New perspectives on democracy and the global financial crisis

Just as my watering poor eyes are beginning to tell me that I should be dramatically cutting back on the time I spend in front of this screen (and blogspot helped by going offline for 36 hours!), good internet articles seem to be increasing. In the last hour, I’ve encountered several fascinating pieces.
First the good news. I’m glad to see that I’m not the only person who has felt unease at the exploding number of indices of good governance and democracy. Open Democracy has just sent me their latest batch of thought-provoking articles – one of which by Jorge Heine puts the issue very clearly Another article on the same site introduced me to a new democracy manifesto which at last moves the focus away from the West.
And Anthony Barnett – the driving force behing the Open Democracy site (which I have now rather belatedly added to my links) – also has a good piece on the manifesto.

Democracy is spreading and it will be with us to stay. That is the good news. The bad news is that, through some sleight of hand, this powerful idea that has mobilized so many people and so much human energy around the world, has been turned by some into a highly parochial, procedural version of what self rule is all about. It is the specific political practices of a few (ironically) self-appointed countries around the world, mostly in the North Atlantic, that have come to be defined as setting the tone and the parameters for what democracy is and is not.

Globalization, by spreading the idea of democracy, has helped to liberate people from many a dictatorial yoke. But globalization also embodies the danger that a ‘one-size fits all’ model of democracy be imposed from abroad and from above. an upsurge of efforts to categorize, classify and rank countries around the world according to a variety of ‘democracy indexes’, which purport to tell us how democratic any given country is.

And this is not a mere academic exercise. Real-life consequences flow from it. Funds are disbursed, loans are approved or rejected and countries are suspended from international organizations as a result of these rankings. One of the great paradoxes of all this is that movements and governments that empower people and bring large numbers of the formerly disenfranchised into the political realm are often the targets of these self-appointed ‘democracy policemen’.

A number of countries in Latin America, like Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and others have experienced this treatment. New leaders, new constitutions, new rights for the hitherto marginalized aboriginal peoples have brought about enormous changes in these countries in the course of the past decade.

Bolivian President Evo Morales is the first Amerindian to be elected head of state in the Americas. Lula was the first trade union leader to become president of Brazil. Rafael Correa has brought political stability to Ecuador and a willingness to stand up against the oil majors to defend his country’s rights.

Yet, far from being welcome as major architects of the deepening of democracy in South America, some of these leaders are often demonized as populists by this fake international consensus about what democracy is and is not.

I was going to say that the bad news is that a special poll for the Labour parties of Sweden, Germany and UK (all of whom lost power recently) has revealed the extent of the distrust in these countries for these parties (despite the global conditions in which they should be thriving). But, as the poll reports a lack of faith in the ability of governments to stand up to vested interests (just 16% believed they could in the UK, 21% in Germany and 27% in Sweden).

That could actually be good news. If a significant percentage of the public understand that the parties have in fact sold the pass and cannot stand up to corporate interests, this could pave the way to stronger political demands. However it is not easy to overcome fataliasm. 29% in the UK were scepticical about the ability of government-led action to improve societies, with and 27% in Germany questioning whether governments can be an effective force.
It’s time parties which purport to be left use arguments and facts such as the following

And another post from Real World Economics reminds us of the strong report on the global financial crisis which came from a UN Commission of Experts (helped by Joseph Stiglitz) in September 2009 which had suggested the establishment of a panel of experts modeled after the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This summer the UN is to decide whether it should implement this. Should there be a panel? And if so what would its function and structure be? The last thing the world needs is yet another glossy report with yet another take on the financial crisis. And why bother if such an effort gets mired in UN bureaucracies and is not fashioned into a voice that would have traction with governments across the world?

The UN is the most legitimate and among the most qualified global bodies to weigh in on the global economic system and it would be ridiculous for it to sit on the sidelines. The UN has economists and experts in numerous global agencies such as UNCTAD, DESA, UNDP and beyond, as well as regional efforts such as ECLAC, ESCAP and others. If the UN does not weigh in, the only other options are the G-20 and the IMF. The G-20 as an institution does not include more than 170 countries in the world, and the IMF has a very poor track record on analyzing, preventing, and mitigating financial crisis. The UN is looked to for balance.

We very much need a meta-analysis of the global state of understanding on the causes of financial crises and measures to mitigate them, with the goal of making suggestions for reforming global economic governance—as recommended by the Stiglitz Commission. The UN has the track record here. The UN has already created two (while not perfect) efforts on climate change and on agricultural development. The IPCC is a body that analyses the state of climate science and its impacts, and the Intergovernmental Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge in Science, Technology, and Development (IAASTD) analyzed the state of knowledge on agriculture from the perspective of fighting hunger and poverty in a manner that can improve human health and environmental sustainability. 

What would an inter-governmental panel do? Like the IPCC and the IAASTD, an Intergovernmental Panel on Systemic Economic Risk would perform a meta-analysis of the state of knowledge on the causes, impacts, and implications of financial crises. This would not be just another report; rather, like the IPCC effort it would be the “report on the reports” where eminent persons make sense of the thousands of peer reviewed articles and agency (UN, IMF, etc) assessments that have been done. This would synthesize the similarities and spell out the differences in thinking about these issues to help policy-makers make better decisions about reform.

One of the volumes would look at causes and impacts, while another could serve as a clearinghouse for financial regulatory reform efforts. Nations and regions around the world are reforming their financial systems but there is no single place to catalogue and make sense of these new regulations. This is important for investors and policy makers as they seek to maneuver in a post-crisis world. It will also help stimulate policy diffusion whereby innovative regulation from one country can be applied to another.

If such an effort gets bogged down in UN processes it will be doomed to fail. Like the IPCC and the IAASTD the effort will need to have relative autonomy from the standard UN process. It should also engage with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The IAASTD has a Panel of Participating Governments (governments of all participating agencies) but also has a 60-person “Multi-stakeholder Bureau” that formally advises the plenary. Thirty of the members are governmental officials, 30 are from civil society, the private sector, and academics. Furthermore, IAASTD has seven cosponsoring agencies: the FAO, UNDP, WHO, UNEP, UNESCO and yes even the World Bank.

A UN panel on the financial crisis could model itself on IAASTD to some extent, having some of the governmental officials in a stakeholder bureau come from Central Banks and Finance Ministries, and having the sponsoring agencies be among UNCTAD, UNDP, UNDESA, some of the regionals, such as ECLAC, ESCAP, and the IMF, and World Bank.
It seems clear that at present the UN is not weighing in with a clear voice on the reform of the global economy. This is a pity. The world’s most powerful leaders and the press that follow them have found solace in the G-20 and the IMF, which are not delivering either. The UN is among the most qualified and certainly the most legitimate bodies to deal with the truly global nature of economic crises and their development implications. It started off better than any other body with the establishment of the Stiglitz Commission. Let us hope the UN is up to the task of following through on the Commission’s recommendations. The health of the global economy depends on it.

The painting is another Nenko Balkanski - which I came across on Thursday in the great Kazanluk municipal Gallery. It's of the painter's wife - and is quite similar to a painting in the Smolyian Gallery.

Restoration and identity

A great drive from Assenovgrad via the Plovdiv old town to Velingrad yesterday. In Plovdiv the main purpose was to visit the Phillippolis Gallery which had really been responsible exactly three years ago for starting my passion for buying Bulgarian paintings (mainly from mid-20th century). So far I have more than 50 – and not enough walls to hang them on! It was therefore not difficult to resist the temptation to buy another Dobre Dobrev (950 euros) – but I could not resist 7-8 small and highly original ceramic pieces at the small shop BG Art Gallery nearby. Before I left I had to revisit the Atanas Krastev house where local painter and conservationist Atanas Krastev lived until his death in 2003. His constant striving to keep the old buildings (at a time in the 1960s when tradition was viewed with some hostility) and to have them as active centres of cultural activity earned him the title of Mayor of Old Plovdiv – and he deserves wider recognition. The cosy, well-furnished house is strewn with personal mementoes, and the terrace offers superb views. His self-portraits and personal collection of (mostly) abstract 20th-century Bulgarian paintings are displayed. The garden also houses exhibits.
I thought it might be difficult to find the Olymp Hotel in Velingrad – since the spa town has so many. But the difficult part of the journey was actually negotiating round Pazhardik which (like Plovdiv) is very badly signposted. I have to say that everyone I stop to ask for guidance is enormously helpful.
And, as I drove straight for the mountain range, I could not see how on earth a road could be there – it is in fact one of the greatest engineering feats I have ever seen – cut right through at the side of a strongflowing river gorge. There is (or was) actually also a small-gauge railway which I seem to remember running 3 years ago when I used this road in the opposite direction. I hope its active in the summer season!
Vilengrad is 800 metres in a lovely valley surrounded by mountains – so the cold has followed me here! But I've warmed up in one of the 70 hot springs with which it is served!

For those who have been following passionately the development of next week’s Conference paper about EC Technical Assistance, I have posted an updated version here. And you can see the thread of the argument on the slides here.

A typically clear and provocative from Simon Jenkins – this time about the issue of Scottish independence which has been put firmly back on the agenda by the results of last week’s elections to the Scottish Parliament.
Kenneth Roy (equally typically) puts the matter in proper perspective.
Namely the Labour vote held up; only 22.6% of the electorate voted SNP in last week's election, while 26.7% insisted on voting for the boring old unionist parties. It was the Liberal Democrat vote which transferred to the SNP and gave it their strong victory. But Jenkin’s article remains one of the best summaries of the substantive issues I’ve seen (apart from the small matter of the dual negotiations which would be involved – first with the UK government and then with the EU!)
An equally good piece on the Scottish question is here.
Finally, an interesting discussion about central europe 20 years after the fall of the wall
The pic is a wood sculpture by Hristo Genev, the Director of the Kazanluk Art Gallery about whom I will write later

our cunning elites

I was skirting yesterday round Plovdiv (which has an old Roman heart – like so many Bulgarian towns) at lunchtime yesterday on the way to a workshop at Assenovograd when I passed a sign (Brestovitza) which is the name of my favourite red wine. I did an about turn, drove through some great-looking vineyards at the eastern foot of the Rhodope mountains and shocked one of guys hanging around the rather decrepit winery into opening a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and of a Rose for me to taste! I don't think they have such requests very often - although this small village apparently has 10 wineries (including the famous Toderoff one)! I was amazed to discover they they produce the great Erigone wines - which I fell in love with 3 years ago but then couldn't find again! Now I know where! I bought 2 of the Erigone's Cabernet-merlot (4 euros); 2 Rose (3 euros); and 2 Chardonnay. Tomorrow I will pop in to one of the Plovdiv art galleries which started me on my painting collection exactly three years ago - on my way to another workshop in a small spa town which skirts the western side of the Rhodopes. What a life! I’m staying at a superb Hotel (Sani) on the outskirts of Assenovograd with a very sizeable room with a view up a valley between the foothills – and a cavernous supermarket in the basement with rows of products (including one of the best selections of wines I’’ve seen) – but no customers! Smacks of a „cathedral in the desert”. Speaking of which, I was horrified to learn at dinner that municipal elections in November here may make half of the the 120-odd trainings this project is organising abortive! Such is the politicisation that many of the officials will be replaced – and it will take a couple of months for that to work through. And, because this project was 2 years late in starting (the usual Balkan politics), it is impossible to extend its current termination date of end-March. So even more workshops may be crammed into the autumn period before the axes start to fall in the pre-Christmas period! My initial view would be to stick with the schedule – although, in such a climate, noone probably wants to be absent from the municipal office! This is where the Brit in me loses patience – Bulgaria should be booted out of the Council of Europe for having such a level of Sultanism in its municipal systems.

But there are more important things to focus our energies on – eg the banks. A couple of good articles. Many of us had thought that neo-liberalism was on the wane; that the financial crisis had exposed once and for all the inanity of the claims of the financial experts; and that the clear public consensus for root and branch reform of the banks would lead to radical reform. In fact the opposite seems to have happened. The elites have spotted the danger; have been able to put an alternative narrative in place (about government debt – and its needing to be cut back) and have audaciously and, so far, successfully, managed to take things in the opposite direction. George Irvin has a strong piece about the strengthening (rather than weakening) of the neo-liberal agenda this has allowed in Social Europe.
Few of us pretend to understand finance – and that is the achilles heel of Democracy these days. We can talk until we are blue in the face about education, migrants, law and order but all this is just a gigantic diversion compared with the activities of those who control our financial system. And, as long as we fail to try to understand what they are up to, we are doomed. That’s why this amazing paper on what’s behind the Irish financial crisis is so important. It’s also why the Real World Economics blog (written by a group of economists who expose the nonsenses of that so-called discipline and have a commitment to drag it into the real world) is so worth reading (and therefore on the list of my recommended links) – particularly the recent posts by Peter Radford which give us insights into the unreal world which has such a profound effect on our real world.

Perhaps the most devastating comment about the state of economics today came – as a short article on Social Europe recounts - at a recent conference held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire – site of the 1945 conference that created today’s global economic architecture – came when Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf quizzed former United States Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, President Barack Obama’s ex-assistant for economic policy. “[Doesn’t] what has happened in the past few years,” Wolf asked, “simply suggest that [academic] economists did not understand what was going on?”Here is the most interesting part of Summers’ long answer: “There is a lot in [Walter] Bagehot that is about the crisis we just went through. There is more in [Hyman] Minsky, and perhaps more still in [Charles] Kindleberger.” That may sound obscure to a non-economist, but it was a devastating indictment. Bagehot (1826-1877) was a mid-nineteenth-century editor of The Economist who published a book about financial markets, Lombard Street, in 1873. Summers is certainly right: there is an awful lot in Lombard Street that is about the crisis from which we are now recovering. Minsky (1919-1996) is best approached not through his collected essays, entitled Can “It” Happen Again?, but rather through the use Kindleberger (1910-2003) made of his work in his 1978 book Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises. Asked to name where to turn to understand what was going on in 2008, Summers cited three dead men, a book written 33 years ago, and another written the century before last.

For my sins I trained as an economist – although in the Scottish tradition of political economy – and did, for some years, lecture on the subject. But I was always mystified about it and sensed its quasi-religious element.
I have a large folder on the financial crisis – but confess to have read very little of it. There are few writers who can make the subject really interesting. Susan Strange was one – but is sadly lost to us. Susan George used to be another – but does not seem to have written recently. I have always admired the writings of Ronald Dore (who helped open our eyes to the Japanese ways of doing things) and was happy to see that he had written a piece in 2008 about the financialisation of the global economy.

And I’m travelling with the paperback Basic Instincts – human nature and the new economics by Pete Lunn who writes very well and clearly.
The painting is by a different Petrov - Ivan this time! 

The Myopic General class - time to let the troops loose

For those not aware, the heading I gave to yesterday’s post was from "that play” by Shakespeare (it’s apparently bad luck for actors to refer to the play’s name!!)

Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28

I was pleased to find out that I will not be the only one in Varna next week questioning the conventioanl wisdom. In a quieter way, another paper – by Canadian Professor Leslie Pal – sets out some of the instruments which have been used by the OECD to try to get the sort of public management reform it thinks necessary. It looks at an important report OECD published in 2009 which, unfortunately, is behind a pay wall. But his paper summarises its main themes and argues that -

the OECD report contains a direct critique of New Public Management (NPM) and three questions that governments were urged to ask themselves in the search for a new governance paradigm. The critique of NPM noted that due “to lack of data and numerous challenges in measuring outputs and outcomes, governments have a difficult time in determining whether the reforms have really resulted in efficiency gains.” But it goes further:

New Public Management has exacerbated the traditional separation between politics and administration, between policy decisions and their implementation. Dismantling organisations also sometimes led to a loss of continuity, institutional memory and long-term capacity. The focus on contracting and reporting may have come at the expense of coherence of strategy, continuity of values and connecting public interest to individual motivation.

In addition, many governments have not developed sufficient oversight capacity, increasing the threat of provider capture. Often, governments adopted reform instruments or ideas from the private sector or from other governments without regard for the country context and/or understanding the inherent limitations and weaknesses of these instruments. (OECD 2009a: 33)

In a sober tone reminiscent of (its earlier neo-liberal tomb) "Modernising Government", the report asked whether a “new paradigm” was needed: “…OECD member countries may need to reassess what has worked well in past 25 years, what has not and why, what might be discarded from those reforms, what needs to be adjusted, what might be further built upon and what are the conditions for success.”

The three questions were (1) How can countries achieve a better balance between government, markets and citizens?, (2) What governance capacities or competencies are needed for dealing with global challenges?, and (3) How can a continued focus on efficiency and effectiveness be reconciled with upholding other fundamental public service values?

The discussion in connection with the third question was telling. While governments would continue to emphasize performance in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, the concept of performance – in light of the challenges of the financial crisis – would have to be broadened to include a government’s ability to uphold “core values such as accountability, transparency and equity.”

I spent the morning reading other papers Professor Pal has written exporing the insidious role the OECD has played in creating what the French would call „La Pensee Unique” in this field of government systems - here and here

I hope to give some more of his analysis tomorrow. I was hoping his material would give me the missing inspiration for the short presentation I have to do at Varna.

- What, basically, am I beefing about? What am I asking for?

A skype discussion with Daryoush helped me on my way.
My plea seems to be for a dialogue about better governance with new actors.
At the moment the dialogue is set by academics and top civil servants (OECD). What we might call the “brain”.

Completely missing is the "backbone" – middle-level officials, politicians, citizens and… consultants like me. In the EC system consultants (“experts”) are the foot soldiers – above us are battalions (companies and Delegations); Generals who are swapping stories and drinking wine – and academics writing about the battles – and noone talks with the troops!! Academics and officials have their (subsidised) Conferences and fora – but not the troopers!

The recent report of the OECD’s Network on Governance’s Anti-corruption Task Team on Integrity and State Building makes part of the point for me

As a result of interviews with senior members of ten donor agencies, it became apparent that those engaged in anti-corruption activities and those involved in the issues of statebuilding and fragile states had little knowledge of each other’s approaches and strategies

.Departmental silos are one of the recurring themes in the literature of public administration and reform – but it is often academia which lies behind this problem with its overspecialisation. „Fragile states” and „Statebuilding” are two new phrases which have grown up only in the last few years – and „capacity development” has now become a more high-profile activity. There are too many specialised groups working on building effective institutions in the difficult contexts my paper focusses on - and too few actually sharing their experiences. We need a road map – and more dialogue!

On a different note, I’ve raged before about management. But this post is a real eye-opener about trends in hgher educartion

As faculty jobs have become increasingly contingent and precarious, administration has become anything but. Formerly, administrators were more or less teachers with added responsibilities; nowadays, they function more like standard corporate managers — and they’re paid like them too.

Once a few institutes made this switch, market pressures compelled the rest to follow the high-revenue model, which leads directly to high salaries for administrators. Even at nonprofit schools, top-level administrators and financial managers pull down six- and seven-figure salaries, more on par with their industry counterparts than with their fellow faculty members.

And while the proportion of tenure-track teaching faculty has dwindled, the number of managers has skyrocketed in both relative and absolute terms. If current trends continue, the Department of Education estimates that by 2014 there will be more administrators than instructors at American four-year nonprofit colleges.

Sound and fury – signifying nothing?

I’m now at the stage of creating the slides for the 10 minute presentation of my paper at the Varna Conference on 20 May. It’s a deeply depressing (but salutory) experience to have spent several months crafting a 25 page paper (with almost 100 footnotes!) and then find – when you look for the basic message - that it seems to say so little! What does this say about me? Or about the nature of administrative reform? Perhaps that should be the focus of my presentation??

The basic points in the paper are that –
• The EC programme of technical assistance is a multi-billion euros industry and policy field
• The European Court of Auditors published a fairly strong critique in 2007 – which was about its procurement procedures rather than the effectiveness of the tools used
• The EC’s 2008 response – its „Backbone strategy” - basically said that the overstretched staff of its 80 European delegations should try harder to achieve 4 things – demand-driven solutions; better project design; better selection of experts; and more project flexibility (already possible during the inception period). This is a cop out!
• Serious gaps in the analysis were failures to analyse the companies and individual consultants who are the real „backbone” of the TA
• There are too many cowboy companies winning projects by dubious means – and using experts they don’t know; who have arrived in the business by accident; and who receive no training (A paper I had presented to the 2006 NISPAcee Conference had questioned the „accidental” nature of the comeptitive procurement system used by the EC TA)
• The project basis of the EC TA is questionable – it lacks sustainability
• Perhaps there is another model - which strikes a better balance between competition, flexibility and sustainability?
• The second part of the paper looks at the difficult contexts of the EC Neigbourhood countries and suggests that few of the (overly rationalistic) tools in the reform toolbox of the EC will work there
• Change is a mysterious process for which the logframe (a tool for the construction industry) is totally unsuitable. This is recognised in the development industry
• Experts in adminsitrative reform lack insights into these wider development processes – and are stuck at stage one of a four-stage process which has been mapped by development experts
• EC TA is a deeply paternalistic model of change

It's been a useful exercise to list these points. Between now and Monday I have to elaborate them and decide what the slides should actually say for a 10 minute presentation - bearing in mind what the other presentations will be saying!!!

The painting is one of several Emilia Radusheva ones which have suddenly appeared. She has been in the Netherlands and her paintings seem to have dried up. But no longer. She has a very distinctive style and is, with Juliana Sotirova and Michko Constandinov, one of my favourite contemporary Bulgarian artists.

Hungarian ambitions and Bulgarian gentility

The Hungarian Spectrum blog continues its amazingly penetrating analysis of political developments in Hungary by a piece on the background to an event which I (and, I supsect, all non-Hungarians) had missed in all the comment about the recent Constitutional changes there – the renaming of the country from „Hungarian Republic” to „Hungary”.
From such promising beginnings in 1989, this small country is turning out to be a real pain in the arse. I was struck with the arrogance of its people in 1993-95 when I worked there – and, looking at the size of their houses (and this was in North-East Hungary, their poorest part hard up against the Slovak, Ukrainian and Romanian borders), I wondered why on earth they needed European money then. Even then, all sorts of municipal developments were in evidence – something which you don’t even see here in the capital of Bulgaria 15 years later!
I have never seen such a poor state of pavements as here in Sofia. I wonder what the statistics of broken ankles are here. Unfortunately the internet offers no real treatment of Bulgaria – there was a rather inconsequential piece recently on an Economist blog about the corrupt state of the media here but, as one of the discussants rightly said, they have been set a very good example by the anglo-saxon world!
I have always seen Sofia as have an old-fashioned gentility – mainly from the tiny shop and gallery units you fiind in its centre with both young and old eking out a fragile existence but at least one whose rhythm they control. Since hearing the buskers in the nearby park playing early 1960s jazz and rock, I realise that Sofia, in many ways, could market itself as the retro-capital of Europe. You still see Trabis (although generally vegetating on the sidewalks); and, at leats round my area, the old folk are always out in strength and not marginalised as in so many other capitals. Of course, this is a stark reflection of the poverty of the economy – indeed I just don’t know how the economy here manages even to tick over.
Romania has at least one good news outlet in English which I came across recently

Today I came across this very evocative clip of poet John Betjeman celebrating Philip Larkin's poetry.

Apparently today is both St George's Day AND the Day of the Bulgarian Army. So I'm using one of Ilia Petrov's pictures.

St George's Day - and Vernissaj

Am I the only person finding the Yahoo site increasingly aggressive and unacceptable? So many huge ads and so much flashing – and delays in getting access to my mail as they divert you to proselytise their latest version of one thing or another. I am seriuous thinking of switching – but is google any better? And not easy to switch when you have been with one address for 8 years!
The weather here in southern europe (Sofia) continues to be…well…Scottish! Cold, dreich and drisle – not calculated to get you running for your swimming gear. So I missed this morning’s walk and swim. And the constant problems anyway with access to the large pool in the Sparta Complex makes swimming totally uninviting….
Tomorrow is (another) holiday here in Bulgaria celebrates I was told that it was Soldiers' Day but became a bit puzzled - the soldiers' day I celebrated (with Russians!) in Riga a decade or so back was 23 February. And Victory day for Russia is 9 May so I don't know what 6 May is all about (Now I learn it's St George"s Day - a soldier!!) Regardless, the roads in town were clogged as people tried to get out for a 3 day weekend. If this is indeed a celebration of the Russian soldier it is utterly deserved. A couple of days after the US assassination in Pakistan, I'm not sure if we should be celebrating soldiers generally. It appears that, for once, they got the right guy - but so easily it could have been an innocent. And what sort of people go dancing in the streets to mark such a macabre strike? Only the sort who danced in the streets after September 11 2001!

Last evening, as I was returning from the Konus Gallery, I alighted on a Vernissaj (free wine at the opening of a gallery viewing) on Rakovski st – interesting landscapes from one Milko Voshkov and I struck a very professional figure as I manoeuvred the four paintings which Yassen had had framed for me into the gallery! The wine was bitter so I didn’t linger. This evening I had an invitation to another opening – at a new gallery only 4 minutes' walk from the flat. I was soon home – the paintings were a modernist disgrace (supposedly on the 7 deadly sins) and the place full of empty English chattering glitterati

Jeffrey Sachs is a figure we all love to hate. A neo-liberal in liberal disguise. I was amazed to fiind him today talking about the corrupt elite (about which, I concede, he knows a great deal!)

And a good discussion thread on the UK health reforms

Angela Minkova is a very creative and versatile Bulgarian artist - who paints and sculpts (in unusual materials - including bone). I'm very tempted by this piece which my friend Yassen has in his Konus Gallery - for 100 euros (the small guy at the bottom is dangling a key).

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!