clearly distinct, the foundations of the constitutional state are taken into account, and diversity and freedom of expression and information provision are guaranteed. Entrepreneur-politician Berlusconi’s skill in using politics and state to further his interest demonstrates that his party fails as the countervailing power required for democracy

The other two strategies were:

(a) a shift toward more direct democracy; and (b) party innovation with a capital P, which means improving professional quality and fostering a more open party style. In the case of the Netherlands a reallocation of the party landscape into a loose two-party system would be desirable

In effect citizens are no longer presented with real options by political parties at the national levels – neither in the USA nor Europe where parties have, to one degree or another, succumbed to what some people call the pressures of globalisation and others call „corporate interests”. What it boils down to is a quasi one-party State. In China (from which I recently returned), the Party has recognised that the recruitment of elected politicians has to be strictly conducted – with party members receiving strict training as well as their elected cadres. Of course any electoral system has to give scope for (if not encourage) mavericks (populists) to keep the representative part of the system operating. If necessary the Party makes the suitable policy adjustment to keep the public happy.
But I would dare to suggest that the role of political parties at a local government might be reduced – and I say this as someone who for 25 years operated as the Secretary of ruling Labour groups at both municipal and Regional levels. Frankly I saw too much of my colleagues representing either party interests or the interests of professional departments (like Education and Police) – and not enough of their representing public concerns. And local elections contests when parties are dominant means that there is no serious debate – and that voters vote on national political grounds. This is probably one of the strongest arguments for the principle of elected mayors to which the Establishment seems at last to have come round to in England (since it brings in the issue of personality) – but I don’t see the argument for it being conducted in these terms. And elected mayors are not enough – a system needs to exist which allows the ordinary citizen to believe that it is possible for her that (s)he could if she wished have a reasonable chance of getting on to the council and being listened to.

populism

There is an interesting post today on Social Europe about the loss of legitimacy of the established political parties in Europe – and the growth of populist sentiment. It’s by a Dutch political scientist who has spent the past decade looking at the issue and has a nice short explanation of the phenomenon under the heading 10 Definitions of The Populist Crisis in Western Politics:

1. Populism is the substitute for the eroded Left/Right divide in politics. It replaces it through the populist cleavage of ‘the establishment’ versus ‘the people’. They are perceived as false unities and indeed pose a potential threat to the pluralist and constitutional dimensions of democracy.
2. Populism is a revolt against (the narrative of) globalisation.
3. Populism is a revolt against what the Germans call the Second Modernity, or late modernity: that is the modernity of individualisation, de-traditionalisation, cosmopolitanism, neoliberal capitalism and the global network society.
4. Populism is a revolt against expert-driven, technocratic policy-making.
5. Populism is the revolt of the working class and the squeezed lower middle class against the dominance of academic professionals in society and public discourse.
6. Populism is the revenge of the working class after the neoliberal betrayal (permanent welfare state austerity reforms) of socialist and social-democratic parties.
7. Populism is a dangerous, xenophobic revolt against ill-managed mass migration which negatively affected the lower end of society much more so than the upper end.
8. Populism is a revolt against a world that is changing too rapidly and where traditions, identities, and securities are no longer respected.
9. Where socialism and Christianity no longer act as moral and cultural restraints or breaks to the disrupting process of globalisation, populism has filled the vacuum: populism is a romantic, irrational, emotional revolt against the inhuman philosophy of efficiency in both the market and the state.
10. Populism is a revolt against the powerlessness of the political class who have seemingly lost all grip after handing control over to the anonymous forces of globalisation, the financial markets, and the logics of EU technocracy.

 Cuperus was a new name for me – but he writes coherent stuff eg in 2004 on the situation facing the Dutch parties and a particularly intersting 2006 paper on the situation at the European level And one of the early comments rightly suggested the anglo-saxon world (to which The Netherlands apparently belongs) should be set apart from that part of Europe (particuarly Germany) which has managed to resist the blandishments of neo-liberalism and retains public values. I mentioned not so long ago that there was an intersting debate about 15 years ago about different models of capitalism – and I find it odd that this has not come back into the debate. Hopefully blogs like Cuperus’ will help bring this back into the mainstream discussion.

An example of progress in Sofia. Three years ago I used to have great relaxation at the nearby Sparta sports centre where – for 45 euros – I was allowed 12 visits to a VIP part which gave me access to swimming, sauna, very civilised changing rooms and towels. Today I learned there has been a change of ownership and, for the same price, I get the same number of visits to the pool only (no sauna now - that's an additional 30 euros; vastly inferior changing facilities (you have to take off and put on shoes in the public waiting area); and bring your own towel. That’s abaout a 75% increase in price. The next step will clearly be to reduce the number of visits to 10, then 8. I have to find out the nature of the change of ownership - is this an example of cowboy privatisation?

I acquired a batch of (unframed) old paintings yesterday without really intending to! And 4 of them are figurative - all very distinctive in their way. One socialist realist of farmers at a combine harvester greeting a couple of colleagues carrying rifle and a soldier taking up the rear (with a couple of military scenes on the reverse side). I was told it was a Vulchev - but which one? There are about four! And I was told another (rather damaged) was a Stamatov who fetches quite a price these days - regardless, it's a brilliant study of a blacksmith. It's an early Stamatov which graces this post.

Flesh and Blood

The NISPAcee Conference in Varna advances apace (May 19-22) so yesterday I gave the present version to the local printer for him to run off 150 copies for the lucky participants, It's now called Flesh and Blood - the EC's Backbone strategy meets "Impervious power" - and contains as a bonus some of the Sceptic's Glossary I wrote at the start of the year.
It's been an important paper to write these past few months - I've tried to pour all the experience and knowledge Ive gained óver the past 20 years into it. It's been a bit like crafting a painting - at some times honing sentences and phrases. At other times, when I've realised that it was missing an important area, a blank part of the canvas was suddenly filled with whirls. This last happened this week - which explains the minimal posts. I realised that my scepticism about anti-corruption work had meant that I had not even deigned to mention it in the paper! And, when I surfed, it was to find a huge literature - including several literature reviews.For the moment let me just link you to this 2001 book summarising experience of anti-corruption work

I cycled to Victoria Gallery today - to discover that they had sold the lovely Vulchev painting of Thassos and Kavala I showed a week or so ago. But I did buy this Rubev. I have been coveting a Rubev for some time - and was glad to find this one (also with a glimose of Thassos).

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!!