Reflections on an intellectual network

NISPAcee has played an interesting role in monitoring and encouraging institution-building in central and eastern europe these last 18 years. Funded initially by the Ford Foundation and by the Pew Charitable Trust; then by SIGMA, LGI Soros (even The World Bank I think at one stage),its Quarterly Newsletter, annual Conferences and publications have been an important resource for those interested in administrative reform in the countries which moved out of the communist embrace in 1989. The Conference is very much a showcase – more than a hundred papers were presented – ie half of those attending were presenting. This leaves little time for thematic exploration – although hopefully the older working groups (civil service reform; and local government) manage a bit more of this. Any dialogue has therefore to take place elsewhere. And the presentations are predominantly academic – as befits an organisation which has defined itself in scholastic terms. I find it a shame that the important concern for analytical rigour is assumed to require obeisance to the narrow and soul-destroying standards of modern academia.
Of course, most authors are writing in a foreign language (English) – and feel it necessary to use all the jargon of new public management. It is the younger people who attend the Conference (they have the language) and, at this early stage in their career, it is difficult (both intellectually and politically) for them to challenge the concepts. It is a pity the Conference cannot attract more older practitioners (from both East and West) who could not only have useful exchanges between themselves – but also challenge the conventional wisdom of the theorists (and the OECD). Of course OECD itself convenes sessions with senior officials on these issues – but they are restricted events.
The theme of the Conference was supposed to be Public Administration of the Future – but got lost a bit in the proliferation of papers and working groups and rather passed me by, distracted as I was by my own presentation. I did, however, catch a panel discussion on the American perspective whose 4 wizened members, understandably, did not seem to be able to move away from the job haemmorrage which is taking place there in the public sector generally and also in university. One of the few interesting comments made by the panel was that American Public Admin scholars have traditionally had a strong link with government practice – and that this was perhaps something which should be taken up by central and east european PA scholars. Certainly it is not very evident in West Europe

As I write this in an empty Sofia (yet another 2 day pubic holiday!) I am listening to the great World Music programme and heard some very touching harp and vocals from the Scottish bard, Robin Williamson, who many decades ago was part of The Incredible String band. It can be heard for the next 4 days here - you’ll find it about half way through.
NISPAcee is at a bit of a crossroads – not least because a major source of funding dries up shortly. In 2007/2008, it carried out a major strategic review and produced a strategy for 2009-12 from which I have pulled this mission statement

The strategic goals of NISPAcee are to:
• define itself as a network-oriented organisation towards the improvement of PA education and training standards in the region
• provide an orientation in multi- and trans-disciplinarity in curriculum development of PA programmes, paying special attention to the connection to, for example, sociology, developmental studies, etc.
• transform itself as a research organisation increasingly oriented towards public administration reforms, and problems of significant importance and high priority in the modernisation of public administrative systems
• measure up to international standards of research and to be competitive with Western Europe and the US
• strengthen the relationship between research, education and consultancy,
• strengthen the role of a bridge between academia and practice, inside the NISPAcee region and between the NISPAcee region and the Euro-Atlantic world.

My only comment (as a sympathetic outsider who only recently took out individual membership) is that there is not much evidence of the strengthening of the relationship with consultancy; and I would love to see the evidence for success in building a wider curriculum. Although quite how relevant that is for undergraduates I doubt. It is by no means obvious that PA graduates are any better recruits to state bodies than others; indeed some would argue that the breadth of their studies makes them intellectually less suitable! Of course the French ENA tradition has had an influence on the region on this point - but I could never understand how, for example, the Presidential Academy of PA in Azerbaijan could justify its existence when virtually none of its graduates were subsequently recruited to state bodies!
Romania is in the Francophone area of influence and inherits its intellectual tradition. Its National Political Studies and Public Admin was strongly represented at the Conference (just down the road) and their papers were quite incredible in their remoteness from reality.
There were some moments at the Conference when its potential was evident - such a range of countries (Afghanistan made its first appearance with quite a strong delegation) and mix of ages and disciplinary interests. But the potential is not being focussed.

Conference frustrations

When you’re a blogger and at a Conference, you are supposed to move into a higher gear. All the chats and adrenalin etc But the NISPAcee Conference at Varna on the Black Sea seems to have had the opposite effect on me. First – few contacts. I missed both evening receptions – because I had travelled by car. Thursday I was just so tired after negotiating Varna (so easy to reach from Bucharest) trying to find the Conference Hotel at the Golden Sands in the north amongst so many thousands in the area – that I could not be bothered getting in a bus to retrace 25 kilometres to Varna University.
And, no matter how hard you prepare for a presentation, you have to see the arena and feel the chemistry of the people before you can decide how to pitch the ideas. NISPAcee has seven working groups and our room was the ballroom (!!) – where even the largest slide was difficult for me to read. Only 10 minutes were allowed (in my case for a 25 page paper with 60 footnotes) and most of the presenters in the first Friday morning session understandably opted for Powerpoint. One didn’t – and I at least focussed more closely on his words. I decided therefore to throw away the slides (but still distribute them as individual handouts). So I missed the plenary session at 11.00 while I wrote a new presentation.
My presentation went down fine amongst the 40 participants (at least amongst the older, more independent characters from Bulgaria, Poland, Serbia and Slovakia who no longer have to earn brownie points from the older academic guru figures around whom most of the Conference swarms). This was a working group (on administrative reform) which I had helped establish by a critical paper I had presented to the 2006 Conference (with several others including David Coombes) – but it was not being managed in a way which allowed any sustained dialogue.
And Friday’s reception involved another bus journey – which I did not fancy - to the nearby Albena resort for some real estate marketing. And, after a couple of beers, the car journey I had planned (to give me the flexibility) was out of the question because of the Bulgarian police lurking behind every palm tree. I had planned to leave Saturday afternoon – but realised this was unfair so decided to stay the course to see if something more coherent could be retrieved. But the presentations were so messy – and all treated as worthy - no matter how pathetic (eg an ex Romanian State Secretary whose support is seen as so crucial to the Conference that he can turn up literally at the last minute - without the necessary paper - and scribble something illegible on a whiteboard). I will later name names!!
Of course it is always a privilege to have the chance to present a paper - even without feedback, it helps me write the paper I should have presented in the first place. And listening to other presentations from those other rare individual who have got into this business of public admin reform also sets off fascinating thoughts which enrich my creative juices. So many thanks to those who took the trouble to attend for the duration (and not just swan in at the last moment via a state limousine) and make a real contribution at Varna!

Hungary's repressive state

I’ve mentioned the Hungarian Specrum blog several times already. If ever a blog deserved a prize, it’s this one – for its consistent and detailed reporting of the misdemeanours of the different parts of the Hungarian system. Here’s a recent post on how an innocent opposition mayor was kept in jail for almost 3 years – with no charges and no evidence. Be very afraid when you cross into Hungary!
People in the EU know about the government control of the Hungarian media. What they haven’t woken up to is the extent of Orban (their PM’s) relentless takeover of every part of the Hungarian system (including the judiciary) and crushing of opposition figures. For that information, you have to read Hungarian Spectrum.

And more on the subject of yesterday’s comment about the long-hatched plot to privatise the English health system. So far, the Scottish government has managed to resist this trend.

The stories about jobless Greek people returning to their villages should be read in conjunction with this blog which, every week, addresses the issue of the simpler life we should be choosing to live - rather than waiting until you're forced to.

laboratory of education and health change

Hats off to the mayor of sector 1 Bucharest! Thanks to the municipality scheme, we were able to pick up 2 bikes at 11.00 Sunday morning – completely free of charge – and cycle around in the delightful Harastroia park and lake in complete safety for 2 hours. Hopefully this scheme – which lasts until the autumn - will encourage more to take to their bikes.

As usual, England is currently the subject of mad scientist experimentation – in the 2 fields politicians most like to play around with – education and health.
A good case-study in economics and in the use and meaning of league-tables is given in an article in The London Review of Books which explores the apparent UK Coalition Government’s drive to emulate US policy toward universities ie customer payment and competition.

The data which appear, at first glance, to demonstrate the great strength of the US university system are revealed, on even the most rudimentary analysis, to demonstrate nothing of the kind. Measure for measure, US universities are manifestly not the ‘best of the best’. If value for money is the most important consideration, especially in an age of austerity, the American model might well be the last one that Britain should be emulating.
This analysis has serious implications for government policy. There is no evidence here that private sector competition drives up academic standards, but there is clear evidence that market competition drives up prices, since academic excellence apparently costs much more in the US than the UK. Why is this? It isn’t in fact difficult to see why the introduction of market pricing into a small cohort of elite universities will drive prices up, not down. Wherever a small and strictly limited supply of a highly desirable commodity – such as places at Harvard – is introduced into a genuinely open market, the wealthiest cohort in society will drive its price up to levels only they can afford. This is essentially what has been happening at the upper levels of the US university league since the income gap began to open up in the 1980s. For several decades, tuition fees have been rising at double, triple and even quadruple the rate of cost-of-living inflation, first at the most exclusive universities, and then throughout the private sector, so that there are now more than a hundred private colleges and universities in the US charging students at least $50,000 annually for fees, room and board.
The introduction of competition drives down prices only in markets for commodities that can be readily produced. If a firm is producing things inefficiently, or skimming off too much profit, it can be undercut by more efficient methods of production or leaner business models. But there are some things which cannot be readily produced, and ancient universities are an excellent example. Oxford and Cambridge have a 600-year head start on their English rivals. Many of the advantages they enjoy are the product of their long histories: their architectural settings, their libraries and archives; their unique systems of tutorial teaching, collegiate organisation and self-government; and the academic prestige accumulated by two dozen generations of scholars, philosophers, scientists, poets and prime ministers. Their competitors cannot produce these things at any price, much less one that undercuts theirs. And because the ‘student experience’ they offer is one that many find uniquely attractive, they could, if freed from the constraints of government legislation, charge as high a price for this experience as the market would bear, without the risk of being undercut by anyone but each other.
But why does all the extra money pouring into US universities generate such a poor return in the rankings? Evidently, a large fraction of this funding is being invested in something other than academic excellence. This haemorrhage of funds has not gone unnoticed by American university leaders, who have traced the source of the leak to another aspect of market-driven academic culture which the government plans to start importing from America: the ‘student experience’.
Jonathan Cole, former provost and dean of faculties at Columbia, wrote in the Huffington Post last year that in addition to fee inflation, a major contributor to the increased cost of higher education in America stems from the perverse assumption that students are ‘customers’, that the customer is always right, and what he or she demands must be purchased. Money is well-spent on psychological counselling, but the number of offices that focus on student activities, athletics and athletic facilities, summer job placement and outsourced dining services, to say nothing of the dormitory rooms and suites that only the Four Seasons can match, leads to an expansion of administrators and increased cost of administration.
If Cole is correct, then the marketisation of the higher education sector stimulates not one but two separate developments which run directly counter to government expectations. On the one hand, genuine market competition between elite universities drives up average tuition fees across the sector. On the other, the marketing of the ‘student experience’ places an ever increasing portion of university budgets in the hands of student ‘customers’. The first of these mechanisms drives up price, while the second drives down academic value for money, since the inflated fees are squandered on luxuries. To judge from the American experience, comfortable accommodation, a rich programme of social events and state of the art athletic facilities are what most 18-year-olds want when they choose their ‘student experience’; and when student choice becomes the engine for driving up standards, these are the standards that are going to be driven up.

As far as the government's intentions for the poor health system are concerned, the backlash from the medical profession to the idea of putting GPs in charge of the health budget (in England) has been so great that the Government set up a "listening exercise"in the summer. Two recent discussion threads give a good sense of what's at stake - in the first BBC's Paul Mason sets out the very clearly the thinking which lay behind the reform; the problems it has run into; and what might now happen. A rare analytical discussion. The second thread - from the Guardian - is more conerned with political aspects.
In the course of following the discussion, I came across a good health blog.
Coincidentally, just as put down (a reread of) Colin Leys' 2001 book on Market-Driven Politics (which was the first study I ever read of the "commodification" of public services, I came across a new article and booklet he has written, suggesting that the government's health changes are not (as normally represented) a deviation but rather part of a change whiuch has been more than a decade in preparation.
The Kazanluk gallery was kind enough to Email me yesterday this pic of one of several paintings they have by Vassil Bakarov - "my mother".

Salute to the local municipal galleries

Thursday I spent on a very pleasant drive from Velingrad in the Rhodope mountains to Bucharest (500 kms) – first through the gorge I spoke about; then east across the Thracian plain with a spectacular glowering sky; a hop past Stara Zagora over another mountain; and pulled in at Kazanluk on the basis of what I had read about its Art Gallery. And I was not disappointed. I was warmly received by Daniela who introduced me to their collection which included the Stanio Stamatov featured above – he was one of many local painters. Indeed the small town was so prolific with artists that it used to be called „the town of a hundred painters”. The collection is therefore a rich one - of both paintings and sculptures - and, amongst those whose acquaintance I made were Vasil Barakov (1902-1991); a scupltor Hristo Pessev (1923-2000); and Spas Zawgrov (1908-1991) born in a nearby village whose landscapes and portrait sketches were in a temporary exhibition funded by his family. Hristo Genev, the Director, welcomed me into his den and presented me with a couple of discs (one of his own material). He sculpts the most fascinating pieces from wood – one of which I displayed a couple of posts back. This is a gallery worth a detour to see – and many revisits!

I don’t often look at yahoo stories - but this is a useful bit of pleading for the simpler life we should be leading.

There are definite advantages in attending workshops which are in languages one doesn't understand! It forces you to use other senses to understand what is going on - to look at body language, for example. And it also gives me the time to reflect - eg I suddenly remembered the paper I had written in 2008 about Training assessment Tools which have different examples which could be used at the different stages of the training cycle. I duly had it printed it out and gave it to the Council of Ministers rep who was also attending the Vilengrad session (since they had insisted on a simplistic evaluation form being used). I will add this shortly to my website.
And I was also able to read more closely the paper on Training and Beyond; seeking better practices for capacity development by Jenny Pearson which I referred to recently - which sets out very well the critique of training I was myself struggling toward in my own 2008 paper.

Finally three good articles on the Chinese mood. The first about a rare critical article on Mao by an 82 year old Chinese economist. Then a good piece on the competition for the new leadership positions.
The last is particuarly interesting - since it gives an insight into how systematic is the Chinese way of researching issues.

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!