The Missionary Position

“Getting to Denmark” seemed an appropriate title for the collection of musings I’m trying to edit about the challenges which technocrats and academics funded by international bodies have wrestled with over the past 2 decades in ex-communist countries – particularly those of us working to try to build the capacity of state bodies there – whether central or local. 
Several billions of euros have been spent on such efforts (not including the hundreds of millions spent in the last decade by Structural Funds in these countries which have employed local rather than international staff)

The musings are a small selection of blogposts I’ve done over the past 5 years - which build on two long papers I produced a few years ago -
- “administrative reform with Chinese and European characters” (2010)  - whose last section  is a summary of the sort of lessons I felt I had learned about public administration reform in Western Europe 
- “The Long Game – not the logframe” (2011) was a caustic paper I presented to the 2011 NISPAcee Conference ( building on an earlier paper to the 2007 Conference) in which I took apart the superficiality of the assumptions EC bureaucrats seemed to be making about the prospects of its Technical Assistance programmes  making any sort of dent in what I called (variously) the kleptocracy  or “impervious regimes” of most ex-communist countries.  

But the adrenalin released by the 50 lengths I try to swim regularly in the Rodina Hotel here made me realise today that “The Missionary Position” is a better title – not only in the sense of potentially getting more hits but of its hitting the target better…… 
After all, what have most of us “Westerners” in ex-communist countries been doing these past 25 years (however little we may have recognised it) – if not “proselytising” (in almost evangelical fashion)  for better systems of what the jargon has (significantly also since 1989) taken to calling better “governance”???

I have always had a problem with this term - which seemed to cover broadly the same issues as the discipline I had known as “public administration” – although I grant you that “governance” has given more emphasis to anti- corruption, coordination, transparency and pluralism.

Volumes have been written about the change of terms – and its significance (one of the best is Whatever Happened to Public Administration? (2004)

In 2007 I did actually use the title “Missionaries, Mercenaries or Witch-Doctors?” for a paper I presented to the Annual NISPAcee Conference (in Slovenia) but, until now, I hadn’t made the connection between my activities since 1990 and the wider process of evangelism – let alone “colonisation”.  Only today did I read an article which used an anthropological approach to interpret the sort of people who go on “missions” to “developing” countries

Most “experts” are trapped in their particular world (geographical and/or intellectual) – be it of “political science”, “sociology”, “economics”, “management”, “public administration”, “europeanisation” or “development”.

Each has its own distinctive networks of socialisation, approval and punishment. Those of us who prowl the edges of these disciplines run the risks all renegades do – of neglect, ridicule, calumny, ostracisation ….except that we were never there in the first place to be ostracised!

Is Denmark actually worth getting to???

I have been viewing, for the first time, the first part of the 2011 Scandinavian television series The Bridge – which follows a Danish policeman and a Swedish policewoman as they criss-cross the 8 kilometre Oresund Bridge (which links Copenhagen and Malmo) in the search of a killer mastermind.

The townscapes are stunning; but the characters and societies presented positively dystopian – and have you wondering whether Denmark (where I lived for a year - in 1990) is actually worth getting to!!

Coincidentally, today’s Guardian has an interview with the Danish star – Kim Bodnia   

What, the journalist asks, is the appeal of shows such as The Bridge?
"We are caught up in the darkness, the evil and the misery – we just do those best." Even though Bodnia, 48, is one of the most genial interviewees I've encountered, as he sets out this theory he sounds like a cross between Kierkegaard and Ingmar Bergman.But surely you can't be right about that. Isn't Denmark regularly voted the happiest country in Europe?
"It is, but you wouldn't guess that from our film or TV."
 True – Danish film has been not just one of the most engrossing national cinemas, but unremittingly, cherishably bleak. And Bodnia in his early days as an actor was part of this Nordic noir movement: "I was always good at playing evil……..- The Swedes got there first – their dramas were always the darkest and most upsetting, and we used to love them when I was growing up in Denmark. Now us Danes have caught up."

The popularity of recent Danish and Swedish crime films, including the adaptations of Larsson's Millennium trilogy, can possibly be traced back to Ingmar Bergman's 1962 film Winter Light, which dramatised the Swede's existential crisis…………..

The reason the series been so compelling is not so much to do with the whodunit, but rather the relationship between the 2 detectives. Yes there have been odd couples in crime dramas before (Morse and Lewis, Holmes and Watson, Clouseau and Cato, not to mention Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in HBO's marvellous new series True Detective), but none so fruitful as these two. Norén is a cop with Asperger's (even though that word never appears in the script) and so emotes very little, but solves crimes with devastating deductive skills. She takes the inversion of gender roles one step further than Sarah Lund: sure, she effectively plays the traditional male role (though she's much more rule-bound than Lund) and is equally affectless, but she confers on her male co-worker the traditional female attributes seen in detective dramas.

Getting to Denmark

Readers know that, for the past 24 years, I’ve been involved in efforts to strengthen the effectiveness of various state institutions in such countries as Azerbaijan, Bulgaria (where I am now), Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Romania and Uzbekistan. I’m trying at the moment to edit a collection of my musings over the past 5 years about this work – to which I’ve given the tentative title of “Getting to Denmark” which is the rather ironic phrase used in the last couple of decades to refer to one of the basic puzzles of development – how to create stable, peaceful, prosperous, inclusive, and honest societies (like Denmark).

We owe the phrase to Francis Fukuyama - of "End of History" and The Origins of Political Order fame – although the issue is one to which thousands of experts have bent their minds and careers for more than half a century.

Fukuyama’s small 2004 book “State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century” appeared at the end of a decade which had seen organisations such as The World Bank lead the charge against the very notion of the State. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, after all, had confirmed the anti-state, pro-greed philosophy which had begun to rule Britain and American during the Reagan and Thatcher years and became enshrined in the global ideology which has ruled us since - of ruthlessly transferring state assets to the private domain.

Fukuyama’s focus on how state capacity could be strengthened went, therefore, against the grain of a lot of thinking – although his main interest was trying to understand what makes some states successful and others fail? To what extent, he was asking, can we transfer our knowledge about what works in one state to another?

We know what ‘Denmark’ looks like, and something about how the actual Den­mark came into being historically.

But to what extent is that knowledge transferable to countries as far away historically and culturally from Den­mark as Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania?”

To be honest, his question didn’t mention Bulgaria and Romania - but, rather, Somalia. But the question remains since Bulgaria has made absolutely no progress in the last 25 years. And Romania only in the last couple of years.

Here’s how a Bulgarian friend of mine put it recently..

Now, how can we talk of any improvement when from 9.0 million in 1989 the Bulgarians today number 7.5 million? An estimated 2.0 to 2.5 million people having left for good, of which about half represent the quintessential “brain drain”. This exodus represents in my view a self-inflicted national genocide that the ruling Nomenklatura is collectively guilty of, and should one day be held accountable for.
How can we talk of improvement in the economic situation of a country which 20 years after 1989 has a GDP about the same size as it was then? What do we make of the facts that today:·      

-      about one third of the population is living below the poverty line;
·         about one third is just hovering at and above it;
·         the minimum monthly salary is less than 150 euro;
·         the minimum pension is less than 140 euro, and that is just above the (official) poverty line; you might want to learn that there are about 3 million retired people in this country – obviously a large portion of them seek additional source of revenue, such as e.g. in the grey economy; the rest rely on remittance from abroad, in order not to starve, the alternative being scavenging the garbage bins;
·         the average monthly salary is less than 350 euro – if we assume that it is realistic, which it is not, being an official number as well, but it’d be too long to dwell on here;
·         before 1989, all Gypsies were working and all their kids were studying in school; today most Gypsy parents are unemployed and on state benefits (apart from those pestering the French, the Italians, Brits etc.) and – protected by idiotic EU policies – engage in theft, damage of property and all kind of other criminal activities, begging apart; and the majority of Gypsy kids boycott schooling, whatsoever;
·         before, education, medicare, social security, recreation were all free or quasi-free of charge – no more today;
·         before, there was an incredible emphasis on culture; today cultural life in Bulgaria is a 24 carats example of the perfect disaster;
·         before, there was respect for the traditional values (we are one of the oldest peoples in the world, respectively claiming one of the richest palette of traditions), unlike today when the only “value” ruling over here is the very same – first and only one – that rules America and, after being imported a while ago, in Western Europe: making money, and fast!
·         From a reasonably well economically developing – albeit under Soviet diktat – and prospering – no unemployment, no poor, no beggars, every citizen “middle class member,” no illiteracy, no housing problem, surplus in food, export of manufactured goods – country then, today’s “democratic” Bulgaria manifests all the characteristics of a banana republic and keeps sinking in the ranking, already a Third World member by most measures. What a remarkable accomplishment, indeed!

In brief, the “transition” from “Communism” to “Democracy” has brought the Bulgarian state to its knees and the Bulgarian people have been impoverished as never before in the country’s millennia old history. Contrary to popular belief, membership into EU has further contributed to the disaster. I have explained this in detail in my recent book “Bulgaria, terra europeansis incognita”

No wonder all independent polls today report that in 60-80% of the responses, within the relevant age groups, people consider having been better off prior to the arrival of “Democracy!” The masses being nostalgic to “Communism” is the true achievement of 20+ years under “Democracy” – that is the only real result which you could, in all fairness, take pride in contributing to, if you wish, no objections here. 

Now, before you stick to me a label of Commie or another affiliation of that sort, let me inform you that, in 1982, I defected to Belgium, where I am a citizen with accomplished career of executive in the microelectronic industry, recently retired, and my Bulgarian citizenship was restored only in 1994. Moreover, in 1954 my father, a regional enterprise director in Burgas, Bulgaria, was sentenced to death by the Communist “People’s Tribunal” for “economic sabotage of the young socialist republic,” in a mock up of a trial designed to scare the populace into submission. In 1955, at the age of 35, he has been executed, leaving behind a son of 7 and a daughter of 2; my mother has not been given the body, nor have we been shown his grave.

Nobody else, therefore, could be better qualified as advocate AGAINST Communism. …..but Communism (a single party Nomenklaturocracy) and Representative Democracy (a multi-party one) are basically the same animal, the ideology being used essentially as a tool to justify how all elites stay in power.

My recent post about the result of the Romanian Presidential elections shows that Romania has at last started to pull itself out of the vicious downward spiral. Time now to explore the reasons for these divergent paths in neighbouring countries.  

This 2009 paper by Alica Mungiu Pippidi - House of Cards – building the rule of law in ECE - gives a good insight into the efforts the EU has made in the past decade to get ex-communist countries to break away from their gangster cultures. But it doesn’t begin to explain the different paths these two countries have taken in the past few years…….

Honouring the past

I wonder if it is possible for Europeans (let alone Brits) to begin to put their head around how countries such as Bulgaria, Poland and Romania have suffered, in different ways, since 1939??

At least Poland had its various strands of resistance to be proud of.

And Romania its various emblems of modernity – visible in its architecture, inventors, writing or painting (to some of which I paid tribute earlier this year in my E-book on the country – Mapping Romania).

Indeed, as I was drafting this post, I was sent a poem from a poet – Mariana Marin – reckoned to be one of the best of modern poets and akin, in her power, to Sylvia Plath.

I hurry toward death

without a purpose,

without a wedding gown,

without a dowry of gold.

Without myself.

Serene and bitter,

I hurry across my native land

As if tomorrow had already been.

Needless to say – despite my love of Romanian poets such as Marin Sorescu and Ana Blandiana, I had never heard of Marin (who died in 2003).

But Bulgaria is small – with its back between the Danube and the Balkan/Rhodope mountain ranges – almost invisible……save, that is for its tourism – at the Black Sea and skiing resorts……

But it does have some people who have the skills and energy to project the country….particularly its artistic community – to whose early 20^th century (realist) painters I devoted a small book a couple of years ago

Earlier this year year I mentioned Ivan Daraktchiev’s amazing Bulgaria: Terra Europeansis Incognita - 600 pages of superb photographs and challenging text about the history (ancient and recent) of the country. Ivan doesn’t pull his punches as you will see from the next post…….

And yesterday I visited the Neron Gallery whose owner, Rumen Manov, is one of the best dealers in older Bulgarian paintings - to discover that he has just published a large 700-page celebration of some 2000 cultural artefacts and photographs from his own personal collection - in A Fairy Tale about Bulgaria. The Intro puts it eloquently -

We the people of this piece stretch of land called Bulgaria are not the end of Europe, hidden somewhere in the end of the world – we are one of the oldest European civilizations. In our history there are thousands purposefully forgotten dates and events. But although quite destroyed, surviving documents speak eloquently and impartially. We Bulgarians love our ancient and beautiful land and this book is an attempt to remember the bright, timeless and eternal values………

 I wanted to do something that is not an encyclopaedia, not an album , not almanac not historical guide or reference book. It was like a seed in the ground. When he started to grow this idea in my mind I could see the colours of the book, as I started to build in time things so hesitated that year - two, long before I finish the book, I had the idea for it. What I saw was difficult for me to explain it to people who work with me…..  then they told me that such a thing is not possible. This genre - no, moreover, that this is a job for an Institute not an individual. But the book is my witness to many survivors and their fathers, grandfathers -some of them departed from this world, things scattered in their markets and antiquarians. 

I salute such people who, against the odds, are determined to remind locals of their heroes and traditions - however politically incorrect it may be these (stupid) days........

Time to get off the fence!

Just over 2 months ago, the British political class was panicked into promising further powers to the Scots – and an apparently independent and enobled businessman was quickly wheeled into action by the British Prime Minister to deliver on those pledges -with the help of a committee nominated by the representatives of all five political parties in the Scottish Assembly.

The timetable was incredibly tight – since there is a General Election next May. Understandably there have been a lot of cynics….

But, incredibly, the report and recommendations (which carry the agreement of all parties) has now been published and seems quite radical – with all income tax from Scottish subjects, for example, to be transferred to the Scottish parliament! This is the full report - along with initial press coverage and readers' comments

This has been quite an autumn – with two of the three places I call home showing real spirit – and giving a real example to the rest of the world.

So let’s have an end to people sitting on their hands - and professing cynicism.

What Romanian and Scottish voters have done in the past 3 months is, hopefully, just a beginning……  although the various “electoral springs” of the past 5 years should be a real warning about false optimism.

Those hoping to change the ruling systems and paradigms of power need to do three things
- do their homework – particularly (i) read up the history of how others have, over the ages, challenged power and its perversities and (ii) try better to understand the nature of the present global crisis……old solutions do not necessarily fit these times…
- cooperate more – it’s so easy to publish a book or start a website; what counts is how we reach out to others and try to create powerful networks
- show some humility – people are not waiting for leaders!! Indeed leadership is utterly discredited…… The comedian Russell Brand has attracted a lot of support recently for his diatribes against global capitalism - here’s an interesting assessment of what he has to offer.

And about time for Bulgaria to stir itself!!!

I'm reminded of a Russian proverb - Don't fear your enemies or friends! Fear the indifferent! You enemies can only destroy you; your friends can only betray you - it's the indifferent who allow your enemies to destroy you and your friends to betray you!!

Portraits of cities in despair

Last week I acquired some new toys – access to wi-fi here in Sofia and the software to download films……For someone who has been able these past 25 years to evade television, this is a dangerous temptation. Oscar Wilde put it nicely for us Presbyterians when he noted, laconically, that “the best way to resist temptation is to yield to it”…..

So I have been binge viewing The Wire which started in 2002; ran for ten years and is rated as the best (and most realistic) of television serials. 
It is a savage portrait of a decaying American city – Baltimore to be precise – and focuses on drug wars; teamster corruption; police and education bureaucracies as they try to deal with the new management techniques; and on the politics of the local newspaper. So far I’ve viewed some 20 episodes of the first two series – each of the 5 series is briefly summarised in this article

I find the focus on a city – and its various layers – much more gripping than the conventional one of a murder. The 2 writers are David Simon (who had written a couple of sociological studies of the situation) and a journalist – so the series has attracted a lot of attention from academics and been the subject of glowing reviews here and here

The dialogue is rich – but really does need sub-titles to help the viewer make sense of what the police and politicians – let alone the drug addicts and dealers – are actually saying.

I was briefly in Baltimore in 1987 – while a German Marshall Fellow based in Washington, Pittsburgh and Chicago (I just missed meeting Obama then working the South Shore as a community activist!) but remember being appalled by the Baltimore slums which are at the heart of The Wire’s drama. 

Such binge-viewing brings diminishing returns – and I don’t find it easy to relate to the American and black context. 
By way of comparison, I therefore turned to the first couple of episodes of the 1996 UK television series – Our Friends in the North - which gives a portrait not just of a city (UK's Newcastle; in the news today for the savage cuts the city faces) but one painted in nine studies over a 32 year period. with an emphasis on the various routes for those wanting to escape from or challenge these urban wastelands and their power systems. This paper offers a good analysis of the series
So far – by virtue of the historical depth - I would rate it even higher than The Wire – and it also gives us an early sighting of Daniel Craig!

ps David Simon first came to my attention a year ago - when he wrote this withering diatribe 

EU credit

This blog admits to sharing the general cynicism about the political process. All the more important therefore to recognise when positive efforts show results. Last week’s astounding victory (by a 10% margin) in the Romanian Presidential elections of a quiet outsider took everyone by surprise – he was down by the same margin after the first leg of the elections - but what happened in the subsequent two weeks has given the country its first real opportunity in 25 years to change an utterly venal system. 

Something seemed to snap this month for many Romanian citizens. They are used to smugness, arrogance, lying and deceit from their politicians – although the past two years have seen an increasing number of those politicians being actually tried, convicted and locked up. The Prime Minister (and Presidential candidate) Ponta epitomised their breed – having been groomed by a previous Prime Minister Adrian Nastase (2000-2004) who became in 2010 or so one of the first politicians to be fingered by a judiciary which was given its head by the terms of Romania’s entry to the EU in 2007 – and specifically by the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism. 
At its heart is the National Anti-Corruption Agency (DNA) whose officials bring the prosecutions which (tenured) judges at last are happy to uphold. (Not that this stops the Romanian Parliament from trying to give its deputies special immunity!)

But blatant attempts at vote-rigging in the last few weeks proved too much for voters - and seem to have been the spur for an astonishing jump of 2 million additional people voting in the second round – more than enough to wipe out the 1.5 million lead which Ponta had in the first round.

Stunning as this victory of decency seems to have been, we need to understand that it has come about only as a result of long, hard and patient work not only of a few Romanian heroes and heroines but of a group whose reputation has become a bit more tarnished these days - namely European technocrats who - as long ago as 2004 - set in place measures to make the Romanian judicial system work. It has been a long struggle which came to a head in 2012.

Ponta had been Prime Minister for only a few weeks when, in summer 2012, he sparked off a major constitutional crisis which I covered on the blog during July of that year and summarised in this post. Tom Gallagher (who has given us a couple of books about post 1989 Romania - one of which is significantly called "Theft of a Nation") gave the best overview then

A 22-page report from the European commission says the new government, led by Ponta, has flouted the constitution, threatened judges, illegally removed officials in an arbitrary manner, and tampered with the democratic system of checks and balances in order to try to secure the impeachment of President Traian Basescu……....The crisis erupted because of the massive over-reaction by the new government of Victor Ponta to court decisions sentencing political figures, previously thought to be beyond the reach of the law, to prison terms. Romania had joined the EU (in 2007) on terms that largely suited a restricted post-communist elite that benefited from discretionary privatisations of the economy while pulling the strings in many of the key institutions of state.

A once lively independent media was mainly captured by the new power magnates. Parliament devised rules for itself that made challenges from new social forces very hard and protected its members from prosecution. 

Aware that there was a real danger of Romania becoming a festering political slum within the EU, Brussels officials showed firmness in one key area, the justice sector. The Romanian elite agreed, in 2004, to Brussels having oversight of the justice system even after entry in 2007.The EU has shown consistency by insisting on a proper separation of powers and the gradual creation of a justice system not impeded from going after top politicians, businessmen, civil servants and judges who face credible charges of corruption. 

For the last eight years there has been a messy power struggle between the old guard, determined to hold the line against encroachments on their power, and a small group of reformers in the justice system and the party of Democratic Liberalism that held office until April. They have mainly been sustained by President Traian Basescu, a rough-hewn and unconventional former ship captain in the Romanian merchant navy. 

Basescu is hated by much of the elite because he defected from their ranks and decided to try and make his legacy the cleaning up of one of the most venal political systems in Europe. In the process, leading figures in his own party have not been spared. This led to a string of defections that explain why his most implacable enemies in the Social Liberal Union were able to return to government this spring (2012).Their original intentions had been to wait until parliamentary elections in the autumn before removing Basescu. They were predicted to produce a big win for them due to the unpopularity of tough austerity measures that Basescu had championed in 2010-11.

But panic set in with the prison sentence for Nastase. Prudence was ditched entirely when the British journal Nature published an investigation revealing that 85 pages of the new Prime Minister’s thesis had simply been copy-pasted from other sources.It was decided that Basescu would have to be eliminated from the political game straight away. But that could only be accomplished by neutralising bodies like the Constitutional Court and the Ombudsman, seizing control of the official gazette so that the government could publish or suppress whatever laws and rulings it pleased, and removing the heads of the bicameral parliament in contravention of the rules for this.

President Basescu was unpopular – being associated with austerity measures and being a hyperactive loudmouth. More than 80% of those who voted in the 2012 referendum called to impeach him therefore wanted him out (although the President had called for a boycott) but it failed since only 46% of voters turned out. After this, things quietened down. A report earlier this year from The Sustainable Government Indicators project gives a detailed analysis of events since 2012.

In a few days he will stand down – and could well then face prosecution himself by virtue of his role (as Minister of Transport) in the privatisation of Romania’s shipping fleet for what some people allege to have been too low a figure. As far as I am aware noone suggests that Basescu benefitted....For Romania's sake, I hope this issue does not become another scandal.....

It has taken all of 2 years for Ponta to get the "come-uppance" he so richly deserves.
And for the EC to begin to deserve the Nobel prize it won a couple of years ago

Psycho-analysing a nation

The Scots have a lot to be proud of – gaining, throughout the centuries, a high reputation for intellectual, commercial and engineering endeavour – and for honest behaviour. A reputation that is global from a mix of ambition and evictions which have spilled us to the far ends of the earth.

And yet, 2003 saw the publication of a book with the title “The Scots’ Crisis of Confidence” which suggests that Scots have inhibiting beliefs, attitudes and general mindset which lead to conformity. Much of the mindset arises from Scotland's Calvinist past. A sympathetic review (there were other, angry ones) suggests that these include -

·         A strong tendency to see the world in strict either/or terms, particularly worthless/damned; good/bad; right/wrong.
·         A tendency to treat a person's mistakes or miscalculations as the result of deliberate bad faith rather than an error. This means that if anyone makes a mistake or does something judged to be wrong then they are personally accountable for it and no excuses or extenuating circumstances are permitted in defence. It also means that people's motives for action are often viewed as suspect. This is a viewpoint which leads to cynicism and blame and is one of the reasons why Scots feel overly fearful of making mistakes.
·         An overriding tendency to believe that criticism (and blame) are helpful and lead to improvement. This means that appreciation tends to get squeezed out and the importance of motivation downplayed or forgotten about altogether.
·         A strong injunction to `know your place' and not get above your station. This exhortation comes from Scotland's egalitarian values but paradoxically, in a society where people do not set out in life equal all it does is reinforce class (and gender) inequality.
·         A sense of everyone's fate being bound up with others. This clearly can have positive aspects but in a critical judgmental climate it can heighten people's fear of doing anything different for fear of being criticised or cast out. It also leads to an inadequate sense of privacy and boundaries. In England there is a prevailing notion of what people choose to do in their own life is their business (an Englishman's home is his castle) but in Scotland it is common for people to believe that they may have to account to others for their actions (e.g. where they live, how they spend money, educate their children etc.) or even for what they think. This, and the previous points, all contribute to the common Scots' fear of drawing attention to yourself.
·         Scottish culture is extremely masculine in character. Even the emotional, tender side of Scottish culture is the preserve of Robert Burns and the Burns cult - not women. Over the centuries Scottish women's contribution to society at large has not only been neglected, but also their lives have been particularly restricted and shaped by tight notions of `respectability'. Since women account for over fifty per cent of the population this pressure on women to conform has led to a great restriction on Scottish potential.
·         A strong Utopian tendency in Scottish public life where people commonly believe that we must all build the New Jerusalem - a perfectly fair, just society where money does not matter. The contrast with America is that whereas the American dream is a dream for individuals to create their own life, the Scottish dream is a dream of collective redemption for Scotland.

But this summer, the world’s journalists who flocked to the country seemed to see a rather different, more buoyant, people. My E-book The Independence Argument – home thoughts from abroad tries to give a sense of how that argument was conducted.

But, in the event, only 45% of the voters chose the independence path. 

Does this therefore prove the point about lack of confidence? 

But in what sense do we (or have we) lack(ed) self-confidence?  
Why did so many Scots have it in the 18th and 19th centuries?
And when did we/they lose it?

Or are the confident Scots all ex-pats?

How might this be measured? 

Is the situation static – or changing? 

Assuming we think it’s a bad thing, how might it be changed? 

What sort of measures have been adopted? When? With what support mechanisms? 

These are the questions I have from reading the book…although the book's preface makes it very clear that the author is impatient with demands for proof...

I spent the 70s and 80s working in the political and administrative heartland of Scotland – with students, professionals, community activists and fellow-politicians - and I agree with the author, Carol Craig, that “failure” (and the fear thereof) was a central reality for an unacceptable number of working class Scottish families.

“Born to Fail” was indeed the phrase some of us latched onto in 1973 in the run-up to the first election for the new Strathclyde Region (responsible for most of the municipal services for half of the Scottish population). It had been the title of a challenging report from a national Children’s Charity which revealed the disproportionate number of families in the West of Scotland who suffered from the multiple handicap (indeed stigma) of unemployment, poor housing, poor health and poor educational achievement.

My own experience since 1968 as a reforming councillor had made me angry with the treatment such people got from local bureaucrats – and had demonstrated how positively people responded if given the opportunity to engage in self-help activity and social enterprise…..

The new Region made a priority of community development from 1976; developed local participative structures and special programmes which ran for 2 decades and was then absorbed into the strategy of the new Scottish Government - work which is well caught in some recent reflections - Supporting People Power. But, frankly, it made little dent on the malaise – which was down (in my view) to decisions of global multinationals, governments…..and…. drug barons

And that’s where I would question Carol’s thesis. It’s a great read – on a par (as far as historical dissection goes) with Arthur Herman’s (rather more positive) The Scottish Enlightenment – the Scots invention of the modern world. She’s unearthed some apt quotations from writers over the centuries – as you would expect of a doctor of literature- and also gives real food for thought with her comments about Jung and Positive Psychology; tables which compare Scottish, English and Irish characteristics; and fascinating comments about how we differ on the deductive/inductive spectrum. 

The introduction does make the important point that she has moved in her life from a strongly political perspective to one that tried to bring in the social and psychological elements. As she puts it on page 24 of the new edition “I simply attempt to add psychological, behavioural and cultural dimensions thus making for a richer and more complex picture”. In amplification she suggests that

“the thinker who has contributed most to our understanding of the dangers of “fragmentation”…is Ken Wilber…who asserts that there are two important dimensions; interior and exterior and individual and collective. These then combine to make four quadrants – psychological, behavioural, cultural and structural”. 

This is an important framework – even if Wilber is now a bit discredited.

But the author then doesn’t really deal with the 2 “collective” quadrants and therefore leaves herself open to the sort of attack she gets from radical sociologists and Marxists. If I had read the book when it was first published (2003) I might well have complained that it made no reference to the efforts a lot of us were making in the 70s and 80s to deal with that sense of failure and self-confidence by developing community structures and social enterprise (not sure which quadrant that’s in). The making of an empowering profession is a good record of those endeavours…..

But the fact remains that social indices in those communities which concerned us all of 40 years ago are even worse than before……the lack of confidence therefore for me seems to be largely a class thing....although the author does make an important point about the signals returnees and their spouses pick up......Extroverts clam up......perhaps that's a "small-nation" syndrome? 

With the benefit of the last 24 years I've had living in other countries, my main critical comment relates to the lack of comparative (eg European) references. 

How cultural behaviour is shaped and changes I find increasingly fascinating - “Path dependency” is the term the academics have used for the grip tradition seems to have on the way we think and behave in our social and political activities. Its 25 years since the wall fell – but little seems to have changed in the political mindset of Bulgarians and Romanians – although things are definitely now on the move in Romania in the judicial system. 

When I first worked in Hungary in 1994 I was very struck by what one of my (older) Hungarian team colleagues said – that their history had taught them to be disappointed in their hopes…..By what fusion of education, family circumstances and communications does a society come to develop values of hope, disappointment, fatalism? I would like to see much more discussion of such issues – and Carol Craig’s book is one of the few which could help us explore this field