UK the new Chile

As the sun beats down relentlessly on Sofia (35), I have had to switch the air conditioner on for the first time.
I realise that it is a bit odd that a blog from the Balkans should so frequently be referring to British events – for which I do apologise. In defence, I can only say that Britain offers a fascinating case-study in governance. For three reasons –
• Its constitution gives governments free rein on whatever nonsense they wish to perpetrate on the public (provided the programme is acceptable to the Murdoch and other media/corporate interest agendas). In that sense the UK can be compared with Chile - which was the first country to be used as an experiment for neo-liberal doctrines.
• Its academic and other traditions ensure that we get serious, civilised and analytical commentaries on government programmes (even from government)
• The disparate parts of the "United Kingdom” have had their governance systems for the last few centuries – which are now developing even faster in different directions. The part of which from which I come (Scotland) has never bought into the neo-liberal agenda which is about to tear England apart.
The return of the public blog - which I discovered today - is ruthless in its appraisal of the british political system – and of the shape of relevant programmes to deal with the financial and economic crisis -

Ignorance of political economy is not normally a serious impediment to a career in politics, but Liberal MPs who want to stay in Parliament after the next election need to figure out what’s going on, and fast. They could start by listening to what Vince Cable is telling anyone who will listen: You have a model of economic growth that has broken down, comprehensively broken down. We had personal debt, which was unbelievably high, and this means you have an overhang debt on houses. You’ve got a property bubble, where property prices went out of control, and so now you have households worrying about falling house prices. Businesses that can’t use their property as security. We’ve got this long-term, systemic neglect of key productive sectors, including manufacturing, because the exchange rate was overvalued. We’ve got the hollowing out of industry: we now don’t have the skills. And then we have the deficit, which was the consequence of the bank collapse.Cable (Lib Dem Business Secretary in the Coalition government) has started to echo the critique of the British economic settlement offered by Ann Pettifor and others. Credit expansion fueled a boom in construction and consumption; credit expansion also created financial sector profits and asset price increases that could be taxed and channeled into the public sector. The triumph of the financial sector was accompanied by a spectacular maldistribution of capital and talent. This was the essence of Brown’s economic miracle. The stockbrokers Tullett Prebon provide a summary of the consequences of this miracle here. I suspect that Cable has been reading it, or something like it. And as Cable well knows, the economy cannot turn round in a few years. The Conservatives do not have a coherent plan to deal with the mess they inherited from Labour. They know that the economy cannot deliver broadly based private prosperity and public goods in its current form. They are hoping to reconcile us to lower living standards as the price of maintaining the existing structure of power.

And it was this post which introduced me to Anne Pettifor’s name – who (after publications about debt in the Third World) was apparently warning from 2003 about the coming debt crisis for the First World and who now has her own great blog – with, for example, this useful explanation of what is really going on with the "bail-out” of Greece.

And Colin Talbot draws on his experience to make some comments about this week’s british government white paper on open public services.

Finally a powerful post from Real World Economics -

What we are currently seeing is the end game of a clash begun in the height of the Great Depression, which like a dormant virus, has sprung back in a more virulent and potentially dangerous form. Back during that time, in the 1930′s, the intellectual world was heavily engaged in practical politics. It was a time of momentous change, and depending on your point of view, either danger or opportunity. The collapse of western economics was a threat, not just to political stability, but to the theoretical framework that lent credence to the governing principles that fed into policy. Theory and practice were being tested. And when policy failed the need to articulate new theory became not just evident, but urgent.
It was within this heated forum that modern economics was formed. It may have taken a while for the various alternatives then developed to to be formally worked out – to reach their final specification – but the seeds were all sown. Everything that came later was an effort to clarify or to synthesize the ideas presented during those years.
Thus we recall the great arguments over the feasibility of central planning. We see for the first time the argument that economics is strictly interested in allocation. We see the Keynesian revolution and the emergence of uncertainty as crucial, and his use of aggregation in methodology. We see the beginnings of the modern Austrian school and its emphasis on entrepreneurialism. The list goes on. This was a high point for economic theorizing. The arguments were both public and severe. Great divides opened up that have never been bridged adequately despite the efforts in the post war era to accommodate pieces of Keynes within the classical project. The divisions were so deep that the landscape of the social sciences generally was re-written: sociology peeled away and reserved certain aspects of behavior, very often economic behavior, for itself.

People types and a plea for slow politics

I’m a sucker for labels! By that, I mean I enjoy people classifications. It was probably Jung’s introvert/extrovert distinction which first impacted on me and I remember, twenty years ago, a book which looked at three scenarios for the future - "Retrenchment", "Assertive Materialism", "Caring Autonomy" - and how different groups are likely to respond to them viz the self-explorers, the social resisters, the conspicuous consumers and belongers, and the survivors and the aimless (the book was Millenium - toward tomorrow's society by Francis Kinsman). Those particular labels were, however, a bit confusing.
I prefer when the labels emerge from a simple matrix; for my work, one useful matrix has people plotted on one axis on the basis of their „agreement with the change” and on the basis of „trustworthiness” on the other – to give 5 types – allies, adversaries, bedfellows, opponents and fence sitters. In 2000, Malcolm Gladwell’s famous book The Tipping Point argued that the attainment of the "tipping point" (that transforms a phenomenon into an influential trend) usually requires the intervention of a number of influential types of people. On the path toward the tipping point, many trends are ushered into popularity by small groups of individuals that can be classified as Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. Connectors are individuals who have ties in many different realms and act as conduits between them, helping to engender connections, relationships, and “cross-fertilization” that otherwise might not have ever occurred. Mavens are people who have a strong compulsion to help other consumers by helping them make informed decisions. Salesmen are people whose unusual charisma allows them to be extremely persuasive in inducing others’ buying decisions and behaviors.
And we mustn’t forget Belbin’s team roles and test.
I remembered all this when I saw this article in today’s Guardian which quotes from an ongoing research study in Britain which has suggested its citizens can be classified in three ways - Pioneers, Prospectors and Settlers

I mentioned the UK government’s White Paper on Open Public Services yesterday; and Owen Abroad’s blog alerted me to an inquiry the House of Lords is currently running on Overseas Aid.
It should be fairly obvious from this blog that (whatever my gripes about UK political leaders) I am a fan of the "classical model of british government” – a combination of rhetoric and "golden age” quasi-practice of –
• The judgement and "institutional memory” of career civil servants balancing the impatience and naivete of politicians who enjoy power for only a limited period
• Strategic statements of government intent being published as "Green” papers – with interest groups (or "stakeholders” in the modern jargon) being properly consulted
• Policies being reviewed not by "one-off” technical evaluations – but by submissions to a parliamentary body which are then cross-examined those with knowledge and experience and issued cross-party reports

It's time for a taste of "slow" politics - it was Tony Bliar who turned British governments into 24-hour media fixated machines. Hopefully the present media scandal there will encourage politicians also to look at this fixation.
And finally a marvellous commentary (and video) by the man who exposed the dirty tricks.

Strategy - or an academic essay?

The UK Coalition Government’s first official document (White Paper) on Public Services this week apparently got no publicity – the media was distracted by the phone hacking scandal. That’s a pity – not just because it’s a well-written document which clearly sets out mainstream thinking in England (the Scots would not go along with some of the themes eg choice) but also because the centrality given to the issue of equal opportunity is not what you would expect to find from a Conservative government -

But while we all have a shared interest in the best possible public services, we know that the poorer we – or our neighbours – are, the more we rely on the state and its agencies. Those who live in our most disadvantaged communities rely most critically on the NHS and need most urgently to see public health improve. Our poorest children depend most powerfully on high-quality childcare, good pre-school provision and excellent teaching to flourish in later life. Those in our most economically impoverished neighbourhoods rely most on decent provision of sporting facilities, parks and greenery close at hand to lead fuller lives.
And at the moment they are often let down.
So reform of public services is a key progressive cause. The better our public services, the more we are helping those most in need. That is why those who resist reform, put the producer interest before the citizens’ needs, and object to publishing information about how services perform are conspiring to keep our society less free, less fair and less united.
Throughout this paper, we will explain just how our reforms give power to those who have been overlooked and underserved. We will also demonstrate that it is only by publishing data on how public services do their jobs that we can wrest power out of the hands of highly paid officials and give it back to the people. And our reforms will mean that the poorest will be at the front of the queue.

Although there are few references to the frenetic reform agenda of New Labour – starting from the 1997 Modernisation Programme and culminating in a self-congratulatory overview by the Strategy Unit of its work in 2009 – there is little with which Labour (at least in its later phases) could disagree. But what is most annoying is that the opportunity is missed for a really serious consideration of why – despite the apparent political commitment since 1997 to equal opportunity and a range of reasonably funded programmes – no real progress has been made on that front. What are the lessons for any new strategy? That’s the whole point about strategies – identifying the factors and forces which have undermined good intentions in the past and developing a “theory of action” and programme which gives us confidence that things might actually change for the betterOne comment makes the point well

The white paper places much emphasis on consultation and facilitating change rather than directing. A weakness is that many proposals are projects or programmes and should be subject to the established public sector controls such as "starting gate" and "gateway". These are not bureaucratic, help identify what should not go ahead, whether the necessary success factors are in place at each stage of the project and whether there need to be changes. These robust approaches save time and money and greatly increase chances of success. The white paper should have provided assurance about applying these disciplines.

A couple of other useful commentaries - first on the realism of the document's reliance on "choice" and "community"; and, second, on the encouragement of social enterprise and "mutualities"are here -

And I've discovered another nice painting blog

Wine, figures and power

Magura is the name of a large cave 25 kms from Belogradchik – the end of the line here with no links to neighbouring countries. But it is also the name of a vineyard which produces excellent wines which I have now discovered. All due to the small kiosk they have at the entrance to the Belogradchik fortress; the two young people who manned it yesterday (as I arrived gasping from the steep climb) clearly knew nothing about wines but I did, after my tour of the fortress, buy a bottle of the attractively labelled Chardonnay (same price – 3 pounds - as the excellent Mezzek range which is currently my favourite). In the hotel last night, the Chardonnay tasted as good as the Mezzek – so today I returned and was lucky to find one of the vinoculturalists herself – with the highly appropriate name of Venelina! She was delighted with my comparison with Mezzek – and was able to tell me that they do have a shop in Sofia – Pushkin St 5. And also a nice website. I bought some other stuff – and will duly report on my tastings! The shop also stocks wine from a small place I passed through on my way here – Borovitsa (sounds Romanian) – which I hope to buy tomorrow and taste over the week-end. Watch this spot!

My readings in the last few days suggest that this blog should focus more strongly on the whole issue of managerialism which has popped up from time to time on this blog. See here and here
Until now this site has reported on other people’s interesting "takes” or "scoops”. So my discovery of a government nominee for the position of Chair of the UK Statistics Authority deciding to withdraw from the position after her cross-examination by the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee at the end of June is a first for my blog. With all the focus on the phone hacking of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, noone else seems to have noticed this. I’m still listening to the discussion (one third through the 2 hour intrerview) – and so far have noticed no reason why the MPs might feel she would not be a strong independent leader of the Statistics Agency. Apart from anything else, this is a rare and fascinating example of parliamentary power.
The photograph shows my faithful 14 year old steed resting while I photograph just outside Vrasets on the way to Belogradchik.

out of this world

I'm now in Belogradchik and could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the first rock formations - some 20 kilometres before I hit the town. They extend over a 600-700 sq km area. The area is very poor - I detoured to the old carpet village of Chiprovitsa in an amazing bowl of mountains. A sleepy and disconsolate place - with many Trabans in the area. I had expected to see carpets displayed in the street - but all was desolate with only a small shop displaying very expensive stuff - 5 times what I had paid for an old carpet!
There is a very nice write-up of the Belogradchik rocks and town here.

Balance again - revising training material

During the preparations for a recent project bid, I could not come up with anything to say about how we might review (as outsiders) existing training material. Of course we can identify criteria such as –
• factual
• comprehensive
• balanced
• up-to-date
• user-friendly
• clear

But the subsequent judgements (for a board which is not expert in the varous subjects) are inevitably subjective and arbitrary. And do they really expect trainers to use material which had been developed by a third party? If so, it is a good example of the mechanistic thinking about organisations which has overwhelmed us in the era of project management and the logframe (treating people as things which can be manipulated). Chris Grey’s book for which I gave a link yesterday, is one of the best exposes of this I have read for a long time. Indeed I now see his little book (purportedly about studying organisations) as the best tract against modern society I have read in a long time. It ties together very beautifully a lot of strands of critical social and political thought.
My recent experience attending these workshops has given me probably the most appropriate approach to this issue of revising training material. All trainers were asked last week to summarise the various difficulties which workshop participants (from the Bulgarian municipalities) have mentioned as having with the design or implementation of EC projects. This is a good approach since it requires the trainers to think about what the participants have said (rather than what they, the trainers, think) – one frequent comment is the disagreements they have with the national authority which identifies mistakes (for which they receive a monitary penalty). Of course, the way to deal with that is to have a note from the national authority identifying the most common mistakes!
Only when the trainer minds are focussed on the problems of the trainees, should they be invited to revise their material - with the following sort of questions to help them -
• Compared to what the target group needs to know about your subject, what did you assume they already knew when you drafted your slides and handouts?
• How would you now change your assumptions about what they already know?
• What changes will you now make in your slides and handouts - in the light of these comments and changed understanding?
• Do you work with a statement of “learning outcomes”? That is – a detailed statement of things participants did not know when they arrived at the workshop and that you hoped they would know at the end of the workshops?
• How much time do you take at the beginning of workshops to ask the participants for detailed statement of their expectations and the questions they bring to the workshop?
• How do you check whether these expectations have been met?
• Have you checked the split of time between your presentations – and participants input?
• Do you observe the rule that participants cannot take much more than a 20 minute presentation?
• What efforts do you make to bring participants into discussion?
• Do you put yourself in their shoes – with their concerns about HOW to draft winnable bids which can actually be implemented successfully?

Of course, this is self-assessment – and the new project I was talking about assumed that outsiders would review and update the training material. I think, however, this is a last resort. It is the trainers who have been through the experience of teaching their material. Better to have a system to encourage them to think about what they themselves learned (and then apply it to their own revision) – with the outsider’s role being a facilitating one. Such an approach, however, which tries to get a balance (or dialectic) between groups does not seem to fit the positivist beliefs and “monitoring and control” culture of our times.

The photo is one I took as I left the training workshop - just a few kilomtres up the road - to show the village dereliction Bulgaria has to cope with

British Arab Spring?

For several decades, British political leaders have been operating a Faustian deal – hoping that toeing the agenda of media barons like Rupert Murdoch would buy them political immortality. Within weeks of his being elected Leader of the Labour party in the early 1990s, Tony Bliar notoriously flew half way round the world to pay homage at the baron’s court; seeking and getting acceptance as someone who would not upset the applecart and subsequently glowing in positive press coverage in the baron’s newspapers. Everything radical was strippped from the programmes and speeches of politicians for fear of losing media support.
But such abuse of power always has its come-uppance. A (Canadian) media mogul (who had owned one of Britain’s famous newspapers) went to prison in 2007 – and the biggest of the lot (Murdoch who owns almost 100 newspapers globally including 4 UK papers and was hoping to take over a major TV channel) seems now to be heading for perdition. It was a Guardian journalist who for 3 years relentlessly and fearlessly pursued the malpractices of the Murdoch empire – and it is therefore fitting that a Guardian journalist should gives us the best summary -

News of the World journalists ordered the hacking of as many as 4,000 people including grieving relatives of soldiers and of terror and murder victims because they thought their paper was untouchable. The cover-up was further evidence of this arrogance and included misleading Parliament and the Press Complaints Commission, the claimed bribery of the police, the intimidation of legitimate claimants and, it is now suggested, the destruction of digital files in Wapping. Little wonder that last year I wrote here that Murdoch, his children and clannish associates were beginning to match the profile of your average crime family.
This story is about the failure of the entire political class. Journalists and politicians, advisers, PR people, writers and lawyers drank Murdoch's champagne, swooned in his company and took his calls (with the current PM acutally appointing one of his editors as his Communications Director). Over more than three decades, the perversion of politics by and for Murdoch became institutionalised, a part of the landscape that no one dared question.
Serious crimes were committed and the police covered them up. Corrupt, or at least badly compromised, relationships became the norm and all but a very few politicians looked the other way, telling themselves this was how things were and always would be.
But let's not forget that a journalist, not a politicians was responsible for exposing the scandal.

Attending (on one’s own) a workshop at a leisure hotel is, I find, a great aid to reflection – especially if your role is observation. I’ve fallen into the habit of taking with me to these workshops stuff I haven’t been able to read at home. Last workshop, I took the printed version of all of this year’s blog posts (more than 100 pages) – just to see what sort of coherence (or duplication) these is in it all. This time I took a small book with the title A Very Short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap book about studying organisations which I had criticised in the Amazon reviews when I first read it. Yesterday I romped through it again and found it an enjoyable and powerful critique of management – even justifying the flippant definition I give in Just Words – a sceptic’s glosary of the verb „to manage” – „to make a mess of”.
Here is a useful article the author wrote in 2000 about the critical management school of thinking.

Vrachanski Balkans

Up and away early to avoid the midday heat which once (actually three times) disabled the car a few years back in this part of the world at this time of the year as were driving back from the lovely Thassos island. Just outside Drama in Greece - as were were beginning the ascent for the new border crossing there – the car engine just stoppped. We were kindly treated (with an overnight stay needed for a petrol filter to be replaced) before the same happened at Plovdiv - after much meandering through gorges and round the densely wooded edges of the Rhodopes (with many minarets in the villages). After a mechanic asked for 300 euros with no guarantees, we discovered the car was working again and decided to proceed – over the Balkans. A Romanian lorry driver confirmed that it was the heat – it had happened to him. Just as we reached the top of the mountain ridge, the car stopped again – but, by then, I knew the trick – just to wait ten minutes or so.
Anyway I neednt have worried today – since, apart from my climb over the Petrohan Pass starting before 09.00, the road is heavily wooded and therefore protected from the heat. But the surface is bad (particularly on the descent) and the road twisty – so a 100 kilometres journey from Sofia to Varshets actually took 3 hours (including a trip to Pennywise in the nearby village of Berkovitsa for a bottle of Mezzek Sauvignon/Pinot Gris . I’m in the heart of Vrachanski Balkan Nature Park here – with towering mountain ranges on 2 sides. The hotel is very nicely situated - with solar panels covering the entire roof (very rare!). I was able to check in (to a large room), get organised and have a swim all before midday.

After my last post, I got thinking about Path dependency – and discovered that the phrase originated in economic not sociological studies as I had imagined. And, of course, it takes us deep into fundamental issues which thinkers have argued about for millenia - such as free-will! The opening pages of this paper are quite enlightening about this – but thereafter the paper gets typically turgid.