Hungarian ambitions and Bulgarian gentility

The Hungarian Spectrum blog continues its amazingly penetrating analysis of political developments in Hungary by a piece on the background to an event which I (and, I supsect, all non-Hungarians) had missed in all the comment about the recent Constitutional changes there – the renaming of the country from „Hungarian Republic” to „Hungary”.
From such promising beginnings in 1989, this small country is turning out to be a real pain in the arse. I was struck with the arrogance of its people in 1993-95 when I worked there – and, looking at the size of their houses (and this was in North-East Hungary, their poorest part hard up against the Slovak, Ukrainian and Romanian borders), I wondered why on earth they needed European money then. Even then, all sorts of municipal developments were in evidence – something which you don’t even see here in the capital of Bulgaria 15 years later!
I have never seen such a poor state of pavements as here in Sofia. I wonder what the statistics of broken ankles are here. Unfortunately the internet offers no real treatment of Bulgaria – there was a rather inconsequential piece recently on an Economist blog about the corrupt state of the media here but, as one of the discussants rightly said, they have been set a very good example by the anglo-saxon world!
I have always seen Sofia as have an old-fashioned gentility – mainly from the tiny shop and gallery units you fiind in its centre with both young and old eking out a fragile existence but at least one whose rhythm they control. Since hearing the buskers in the nearby park playing early 1960s jazz and rock, I realise that Sofia, in many ways, could market itself as the retro-capital of Europe. You still see Trabis (although generally vegetating on the sidewalks); and, at leats round my area, the old folk are always out in strength and not marginalised as in so many other capitals. Of course, this is a stark reflection of the poverty of the economy – indeed I just don’t know how the economy here manages even to tick over.
Romania has at least one good news outlet in English which I came across recently

Today I came across this very evocative clip of poet John Betjeman celebrating Philip Larkin's poetry.

Apparently today is both St George's Day AND the Day of the Bulgarian Army. So I'm using one of Ilia Petrov's pictures.

St George's Day - and Vernissaj

Am I the only person finding the Yahoo site increasingly aggressive and unacceptable? So many huge ads and so much flashing – and delays in getting access to my mail as they divert you to proselytise their latest version of one thing or another. I am seriuous thinking of switching – but is google any better? And not easy to switch when you have been with one address for 8 years!
The weather here in southern europe (Sofia) continues to be…well…Scottish! Cold, dreich and drisle – not calculated to get you running for your swimming gear. So I missed this morning’s walk and swim. And the constant problems anyway with access to the large pool in the Sparta Complex makes swimming totally uninviting….
Tomorrow is (another) holiday here in Bulgaria celebrates I was told that it was Soldiers' Day but became a bit puzzled - the soldiers' day I celebrated (with Russians!) in Riga a decade or so back was 23 February. And Victory day for Russia is 9 May so I don't know what 6 May is all about (Now I learn it's St George"s Day - a soldier!!) Regardless, the roads in town were clogged as people tried to get out for a 3 day weekend. If this is indeed a celebration of the Russian soldier it is utterly deserved. A couple of days after the US assassination in Pakistan, I'm not sure if we should be celebrating soldiers generally. It appears that, for once, they got the right guy - but so easily it could have been an innocent. And what sort of people go dancing in the streets to mark such a macabre strike? Only the sort who danced in the streets after September 11 2001!

Last evening, as I was returning from the Konus Gallery, I alighted on a Vernissaj (free wine at the opening of a gallery viewing) on Rakovski st – interesting landscapes from one Milko Voshkov and I struck a very professional figure as I manoeuvred the four paintings which Yassen had had framed for me into the gallery! The wine was bitter so I didn’t linger. This evening I had an invitation to another opening – at a new gallery only 4 minutes' walk from the flat. I was soon home – the paintings were a modernist disgrace (supposedly on the 7 deadly sins) and the place full of empty English chattering glitterati

Jeffrey Sachs is a figure we all love to hate. A neo-liberal in liberal disguise. I was amazed to fiind him today talking about the corrupt elite (about which, I concede, he knows a great deal!)

And a good discussion thread on the UK health reforms

Angela Minkova is a very creative and versatile Bulgarian artist - who paints and sculpts (in unusual materials - including bone). I'm very tempted by this piece which my friend Yassen has in his Konus Gallery - for 100 euros (the small guy at the bottom is dangling a key).

How do we know what we think?

I notice that I have recently started to use the phrase „corporate interests” – as in "politics in deep thrawl to corporate interests”. I generally don’t like politically-loaded words since, as Orwell memorably expressed it, they so quickly lead to the death of thinking and the tyranny of words and slogans. It also means that we alienate others and end up talking only to those who agree with us. So why have I started to use the phrase – and what exactly do I mean by it?
It started, I suppose, when I first realised the extent to which both the media and political parties have been penetrated by multi-national business money and its perspectives.
It was obvious from the beginning that New Labour policies were shaped to keep the party safe from the attacks of the Rupert Murdoch media empire – but the infamous Bernie Ecclestone scandal at the very start of New Labour rule in 1997/8 was a shock to many (demonstrating so vividly how business people could purchase policy and access to legislative power – on the American model). But I suppose I thought this was just a bit of anglo-saxon distinctiveness.
As, however, other governments followed the path of neo-liberalism - and money and greed became more respectable, scandal after scandal followed (eg Enron). The global financial meltdown opened everyone’ s eyes – not only to the immorality of the big players but their utter shamelessness. And the growing centralisation of the media – and its unreliability – has also hit me hard recently. When I developed my type of gentle socialism (under the influence of Tony Crosland’s writings of the late 1950s and 1960s) we really did have a "mixed economy”. Power was reasonably balanced then in the UK (and the rest of Western Europe) between the various forces of labour and capital – and capital was not so monolithic. The word "„corporate” is another word for multinational (or big) business – and my use of the phrase "corporate interests” was shorthand for my disgust for the extent to which such corporate power is now, literally, out of control.
And its grip of the media means that the onus is on those of us object to the imbalance to demonstrate how little competition actually exists now in huge swaithes of the "market” at whose alter we are all supposed to worship. I’ve mentioned already on the blog a couple of recent publications which have exposed the extent of big business influence on the EU - Bursting the Bubble (Alter EU 2010); and Backstage Europe; comitology, accountability and democracy (2010) by Gijs Jan Brandsma.
Today I came across a summary of an academic treatment of the subject – Quiet Politics and Business Power – corporate power in Europe and Japan.
This is on Daniel Little’s excellent blog – and the article led me on to a previous post of his which is very important in answering the basic question of „how we actually know that things work the way in society that we think?”

The Guardian has an interesting piece about a new European left initiative. But I'm not holding my breath!

And, at last, we have one of the female Bulgarian painters represented! This is one of my favourites - Alexandra Mechkuevska who painted mainly in the 1930s and 1940s(I have two of hers). Not one of her best - but too few of the paintings I show have figures!

are we any better than the Chinese one party state?

This year marks the centenary of the publication by Robert Michels of his great book Political Parties - which set out "the iron law of oligarchy" ie that all forms of organisation, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop into oligarchies (ie rule of the few). The reasons behind the oligarchization process are: the indispensability of leadership; natural self-interest and survival instincts (it’s a good life); and the passivity of the led individuals, more often than not taking the form of actual gratitude towards the leaders. These days we would add the media need for a hierarchical figure to focus on. I haven’t seen any recognition of the centenary yet. But I mentioned in my last post a paper written by a Frans Becker and Rene Cuperus a Dutch political scientist in 2004 - Party Paradox - which is the best analysis of the failings of the modern European political parties (and also the possible reasons for the various deficiencies; and possible ways for dealing with the crisis) which I’ve ever read. It might, with a bit of updating and some more international examples, make a suitable new version of the Michels classic – one hundred years on.
There have been innumerable articles and books bemoaning the state of democracy – but few to my knowledge which have identified the role of the political party in creating this parlous state. I had a long post in November bemoaning this lack of analysis.
So it’s great at last to find a good, solid paper – which I can recommend to others. Here are some excerpts -

Social-democratic politicians – even the local ones – come from a limited circle. Most are well-educated and are professionals in the collective sector. They closely resemble their counterparts in other parties as far as their education is concerned but differ from them in terms of their professional backgrounds.25 They are often well-suited for civil service and the policy-based, bureaucratically-oriented decisionmaking process and are at ease in the small inner circle of politics. The sociologist Van Doorn has described the contrast between the old and new politicians as follows. The old political elites were selected “because they had social standing, and they derived their standing from their leadership of certain social groups and core institutions: employers’ federations and employee organizations, leagues of farmers and small businessmen, dailies, broadcasting associations, and universities. In the 1960s these double offices became suspect and gradually disappeared. The “regents” were replaced by political professionals, who often had more ambition than experience. They became significant thanks to their election. A self-perpetuating cycle began: the inflow of professional politicians eroded the standing of being a member of parliament, and this diminished standing compromised the quality of the MP’s. They were selected from the crowd and lacked any competence beyond that of a low-prestige board. They almost exclusively represented their party and consequently became isolated from a society that is rapidly becoming disaffected with party politics.” Admittedly, some exceptions occur, and the good ones among them deserve their due.

Parties and politicians have come to focus increasingly on policy making. Politicians are like mechanics, tinkering at the engine of society by means of policy, without ever getting away from under the hood, as Anton Hemerijck put it at a conference of the Institute for Public Policy Research in London in 2000. Parties, having lost their social footing, do not appear to have replaced it with new alliances with civil society organizations.33 The isolation of the political parties is the predominant theme in the analysis of the Dutch Labour Party’s defeat in the 2002 elections. In the successful election campaign in 2003, Wouter Bos overcame this isolation and restored the electoral position of the Dutch Labour Party. Both a drastic change of the party culture and more structural ties with social organizations have been suggested as remedies to achieve sustained reinforcement of the party’s position.

The paper finished by suggesting that

three strategies are available to these parties in their quest to retain or reclaim their role in democracy. First, to focus far more on their procedural functions. As political parties become less adept at their representative function, they will need to take on a new role as keepers of transparent and democratic public administration, where access to political and administrative decision-making remains open; private and public interests are clearly distinct, the foundations of the constitutional state are taken into account, and diversity and freedom of expression and information provision are guaranteed. Entrepreneur-politician Berlusconi’s skill in using politics and state to further his interest demonstrates that his party fails as the countervailing power required for democracy

The other two strategies were:

(a) a shift toward more direct democracy; and (b) party innovation with a capital P, which means improving professional quality and fostering a more open party style. In the case of the Netherlands a reallocation of the party landscape into a loose two-party system would be desirable

In effect citizens are no longer presented with real options by political parties at the national levels – neither in the USA nor Europe where parties have, to one degree or another, succumbed to what some people call the pressures of globalisation and others call „corporate interests”. What it boils down to is a quasi one-party State. In China (from which I recently returned), the Party has recognised that the recruitment of elected politicians has to be strictly conducted – with party members receiving strict training as well as their elected cadres. Of course any electoral system has to give scope for (if not encourage) mavericks (populists) to keep the representative part of the system operating. If necessary the Party makes the suitable policy adjustment to keep the public happy.
But I would dare to suggest that the role of political parties at a local government might be reduced – and I say this as someone who for 25 years operated as the Secretary of ruling Labour groups at both municipal and Regional levels. Frankly I saw too much of my colleagues representing either party interests or the interests of professional departments (like Education and Police) – and not enough of their representing public concerns. And local elections contests when parties are dominant means that there is no serious debate – and that voters vote on national political grounds. This is probably one of the strongest arguments for the principle of elected mayors to which the Establishment seems at last to have come round to in England (since it brings in the issue of personality) – but I don’t see the argument for it being conducted in these terms. And elected mayors are not enough – a system needs to exist which allows the ordinary citizen to believe that it is possible for her that (s)he could if she wished have a reasonable chance of getting on to the council and being listened to.

populism

There is an interesting post today on Social Europe about the loss of legitimacy of the established political parties in Europe – and the growth of populist sentiment. It’s by a Dutch political scientist who has spent the past decade looking at the issue and has a nice short explanation of the phenomenon under the heading 10 Definitions of The Populist Crisis in Western Politics:

1. Populism is the substitute for the eroded Left/Right divide in politics. It replaces it through the populist cleavage of ‘the establishment’ versus ‘the people’. They are perceived as false unities and indeed pose a potential threat to the pluralist and constitutional dimensions of democracy.
2. Populism is a revolt against (the narrative of) globalisation.
3. Populism is a revolt against what the Germans call the Second Modernity, or late modernity: that is the modernity of individualisation, de-traditionalisation, cosmopolitanism, neoliberal capitalism and the global network society.
4. Populism is a revolt against expert-driven, technocratic policy-making.
5. Populism is the revolt of the working class and the squeezed lower middle class against the dominance of academic professionals in society and public discourse.
6. Populism is the revenge of the working class after the neoliberal betrayal (permanent welfare state austerity reforms) of socialist and social-democratic parties.
7. Populism is a dangerous, xenophobic revolt against ill-managed mass migration which negatively affected the lower end of society much more so than the upper end.
8. Populism is a revolt against a world that is changing too rapidly and where traditions, identities, and securities are no longer respected.
9. Where socialism and Christianity no longer act as moral and cultural restraints or breaks to the disrupting process of globalisation, populism has filled the vacuum: populism is a romantic, irrational, emotional revolt against the inhuman philosophy of efficiency in both the market and the state.
10. Populism is a revolt against the powerlessness of the political class who have seemingly lost all grip after handing control over to the anonymous forces of globalisation, the financial markets, and the logics of EU technocracy.

 Cuperus was a new name for me – but he writes coherent stuff eg in 2004 on the situation facing the Dutch parties and a particularly intersting 2006 paper on the situation at the European level And one of the early comments rightly suggested the anglo-saxon world (to which The Netherlands apparently belongs) should be set apart from that part of Europe (particuarly Germany) which has managed to resist the blandishments of neo-liberalism and retains public values. I mentioned not so long ago that there was an intersting debate about 15 years ago about different models of capitalism – and I find it odd that this has not come back into the debate. Hopefully blogs like Cuperus’ will help bring this back into the mainstream discussion.

An example of progress in Sofia. Three years ago I used to have great relaxation at the nearby Sparta sports centre where – for 45 euros – I was allowed 12 visits to a VIP part which gave me access to swimming, sauna, very civilised changing rooms and towels. Today I learned there has been a change of ownership and, for the same price, I get the same number of visits to the pool only (no sauna now - that's an additional 30 euros; vastly inferior changing facilities (you have to take off and put on shoes in the public waiting area); and bring your own towel. That’s abaout a 75% increase in price. The next step will clearly be to reduce the number of visits to 10, then 8. I have to find out the nature of the change of ownership - is this an example of cowboy privatisation?

I acquired a batch of (unframed) old paintings yesterday without really intending to! And 4 of them are figurative - all very distinctive in their way. One socialist realist of farmers at a combine harvester greeting a couple of colleagues carrying rifle and a soldier taking up the rear (with a couple of military scenes on the reverse side). I was told it was a Vulchev - but which one? There are about four! And I was told another (rather damaged) was a Stamatov who fetches quite a price these days - regardless, it's a brilliant study of a blacksmith. It's an early Stamatov which graces this post.

Flesh and Blood

The NISPAcee Conference in Varna advances apace (May 19-22) so yesterday I gave the present version to the local printer for him to run off 150 copies for the lucky participants, It's now called Flesh and Blood - the EC's Backbone strategy meets "Impervious power" - and contains as a bonus some of the Sceptic's Glossary I wrote at the start of the year.
It's been an important paper to write these past few months - I've tried to pour all the experience and knowledge Ive gained óver the past 20 years into it. It's been a bit like crafting a painting - at some times honing sentences and phrases. At other times, when I've realised that it was missing an important area, a blank part of the canvas was suddenly filled with whirls. This last happened this week - which explains the minimal posts. I realised that my scepticism about anti-corruption work had meant that I had not even deigned to mention it in the paper! And, when I surfed, it was to find a huge literature - including several literature reviews.For the moment let me just link you to this 2001 book summarising experience of anti-corruption work

I cycled to Victoria Gallery today - to discover that they had sold the lovely Vulchev painting of Thassos and Kavala I showed a week or so ago. But I did buy this Rubev. I have been coveting a Rubev for some time - and was glad to find this one (also with a glimose of Thassos).

Two model blogposts

Two model blogposts – the first giving a superb example of the total undermining of the once great reputation of the British media. If this is what is happening in Great Britain, then imagine what the situation is elsewhere!
The second great post is on current aspects of Hungarian education. Amidst all the reengineering of administrative systems, we let the "political class" blunder around without any attempt at preparation. It's like the old Coronatation ritual - they are annointed with God's (The People's) blessing and so feel permitted to do what they want.
If only what we read could always have this depth!!
And, finally, an interesting angle on current Chinese political developments.
Moutafov is one of my favourites