wood and wisdom

There is little more satisfying in winter than raising a good axe above your head in the open air and bringing it down with a swift, so professional, movement to split a suitably sawn and well-seasoned chunk of wood! I take some pride in having heated myself, in my recent sojourns here, only with the wood from the branches I sawed from the 2 garden trees in the autumn (OK I take the nip off the air in my study with a burst from the electric heater!).
I made the mistake last week of using some logs which had not dried properly in the spare room – and so have now chopped some which have been in the open air and therefore season better. They are now in the bedroom, having a last bit of seasoning in the warmth of the bedroom (whose stove went out 15 hours ago but whose bricks continue to keep the room iincredibly warm). I will not need to light the fire again beforee my departure tomorrow. I’m off to Sofia for a couple of weeks - some business on a small training project I have there; meet old friends (including the wine!); and visit the art galleries for more paintings.
I’ve just taken the laptop out on the verandah after clearing the ashes from the bedroom fire to protect it from the ash particles and find that I can sit comfortably on the verandah – in mid January at 1,400 metres in the Carpathians (well for 15 minutes!) Great sounds – birds, folk music from somewhere and the inevitable sound of a power saw.
I’m now in the last stage of the paper relating to Chinese adminsitrative reform – over the week-end it grew an important section summarising (for me and the Chinese) the last 40 years’ history of reform efforts! This morning, therefore, I had to return to the start and explain the purpose of and audience for the paper. It has been written for anyone engaged in discussions about administrative reform in China – whether Chinese or foreign. The project I was to have led last year there was not only designed to assist indigenous reform efforts – but also service an EU-China dialogue about administrative reform. Perhaps, as a good Scot, I feel guilty about walking away from that – and want to make amends! Right now I am looking at a blank section with the headline „Coda” in which I want to leave some brief, final injunctions about reform endeavours. Any ideas? I think I want to say something about "balance" - relating to recent comments here about that. At the moment I have only two extended quotations – the first a TS Eliot poem which always crops up in my writing; the second Rosabeth Kanter’s 10 rules for stifling initiative.
I’ll sign off with the poem -

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years -
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again; and now under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

TS Eliot; The Four Quartets

Missing history of administrative reform

Worked non-stop all Saturday on this briefing paper on Chinese administrative reform (Friday’s draft is here). Two developments got the creative juices flowing - first I discovered a method for giving my website papers higher visibility on the internet - I simply choose a title for a blog posting which is the same as one already on the first page of google search and then ensure there is a link in the blog post to my paper! So, as I scribble (or whatever word now captures the key tapping we all do now) I can imagine my phrases and insights hitting a spellbound global audience. Dream on!
Then, as I was grappling with the question of the lessons from 40 years of reform efforts in Western Europe, I was suddenly reminded of my 1999 book - in which I had tried to explain west european public admin reform to a central european audience. I was amazed to find that the argument and text still stands up pretty well eleven years on – and have duly uploaded it to the website - In Transit - notes on Good Governance Part I. What I had tried to do in chapter Four of that book was to emphasise how varied were the „explanations” we had in the 1970s about the sort of problem which required „reform”; and, therefore, how differently (despite the talk of New Public Management - NPM) reform programmes developed in different countries. I had also explained how, in the 1970s, the new breed of policy analysts had almost given up on the hope of getting the bureaucracy to operate in the interests of the public - „disjointed incrementalism” was the best that could be hoped for. And how public choice theory came along to give an ideological explanation and justification for what came to be called NPM. I was fighting bureaucracy in the 1970s and 1980s with a different (and simpler) theory – what I called the „pincer approach”- a combination of community action and strategic management led by politicians and explained in paper 50 of my website – Organisational Learning and Political Amnesia. In the 1980s, I was using the pamphlets of the Institute of Economic Affairs (on issue like road-pricing) with my students to show the practical applications to which economics could be put – never imagining that such neo-liberal thinking would soon dominate government policies. But in the mid 1980s I remember reading a long article by a neo-liberal American academic in The Economist about the need to introduce a split between purchasers and providers into the health system – and sending it with a warning note to the (Labour) Opposition spokesman in Parliament.
The technocratic fix of (young) consultants misses completely this politico-historical side of things – and I realise that my personal history (and extensive reading and international experience) gives me a fairly unique perspective on this issue of administrative reform. Anyway it encourages me to think I have!

And that is a good opening for a bit of trumpet-blowing. I got a very nice note a few weeks back from Tom Gallagher (author of Theft of a Nation – Romania since Communism and Illusion of Freedom; Scotland under nationalism and many other books) whom I had met up with for the first time in Bucharest in late November. He has kindly given me permission to reproduce his note which read -

“I came to Carpathian Musings fairly late in the day but I soon grew to appreciate the intellectual fire-power and also the aesthetic pleasures to be derived from following your thoughts and also your experiences in Romanian city and countryside. Indeed, I can't think of any other blog that works so well at very different levels; you are able to switch (seemingly effortlessly) from discussing the current deep politico-economic crisis, to appraising the books you are reading, casting a beedy eye on the delusional university world, to passing on your experiences as a bon vivant, sampling the cornucopia of seasonal foods, wines and your trophies from the fairs and antique market. You also explore your own life in an honest and constructive way. So you manage to be a cross between JK Galbraith, Fred Halliday, Egon Ronay and Dennis Healey - quite a feat”.

Praise indeed - particularly from such a writer! I have been trying to insert it as one of my list of quotes in the right-hand column of the site but have been foiled so far!

Morning surf

I gave a link yesterday to an interesting site – Musings of an Amateur Trader – which consistently gives detailed and self-confident assessments of the political and economic health of countries. Wow, I said to myself, this guy really gets around. Now I think I know why – it’s hardly a blog (it contains no profile or statement of purpose) rather the presentations from a risk agency called STRATFOR headed by a financier called George Friedman. Today’s entry is a detailed forecast of political and financial events in 2011 – with the text occasionally indicating STRATFOR’s methods or assessments (when the penny dropped). So this is the real stuff we are getting – for free!
While I was searching for info on them, I came across (a) a long and fascinating post from another forecasting blog on Stratfor reliability and also what looks to be a thoughtful blog by management consultant (!!) John Hagel.

I’m remiss in not having looked at the great Eurotribune website in the last few months – and did some catching up this morning of its diaries. It draws on a group of writers from various parts of Europe and America and does great interviews with people working at the cutting edge of social and economic development - particularly those working on food and farming issues (eg farming sovereignty) and in various African countries (a good series is the 1,000 word intros to those countries and the various garssroot initiatives they have). Good posts on Neo-feudalism and neo-nihilism; a pamphlet on the broken British economic model; and a discussion about trends in financial capitalism.

Clearly I shall have to update the list of favourite links I have on the right hand column of this site!
Now to return to the editing I have been doing of the two papers on China I have recently added to my website. The title I had originally given to my explanation for my resignation from the project there had been Mission Impossible and, when I changed it to Lost in Beijing,I had not realised there had been a steamy film with that title! I had actually been thinking of Bill Murray's Lost in Translation with the sad hotel scenes looking down on a megapolis. Right now I'm working on the other paper - a briefing note on Chinese Administrative Reform. One might ask why - since my website does not get many hits. But I am surprised by the frequency with which I can find a post of mine from this blog on a google search - so I hope that, with a suitable title, the paper (and website) might get a higher profile. Even although I say it myself, its library of papers and references seem to be unique!

Lessons in Transylvania

I've just received the latest issue of The Ecologist and it contains a great article by Laura Sevier, a freelance journalist, about traditional farming here in Transylvania. For the (few) lazy readers I have, let me reproduce the entire article here -

Transylvania has maintained traditional farming methods for hundreds of years. As it faces the twin threats of intensive agriculture and byzantine EU policies, its model of under-development is attracting the interest of policy makers. Forget Count Dracula. Deep in the heart of Transylvania, an altogether more mesmerising scene is playing itself out - a vision of what life must have been like in a medieval village. There's not a brightly coloured shop or advert in sight. Horse and carts clatter down the dirt track roads and cows wander freely. There are barely any cars. And behind the tall walls of each of the old Saxon houses is a self-contained ‘courtyard farm' complete with a wooden hay barn, livestock sheds and a small vegetable plot and fruit orchard.
In the distance are unfenced wildflower-rich grasslands and communal hay-meadows and beyond that, thick, old growth forests where bears, wolves and wild cats still roam.
This village, Crit, is one of the 150 or so well preserved Saxon villages and settlements of southern Transylvania that have remained almost unchanged for hundreds of years. The so-called Saxons were German colonists who immigrated to Transylvania in the 12th and 13th centuries and they were renowned for being hard working farmers. The smallholder lifestyle continues to flourish here today, with most villagers entirely self-sufficient.


The good lifeA typical household keeps poultry, a couple of pigs, 10-20 sheep, along with 2 or 3 cows that graze on communal village pastures by day and are milked by hand in the morning and evening in the courtyards. Fruit and vegetables are eaten fresh from the garden or preserved in pickles or jams for the winter months. As well as growing and rearing their own, villagers also slaughter and butcher their own animals. Every chimney has a special chamber for hanging meat (predominantly pork) for smoking. Many households make their own wine from homegrown vines and brandy from plums.
This self-sufficient way of life is still deeply ingrained in rural Romania, passed down from generation to generation. Farming dictates the rhythm of life here, both daily and seasonally - during the summer months, for instance, most families are out in their hay-meadows with scythes and rakes making hay for their cattle and sheep.
‘Practically everyone is a farmer in rural Romania,' says Nat Page, director of the charitable conservation foundation ADEPT. ‘Ninety per cent of villagers have land outside the village and their courtyard farms.' There are some shops but they're very basic - you wouldn't even know they were shops and most people only buy things they can't make themselves, like cooking oil, cigarettes and beer.
The food produced is organic in practice, although it's not certified because the costs of certification are too high. This low impact, ‘High Nature Value' farming allows nature to thrive. Wildflowers are abundant, and many of the mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish and insects present are rare or protected at national and international level, and have disappeared over much of Europe.


ThreatsADEPT focuses its work in the Târnava Mare area, 85,000 hectares in the heart of the Saxon Villages area and has had the area certified as a Natura 2000 site which gives it a basic level of protection.
There are, however, threats facing the landscape and local communities. ‘People are not being allowed to produce jams and pickles in their own kitchen because of excessive interpretation of EU law by the Romanian Food Standards Agency,' says Page. ‘They're being driven out of business and lovely old bakeries are still being closed down.' This, he stresses, is not what Brussels wants. ‘Brussels preaches diversity, flexibility and cultural traditions but it's up to the host country to implement it.'
Another problem is that 70 per cent of farmers are over 50 years old. Christi Gherghiceanu, ADEPT project manager who grew up in the area says, ‘people older than 50 are reluctant to leave their homes. They seem to be happy with their rural lifestyle. The rest of the population would rather abandon the villages because of the lack of financial opportunities in the area.'
The biggest threats to the landscape are intensive farming - artificial fertilisers would seriously damage or destroy the wildflower meadows and high stocking rates could lead to over-grazing - or abandonment of the land.


Farmers' markets‘Inevitably many of the smallest farms will disappear,' says Nat Page. ‘The average size of a farm here is 1.5 hectares. In five years time it will be three hectares. We can't say that everything is going to remain the same. But we can say we hope small- scale farming has a future in the area.'
Founded in 2004, ADEPT's main objective is to protect the fragile biodiversity of Transylvania and use it to benefit local communities. ‘We didn't just parade in with a load of money telling them what to do,' explains Page. ‘We employed local people and we've helped small farmers in the real world. If you want to conserve an area but there are no economic benefits, people are less responsive.'
ADEPT, funded by Defra's Darwin Initiative, Orange Romania and Innovation Norway, has assisted small farmers in two main ways. The first is to help them find a market by organising regular farmer's markets in nearby towns and cities and enabling producers to get their kitchens authorised (by persuading inspectors not to excessively interpret the Brussels guidance). ADEPT, based in the large Saxon village of Saschiz, also provides a modern ‘food barn' authorised by the Romanian Food Safety Authority where people can produce food. The 20 producers it works with now sell 70,000 euros worth of produce a year through markets, although ADEPT is keen to work with more. In addition, ADEPT has helped 65 small-scale farmers gain an income again by finding a market for milk. By working with them to improve hygiene and equipment, the farmers had their milk collection reinstated.
The second aspect of what ADEPT does is to help small-scale farmers get grants from the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. Many farmers own under 1 hectare, so don't receive basic Pillar 1 payments. ADEPT is dealing this at a policy level, promoting higher payments for small farmers.


To CAP it offADEPT has also helped farmers benefit from biodiversity conservation. As the area is a Natura 2000 and HNV landscape, farmers are eligible for CAP agri-environmental payments but these are not automatic - you have to opt for them. After running farm visits explaining the advantages of signing up, 75 per cent of eligible farmers within Târnava Mare have joined the scheme; this is four times the rate of uptake in neighboring areas which demonstrates the desperate need for farm advisory services in such areas.
This will too, of course, benefit plants and animals. ADEPT's botanist, Dr John Akeroyd, who often accompanies Prince Charles (a regular visitor to Transylvania) on his walks through this countryside says, ‘the grasslands in this area are uniquely rich in Europe and appear to be still in good heart thanks to continuing traditional management by local farmers'.
On a wider scale, Nat Page believes this project could even have an influence over the next phase of the CAP, 2013-2020, in favour of High Nature Value landscapes elsewhere. ADEPT has been asked to present its results at EU meetings in Brussels because it shows a way forward to protect the small-scale farmed landscapes and communities across all of Europe. The Commissioners for Agriculture and the Environment both sent encouraging video messages to the High Nature Value Grassland Conference organised by ADEPT in Sibiu in September 2010.
‘An amazing thing is happening within the EU,' says Page. ‘A few years ago everyone said these farms were irrelevant and policy favoured competitive farms. Now small-scale farms are seen as valuable for food and landscape, with massive benefits for flood and fire control, biodiversity and mitigation against climate change. They are increasingly appreciated as vital for Europe's future.'

autobiographies

A cold mist surrounded the house in the early part of the morning – but, as it slowly lifted, a wondrous sight was beholden. Each tree nearby and far was picked out - as in a touched up photograph - covered with iced snow. It was like a phalanx of phantom warriors. Question – what is the collection noun for a group of government leaders? It was none less than Harold McMillan, a Conservative UK Prime Minister in the early 1960s who gave a great answer to this question – “a lack of principals”! And, as the sun’s rays reached the branches, a rustling around the house as the icicles fell from them.

Paul Theroux is a travel writer who apparently arouses some feeling – his observations apparently offend some people. I find this genre an interesting one but personally prefer Colin Thubron. Theroux has reached the age of 69; started to write his autobiography; got to 500 words; and then realised he couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth about himself and found justification for closing his notebook on the venture by looking at the reliability of autobiographies over the centuries. I suppose blogs make a lot of us diarists if not autobiographers these days. One of the papers on my website attempts what one might call an intellectual autobiography - Search for the Holy Grail - Lessons from 40 years of fighting bureaucracy.

Simon Jenkins had a good piece on the issues behing the uncovering of an undercover policeman who was playing a prominent if not agent-provocateur role in the ecology movement.
And I've recently come across a blog - Musings of an amateur trader - which, like Boggy's blog - gives useful mini-lectures and country vignettes. This week on banking.

An everyday encounter

Over the weekend I stayed at Ploiesti - some 50 kms north of Bucharest on the main road to Brasov; within sight of the Carpathian foothills; and easy reach of the Dealu Mare vineyards. For most of the 20th Century it was the Romania’s oil base – but the oil has now been bought up by foreigners and apparently put on reserve. As a result the City is now very pleasant – at least in its physical surroundings!
But Romanian petrol has become in the last 6 months the most expensive in Europe – the subject of some intense debate but for reasons for which I am none the wiser. If it interferes with the driving habits of the young Mafia here, I will be well pleased. We encountered one of the high Testerone guys on Monday – his smoked windows black Audi was dumped across the pavement leaving us only a body width to scrape through. We get very angry with this insensitivity – and swung our bags around as we passed – and a screetching dervish duly emerged to hurl insults at D who reciprocated. Testerone Ted (all of 24 years old – how can he own such a car???) came chasing after D – and physically prevented her from continuing her way – paintwork after all is their virility symbol. I returned to lend her moral support – just as a 50 year-old was telling her that if it had been his car he would have knocked her to the ground and trampled on her! Our protestations about illegal parking were brushed aside – even by a couple of cops who were summonsed after the guy grabbed my throat after his floosy objected to my banging my fist on his car. At my age I can (if I control myself) react passively - unlike the TTs. D and I were driven to the police station – with D facing a charge of vandalisation (for a hair scratch) but me prepared to counter-charge TT with assault. I was told that – as a foreigner – I could not enter the police station (!) and one of the PCs stayed with me. He was in his mid 40s – had been fairly hostile to us during the encounter – but now seemed to relax (good training??) and share my concerns about TTs.
When I was eventually allowed in, it was to meet the very impressive station boss – Tiberius no less – who spoke English and adopted a very common-sense approach – apparently threatening TT with both a parking charge and assault. He took D and me into his office and, while D was writing her testimony, told us about his various initiatives. A good guy – although D feels that the treatment had a lot to do with my being a Brit (and of a certain age)!

The next day – despite the overcast sky – I headed north to the mountains and D to Bucharest. The higher I climbed the more the sky cleared but immediately I hit the plain again at Rasnov I was into pea-soup mist again. The village, however, had not only clear sky but no snow! Rare for 1,400 metres in mid-January.
A box of Fassbinder films was waiting for me – as well as the news that one of my neighbours had died (88 year old husband of the small bent woman who chases her chickens and occasionally drops in for a coffee and biscuits. Duly lit the bedroom stove – and discovered that a leak has sprung in one of the bath taps (yes, I do have a bath – if no TV or fridge!). But I took the easy way out; turned off the water again and relied on the traditional water pitcher and bowl I bought recently. Assembled one of the marvellous standard lamps (with additional reading light) which IKEA is selling for only 10 euros – and settled down to read a fascinating book about the 3 Himmler brother written by a granddaughter of the youngest (Heinrich was the middle brother). How Nazism took hold of such a civilised country as Germany is a fascinating question which I have never seen dealt with adequately – it’s usually passed over in a perfunctory manner to get to the more exciting and shocking aspects of Nazism with which (as Peter Watson rightly points out in his recent book) the Brits have an unhealthy fixation. A lengthy, sympathetic but balanced story of the interaction of the stable family circle and unstable social and economic environment in which someone like Himmler grew up is an important aspect of our understanding of that period. Most of us know about the feeling of betrayal when the 1st world war was suddenly lost (The Kaiser had been hiding the truth); the communist putches in the various cities in the immediate aftermath and the recruitment of young soldiers to the Freikorps-type organisations which were created to put down these revolutionaries; the hyperinflation – but it is rarely told from the perspective of the ordinary person. Himmler’s father was a respectable Headmaster – and The Himmler Brothers by Katrin Himmler paints a powerful picture of how such people’s worlds crumbled.
And, finally, a good sample of recent coverage of China.

Chinese administrative reforms in international perspective

Exactly a year ago I was preparing to fly to Beijing – to start a major new project but I was not looking forward to the experience. Alarm bells had rung in the summer when I was first invited to go with the bid – and I told the contractors that neither the scale of the city nor the repressiveness of the regime appealed to me. Nor could I see what my experience could bring to the Chinese. What little I knew of the Chinese context suggested that it was so very different from anything I was used to.
But the temptation of seeing China was too great – and I agreed to go with the bid – not really expecting to win. We did – and the alarm bells started up again when I went to visit the contractors in November and began to realise what a gigantic bureaucracy they (let alone the EU) were! And that they wanted to offload virtually all the financial management to me as Team Leader. I prefer to focus on professional issues and let the contractors deal with finances.
I tried to put my foot down – but was still subjected to a lot of technical briefing about (expert) procurement and payment procedures which frankly bored the pants off me. When, 2 months later, we got to Beijing we were taken to the contractor’s huge offices there and subjected to the same briefing over several days with no Chinese counterpart in sight – at which point I began to realise that what was supposed to be a support system to us was in fact exactly the opposite. We were paying the local contractor’s branch office for services which were at best perfunctory - but expected to pass to them all project papers and information in a complex and time-consuming intranet system!
This was one of three factors which persuaded me to draft my resignation after only one week – the other two issues being the claustrophobia I felt in the dense mass and materialism of Beijing; and the failure of the Chinese to appoint anyone for us to work with. I had faced some difficult challenges in 7 years in central Asia (even a revolution) and a year in politicised Bulgaria - and survived and succeeded. The other key expert resigned a few months later (there were only two of us for a rather ambitious project which was another warning sign I had ignored!)
On my return home in March I took time to try to understand why I had so quickly felt so alienated on this project. Lost in Beijing was the result - in which I identified 17 reasons for my decision!!
I shared it with the contractors and some colleagues – but feel I should now put it in the public domain as a contribution to the gap in literature about this multi-billion industry which I identified recently. The paper has a few comments at the end about what I learned about public services in China – and these are developed in a separate briefing and reading and web references which I’ve also put on the website for anyone who suddenly finds themselves involved in discussions with the Chinese about issues relating to administrative reform! It’s called Chinese administrative reform in perspective - a revisionist briefing (May 1 update)and contains some provocative stuff about so-called western democracy.

Boffy has another good read on present economic issues.