Helping People Help Themselves

“Development” is a strange word. It’s been prefixed to so many other words – community, economic, rural, regional, social, urban – that we tend to overlook it. It generally has a positive connotation – although only when used within the boundaries of a particular country. Something seems to go seriously wrong when “development” is something encouraged by outsiders.

That, at any rate, is the general view now taken by “development theorists” – the people who write about and advise what used to be called “developing” countries. In the 1970s and 1980s these were predominantly economists but “good governance” specialists became active in the 1990s.

The development field has become a highly contested one – with writers from the political extremes sharing a highly critical approach to the conventional wisdom coming from centrist liberals. The right-wing (Bauer, Easterley) consider that Foreign Aid just builds up “dependence” whilst the left-wing accuse the centrist liberals of aiding and abetting imperialism. These are the essential currents at the heart of the current British debate about the cuts to the UK Foreign Aid budget.

Foreign Aid seems to be a very distinctive topic – almost sui generis. But scratch the other “development” types – social, rural, regional, urban, educational – and we find the same pattern of someone in authority trying to get others to behave in certain ways. Economists tend to be the dominant voices but the occasional sociologist, agronomist, pedagogue even anthropologist pops up.

But truly interdisciplinary works are very difficult to find – until now the most profound writer on the subject for me was Robert Chambers whose field is rural development. But I have just come across an article Helping People help themselves – toward a theory of autonomy, written 20 years ago by an adviser to ex-World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz, which seems to me to get to the heart of the development conundrum. And the article led to a book Helping People help themselves – from the World Bank to an alternative philosophy of technical assistance ; David Ellerman (2006) 

If development is seen basically as autonomous self-development, then there is a subtle paradox or conundrum in the whole notion of development assistance: how can an outside party ("helper") assist those who are undertaking autonomous activities (the "doers") without overriding or undercutting their autonomy?

How can a development agency actually help people help themselves as opposed to giving various forms of unhelpful help? The topic is related to the presumption in favour of inclusion, popular participation, involvement, and ownership as well as the suspicion that externally applied "carrots and sticks" do not "buy" sustainable policy changes.

We cast a wide and vigorously multidisciplinary net to construct the intellectual background. Helping theory is approached by looking at the commonalties in quite different examples of relationships where one party, the "helper," is trying to help certain others, here called the "doers," to better help themselves. The target example of the helper-doer relationship is the relationship between a development agency and a client country but the theme is also explored in pedagogy, management theory, psychotherapy, community organization, and community education. The helper-doer relationships and prominent authors or "gurus" are (see Appendix for representative quotes):

* Albert Hirschman on the relationship of a development advisor and a government,

* E.F. Schumacher on the relationship between a development agency and a developing country,

* Saul Alinsky on the relation of a community organizer to the community,

* Paulo Freire on the relationship between an educator and a peasant (or urban poor) community,

* Soren Kierkegaard on the relation between a spiritual counselor and a student,

* John Dewey on the teacher-learner relationship,

* Carl Rogers on the therapist-client relationship, and 

* Douglas McGregor on the (Theory Y) relationship between a manager and workers. 

The argument is not that all these relationships are the same, but that there are commonalties when the party in the "helper" role acts so as to help the parties in the "doer" role to help themselves. The fact that such diverse thinkers in different fields arrive at interestingly similar conclusions increases our confidence in the common principles.

Some principles of a Broader Helping Theory:

·       I Starting from Where the Doers Are

·       2. Seeing Through the Doers' Eyes

·       3: Helper Cannot Impose Change on Doers

·       4: Help as Benevolence is Ineffective

·       5 Doers in the Driver's Seat Helping Theory Applied to Development Assistance

 

Ivan Illich’s neglected influence on my generation

 How did a priest manage to captivate me (and others) for the best part of a decade in the 1970s? I was, after all, a politician – if a reforming one – with increasing responsible positions as, first, a Chairman of a (newly-established) municipal social work committee and then as Secretary of the ruling group of Scotland’s (and Europe’s) largest Region and its strategist for its central policy relating to multiple deprivation – or social justice as it would be called these days. What, you might well ask, was I doing with a dangerous anarchist who challenged the claims of health and educational professionals? 

I had, admittedly, been open to community action since first encountering the likes of Saul Alinsky and Paulo Freire as I fought the local housing bureaucracy with local residents in the late 1960s – as you can see in the long 1977 article  Community Development – its political and administrative challenge.  Alinsky was more of a tactical street-fighter; Freire the deep and inspirational thinker about self-help. But it was Illich who supplied the hard weaponry

The seeds were probably sown a decade earlier – at university – when I was exposed to Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) and its demolition of those who claimed universal truths. The article given by the link is a critical reassessment of the 2 volume work after 50 years but can’t detract from the powerful impact it had on this reader in the early 1960s. Even at school, I had learned to be a “freethinker” and to be suspicious of what JK Galbraith called “the conventional wisdom”. 

Illich’s critique in the 1970s of the monstrous arrogance of health and educational professionals in claiming to know best was, therefore, pushing at an open door for the likes of us….In all the talk of the dominant narrative of Neoliberalism, this element in my generation’s formation tends to be forgotten.

Social Democracy was undermined to a large extent because my generation stopped believing in the big battalions – not least because of the power of such writers as Illich. In so doing, we committed the first but unnoticed unilateral disarmament! It was the Trade Unions and the working class who had given democracy its teeth. But – as individualists and members of identity tribes - we came to scorn organisational power and have allowed Big Money to subvert democracy with its lobbying, Think Tanks and Corporate Media. 

I am not, of course, doing Illich justice when I paint his contribution as one largely of criticism. There was also a deep caring and compassion for the ordinary person – and their capabilities. But, somehow, we western readers tended to take that for granted – such was the power of his dismantling of the claims of the powerful. 

Some Reading on Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich

https://www.noemamag.com/a-forgotten-prophet-whose-time-has-come/ a short article

The Prophet of Cuernavaca – Ivan Illich and the Crisis of the West by Todd Hartch (2015) is a recent testimony to the man.

The Challenges of Ivan Illich – a collective reflection; by L Hainacki (2002)

We Make the Road by Walking – conversations on education and social change; Myles Horton and Paulo Freire (1990) Myles Horton was a great American practitioner of working class education who teamed up with Freire for this book

Tools for Conviviality; is a short book by Ivan Illich (1975) which gives a sense of his style.

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Adulation and Narcissism in Leaders

It is too easy these days to fault politicians. They have become the go-to scapegoat. And we should always be suspicious when a scapegoat is offered as the explanation for society’s ills….In Germany, in the 1930s, it was the Jews; post-war America chose the “Commies”; Trump and the Brexiteers immigrants. 

The account Tom Bower gave in his book about Blair’s record in government – Broken Vows – Tony Blair, the tragedy of power (2016) which I reviewed in the last post but one was, quite bluntly, a bit of a travesty. But it did indicate some of Blair’s personal weaknesses – in particular indecisiveness, cowardice and downright fear of his Finance Minister, Gordon Brown, to whom he deferred on all budgetary matters (if not also of his spin-man Alastair Campbell).

And few of us needed reminding of Blair’s greed, superficiality and delusions (of grandeur) which became very obvious once he left power in 2007.

Blair is not the first political leader to register psychological issues – and certainly not the last. His immediate successor, Gordon Brown, was a bit of a bully (with all the implied weaknesses) but had the compensatory gifts of high intelligence and political nous. The walking disaster that is Boris Johnson has no such excuses.

Trump’s narcissism has made us all more aware of the neglect of political psychology as an explanatory factor in leadership. In the 1970s I remember a wonderful book written by a reforming Labour MP Private Member Leo Abse (1973) which applied Freudian analysis to the issue of the social liberalisation process of the Wilson Labour governments.

But we needed The Psychology of Politicians ed by Ashley Weinberg (2012) to get the full picture.

As a rather reserved strategic politician in Europe’s largest regional authority (in Scotland) I had in the late 1970s been briefly tempted to go to Parliament – with a strong chance of victory – but had decided against simply because I saw the damage it did to your psyche. I knew a few MPs quite well – and they all had this harassed look in their eyes

Amazon arrogance - they actually couldn't care less about customers

I’m delighted to report that Amazon have locked me out of my account. I used Amazon these past few years only when I’m in my summer house in the mountains – otherwise the combination of bookshops here in Bucharest and the internet Zlibrary more than satisfy my needs. Indeed I have an embarrassment of unread books – particularly virtual ones in pdf format (more than 500).

Amazon have recently started a security coding system which depends exclusively on smart phones – which I refuse to adopt. So I can no longer use my password to check in to my account. I tried this evening to alert them to this – but had first to go through a security check which I failed since I was unable to give them

-       my precise postal code; I gave them the correct address but one of numbers of the 6 digit postal code was wrong

-       3 titles of recent purchases (which were late last summer – which they could confirm - but I could remember only one title since I have looked at literally hundreds of books since then);

-       or the number of my current credit card (which is out of date and I have destroyed as the bank advised)   

They can assert they were just looking after my interests but to lock me out when 99% of the detail was correct is sheer stupidity. I was feeling guilty about continuing to use Amazon (even spasmodically) – they have done such huge damage to

-       the book trade

-       independent bookshops

-       national budgets

     pollution in the skies as they fly stuff we don't need so quickly

So I am relieved that they have been so stupid as to lock out someone who had been a good customer of theirs for more than 20 years – needing books which were simply not available in countries such as Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Romania.

The only drawback is that I will in future be unable to send books to my daughters…..

One final thought - as far as Amazon is concerned, I was an intruder trying to gain access to an account unlawfully. You would have thought that they would have subsequently sent me a warning note about this. The fact that they haven;t done so - 20 hours after the attempt - suggests to me that they have accepted that this was a genuine attempt by a customer but that they don't actually care.....

Assessing a government’s record

Is a balanced judgement on a government ever possible?

I’ve just finished a book about New Labour under Tony Blair. He was PM for 10 years – from 1997 to 2007, leaving office just before the global financial crisis broke – and this particular book, “Broken Vows – Tony Blair, the tragedy of power”, published almost a decade later, purports to be an assessment of his government’s record - at least in the fields of health, education, immigration, energy and “the wars”.

Tom Bower is a well-known British investigative journalist who has profiled commercial rogues such as Robert Maxwell, Tiny Rowlands, Conrad Black, Bernie Ecclestone (of F1 fame) and Richard Desmond let alone characters such as Klaus Barbie but offers more sympathetic profiles of Prince Charles, Simon Cowell and Boris Johnson.

His bibliography lists the books he relied on – basically 40 memoirists and not a single one of the many writers whose serious analytical accounts of the period were available if only Bower had had the patience to read serious material.

It’s significant, for example, that no mention is made – whether in the bibliography or the text – of a book which had attempted an assessment both fair and accessible - The Verdict – did Labour Change Britain? by Polly Toynbee and David Walker issued several years earlier in 2010. 

And that is certainly the question by which it is reasonable to hold both Blair and New Labour to account. “Modernisation” was Blair’s mantra – conservatism the enemy whether it rested in the trade unions or the civil service – both of whom he regarded as the immediate enemy.

Indeed such was the suspicion of the civil service from the very beginning that virtually all New Labour Ministers threw their senior civil servants’ advice notes into the bin. They had their manifesto – strongly enforced by both Blair and Brown, the “Iron Chancellor”.

Not only Civil Servants but the Cabinet was treated with utter contempt – if it had not been for the Blair-Brown tension which would often break out in open conflict, the resultant system might have lapsed into total “groupthink”…..

Sadly, however, Bower doesn’t bother to use (or even make reference to) the excellent analysis available in British Government in Crisis (2005) by Christopher Foster who had been both an adviser and consultant but prefers instead to rest on a critique of the vainglorious Michael Barber of “deliverology” infamy

Strangely, only in Education had New Labour come with coherent plans for the future. Bower’s story is one of the system staggering from one crisis to another – with no lessons learned other than the need to return to Conservative policies which Blair not so secretly had always favoured. 

These days, we associate New Labour with four main things – PR “spin”, the Iraq war; a globalist encouragement of immigration; and huge budgetary increases for health and education. But there was a positive side which even an ex-adviser to Margaret Thatcher recognises in this critical review of “Broken Vows”.   

But – despite the claims in the Introduction - Bower’s book is NOT an attempt to judge a government – let alone dispassionately. As is abundantly clear in the devastating picture of Blair portrayed in the book’s opening chapter and Afterword, this is a hatchet job on a man whose greed, superficiality and delusions were already evident to most of us 

Those wanting a serious analysis of New Labour should better spend their time on -

New Labour – a critique Mark Bevir (2005) Not the easiest of reads – the author is a post-modernist academic if also a social democrat – but starts from the position that New Labour used slippery language and ignored its traditions. But excellent on options and traditions ignored...

The Verdict – did Labour Change Britain? Polly Toynbee and David Walker (2010) written by journalists sympathetic to Labour who supply a reasonably balanced assessment – if one rather light on references.

In Transit

One of the books of which I’m most proud is In Transit – notes on good governance which I drafted in 1998 - after almost a decade of experience of working and living in Czechia, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Latvia on projects building, we hoped, more open institutions of local government and regional development. I had come to that work in 1990 after 20 years of trying to get our Scottish system operating in a more citizen-friendly way – so I felt I knew what people in central Europe were up against.

The book was, unusually, written very much for the younger generation in those parts of central Europe and central Asia I was working with; picking out the key features of the new systems they were being asked to run; and tried to identify some pointers for how to effect change in local and central government state bodies. I remain pretty satisfied with the book – although I might have made a better link between the case study of strategy work in Scotland and the rest of the book

In the early days of what used to be called “transition”, people sometimes asked me what, as a western consultant, I could bring to the task of crafting state bodies in the countries of the old soviet bloc. They didn’t realise that, in many respects, Scotland was, until the 80s and 90s, culturally and institutionally, more socialist than countries such as Hungary. The scale of municipal power was particularly comprehensive in Scotland where the local council still owned three quarters of the housing stock, 90% of education and most of the local services - including buses. Only health and social security escaped its control: these were handled by Central Government.

Local government simply could not cope with such massive responsibilities (although such a view was rejected at the time). This was particularly evident in the larger housing estates in the West of Scotland which had been built for low-income "slum" dwellers in the immediate post-war period -

·       there were few services in these areas

·       employment was insecure

·       schools in such areas had poor educational achievement and were not attractive to teachers/headmasters

·       local government officials treated their staff in a dictatorial way

·       who in turn treated the public with disdain

The contemptuous treatment given by local council services seemed to squash whatever initiative people from such areas had. They learned to accept second-class services. Behind this lay working and other conditions so familiar to people in Central Europe

·       the culture was one of waiting for orders from above. There were few small businesses since the Scots middle class have tended to go into the professions rather than setting up one's own business

·       work was in large industrial plants

·       for whose products there was declining demand

·       rising or insecure unemployment         

·       monopolistic provision of local public services

·       and hence underfunding of services - queues and insensitive provision

·       hostility to initiatives, particularly those from outside the official system.

·       elements of a "one-party state" (the Labour party has controlled most of local government in Scotland for several decades).

I’m thinking now of updating the “In Transit” book but thought it would be useful first to plot how western and eastern European authors have deal generally with developments in their respective parts of Europe.

How english-speaking authors from Eastern and Western Europe have tried to make sense of each other’s societies developments since 1990

	Western Europe authors	Eastern Europe authors
On Western Europe changes	A lot of Western European writers have covered developments in West Europe since 1990 eg Empire of Democracy – the remaking of the West since the Cold War 1971-2017 by Simon Reid-Hendry (2019)	Ivan Krastev – “After Europe” (2017) Bulgaria’s best-known intellectual argues that the democratic ideals that were promoted beyond Europe’s borders have now been undercut within the European polity itself. Ryszgard Legutko – a right-wing Polish philosopher argues in The Demon in Democracy – totalitarian temptations in free societies (2016) that the more the cause of liberal-democratic equality progresses, the more indignantly the remaining instances of inequality are felt. Thus “equality resembles a monster with an insatiable appetite: regardless of how much it has eaten, the more it devours, the hungrier it becomes.”  I would be interested to hear about other publications
On Eastern Europe changes	The Great Rebirth – lessons from the victory of capitalism over communism ; Anders Aslud and Simeon Djankov (2015) which is one of the very few books which tells the story from the view point of some of the key actors in most of the eastern countries at the time – with all the strengths and weaknesses that genre involves Although most historians find it easier to focus on individual countries, From peoples into nations – a history of Eastern Europe; by John Connelly (2020) reviewed here and with an interview here.  Aftershock – a journey into Eastern Europe’s Forgotten Dreams 2017) is based on interviews with people the author, young American journalist John Feffer, met in the early 90s and then, 25 years later, went back to interview. The interviews can actually be accessed here   SO NOT MANY covering the Region as a whole. Most westerners concentrate on a particular country. As Romania is the country I know best, I have selected a few texts which throw light on that country’s development - Romania Redivivus; Alex Clapp (NLR 2017) - Robert Kaplan  - In Europe’s Shadow – two cold wars and a thirty-year journey through Romania and beyond; (2016) a fascinating book by an American journalist who has had a soft spot for Romania since the beginning of his career. Great breadth of reading - Tom Gallagher - Romania and the European Union – how the weak vanquished the strong; (2009) great narrative by a Scottish historian; and Theft of a Nation – Romania since Communism (2005) powerful critique	Ivan Krastev and S Holmes – “The Light that Failed – a reckoning” (2019) which is one of the few books to assess how Eastern Europe has fared after 30 years. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi - Europe's Burden - promoting good governance across. borders" (2019) which looks at the nature and impact of European technical assistance on the development of institutional capacity in central europe and "Neighbourhood" countries SO NOT MANY covering the Region as a whole. East European social scientists and journalists cover their own countries eg Vladimir Tismaneanu and Marius Stan's Romania Confronts Its Communist Past: Democracy, Memory, and Moral Justice (2018) – both Romanians. The first who left Romania in the 1980s and returned briefly in the early 2000s to chair a Presidential commission into the impact of communism on the country, the second who still works in Romania. The book is a very personal take on how that Presidential Commission fared.  Cornel Ban - Ruling Ideas – how global neoliberalism goes local (2016) a left-wing Romanian critique of how neoliberalism got its grip on countries such as Romania and Spain Romania – borderland of Europe; Lucian Boia (2001) Very readable and well translated study by a Romanian historian

 

The Fourth Dimension?

It’s strange how our mind operates on single tracks but suddenly makes a connection with an idea that has been travelling on a parallel track.

This past year has seen regular posts about the idea behind the blog’s new title – that writers who work across boundaries (be they cultural or intellectual) tend to think more creatively and to express their ideas more clearly than those stuck in the old silos. I even developed a table of some 20 writers to prove the point.

Completely separately, there have also been regular posts about cultural values – referring to the work of people such as de Hofstede; Ronald Inglehart; FransTrompenaars; Richard Lewis (of When Cultures Collide fame) and Richard Nesbitt.  That body of writing emphasises the distinctiveness of cultural values and is most graphically illustrated in the Inglehart cultural map of the world which is best explained in this brochure. Those were the days when a body of literature called “path dependency” was raising important questions about how “sticky” cultural values were…viz how difficult it is to change national behavioural traits

There is one guy who could have helped me make the connection between these two very separate streams of thinking – and that is the rather neglected figure of Ronnie Lessem. Ronnie who? I hear you asking. I first came across his work in the early 1990s when I bought a copy of “Global Management Principles“ (1989) which impressed me very much. It - 

classifies the management literature (and styles) of the twentieth century using the points of the compass.   North" is traditional rational bureaucracy: "West" celebrates the animality of the frontier spirit: "East" the developmental side of the collectivity; and "South" the metaphysical He then goes on to argue that organisations and individuals also go through such phases. It is undoubtedly the most inter-disciplinary of the management books: and gives very useful vignettes of the writers and their context. 

And utterly original – as you would expect of someone raised in Zimbabwe in southern Africa who then moved to the UK. His work blazed a trail, however, which few have chosen to follow – it’s just too original! His personal style of writing was a bit daring for academia in those days! And his references sometimes too wide – in the opening pages he quotes approvingly the development style of the ultimately-disgraced Bank for Credit and Commerce

In a way, it embodies the thesis-antithesis-synthesis approach beloved by those who refuse to accept the Manichean view of the world and argue instead for “balance” (Giddens; Mintzberg) - except that it adds a fourth dimension! 

Which is my cue for an (overdue) discussion of this issue of World Views. In the 1970s anthropologist Mary Douglas developed what she called the “grid-group” typology, consisting of four very different “world views” – what she calls hierarchist, egalitarian, individualist and fatalist. This came to be known as “Cultural Theory”. I came across Mary Douglas’ theory only in 2000, thanks to public admin theorist Chris Hood’s “The Art of the State” which uses her typology brilliantly to help us understand the strengths, weaknesses and risks of the various world views. 

I am aware of only one book-length study which compares and contrasts these various models “Way of life theory – the underlying structure of world views, social relations and lifestyles” – a rather disjointed dissertation by one, Michael Edward Pepperday (2009) an introduction to which is here. Those wanting to know more can read this post which might encourage them to have a look at this short article “A Cultural Theory of Politics” which shows how the approach has affected a range of disciplines. Grid, group and grade – challenges in operationalising cultural theory for cross-national research (2014) is a longer and, be warned, very academic article although its comparative diagrams are instructive

Lessem Resource

Management development through cultural diversity (1995)

Integral Polity – integrating nature, society, culture and the economy (2015)