Stories we tell

Since we were small children, we have all needed stories – to help us understand and come to terms with the strange world we inhabit. In this post-modern world, “narratives” have become a fashionable adult activity for the same reason.

It’s significant that, when I was looking for a structure with which to classify the different approaches in the (vast) literature about the global crisis, I used the classification - micro-meso-macro. That shows the grip my university training in political economy still has on me. Political sociology actually had more appeal for me – but somehow lacked the apparent legitimacy of economics.

In fact, the anthropological ways of looking at the world have much more power than the economic – in particular the grid-group typology of Mary Douglas (and her Cultural Theory) which first gave us the four schools or lenses (“hierarchical”, “individualistic”, “egalitarian” and “fatalistic”) used to such effect in Chris Hood’s great little book “The Art of the State” (1990). It was indeed his book which introduced me to this typology which allows us to tell distinctive “stories” about the same phenomenon. More interestingly, he then shows the typical policy responses, weaknesses and strengths of each school. A sense of his book's argument can be gained from the review of the book which can be accessed toward the end of the contents sheet of this journal. 

At University I had been interested in how social systems held together and why people (generally) obeyed - and I had liked Max Weber’s classification of political systems into – “traditional”, “charismatic” and “rational-legal”.

But it was the sociologist Ametai Etzioni who first impressed me in the 1970s with his suggestion that we behaved the way we did for basically three different types of motives – “remunerative”, “coercive” and “normative” – namely that it was made worth our while; we were forced to; or that we thought it right. He then went on to suggest (in his 1975 Social Problems) that our explanations for social problems could be grouped into equivalent political stances - “individualistic”, “hierarchical” or “consensual”. These are effectively “stories” about the world. Unfortunately google search will not give me access to the relevant works of Etzioni or Hood - although substantial chunks of a similar sort of book "Responses to Governance - governing corporations and societies in the world" by John Dixon can be read on google books.

During the 1980s, when I was doing my Masters in Policy Analysis, I was (briefly) interested in the potential of “Frame Analysis” which showed how we could tell different “stories” to make sense of complex social events.

The last decade has seen a revival of interest in such typologies - The case for clumsiness which, again, sets out the various stories which sustain the different positions people take us on various key policy issues – such as the environment. There is a good interview with the author here and a short summary here

Three recent reports give an excellent summary of all this literature - Common Cause; FindingFrames; and Keith Grint’s Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions 

I know this has not been easy reading – but my next post will hopefully show its relevance to the search for a typology to help us navigate the literature on the global crisis!

The photo on my new "masthead" is from Sunday's annual "milk festival" in my village. The weather was superb and the next day the best of the year

Where is the shared Understanding and Vision?

There must be tens of thousands of books (in the English language) about the global financial crisis and the deeper malaise it revealed but most writers focus on diagnosis and are reluctant to put their name to detailed prescriptions. With the exception, perhaps, of the banking crisis where the many and divergent diagnoses (Howard Davies counted 39) did generally lead to detailed prescriptions – few of which, however, have been implemented.

One further lack, for me, is any serious effort to create a typology which might help create a shared agenda for change. Rather, various kinds of expert give us their particular view - matching their prejudices or those of their putative readers. For example -

·         In the UK, Will Hutton has been giving us a powerful systemic critique of the coherence of neo-liberal thinking and policies since The State We’re In (1995) although his latest - Them and Us  (2010) – was weaker on alternatives and fails to mention a lot of relevant work.

·         Since When Corporations Rule the World (1995) David Korten has, in the US, been critiquing the operation of companies and setting out alternatives – using both books and a website. One of his latest books is Agenda for a new economy - much of which can be accessed at Google Scholar.

·         And Paul Kingsnorth’s One No – many Yeses; a journey to the heart of the global resistance movement gives a marvellous sense of the energy a lot of people are spending fighting global capitalism in a variety of very different ways.

The Guide for the Perplexed which I drafted a couple of years ago did offer (from para 9 onwards) a rather crude initial typology modelled on that of the approach of the capacity development literature which is interested in how to make organisations more “effective” and recognises three levels of work - the individual (micro); the organisation (meso); and the wider system (macro).

Decisions about organisational improvement are taken by those with power in organisations who are reluctant to identify those at the top as the cause of poor performance – so it’s generally the foot-soldiers at the micro level who are to blame and “skill development” and “better training” which is identified as the solution.

But more systemic change for organisations (the meso level) as part of the cut and thrust of competition did become the norm in anglo-saxon countries in the last 50 years, bolstered by the theories of management gurus.

As someone who has spent the last 20 years in contracts to improve the performance of state organisations (local and national) in ex-communist countries, I slowly realised that the key lever for change (at least in such countries) was at the macro level and governed not only by the legal framework establishing the various institutions but by to the informal processes in (and interactions between) political, commercial and legal systems. I’ve written quite a bit about this eg here

The challenge of the global crisis is to mobilise civic power with a coherent agenda which forces appropriate changes in the (national and global) legal frameworks. Political, financial and leaders will, of course, resist such changes. The question is how to put the various pieces together.

What is the sequencing? A unifying agenda? Mobilisation?

What I want to do in this post is to use the framework of the Draft Guide for the Perplexed paper to –

- remind us of the sort of texts which have been urging change over the past 15-20 years
- see if and how such writers have changed their diagnosis, prescriptions and tactics in the light of the crisis of the past five years.

1. Meso Change – the commercial world

·         Paul Hawken published in 2000 an important book Natural Capitalism  which showed the economic benefits which could flow from a variety of ecological products. Ernst von Weizsaecker has long been an eloquent spokesman for this approach see the 2009 Factor Five report for the Club of Rome.

·         Peter Barnes published in 2006 a thoughtful critique and alternative vision - Capitalism 3.0  - based on his entrepreneurial experience. All 200 pages can be downloaded from this internet link.

·         William Davies published a useful booklet Reinventing the Firm (Demos 2009) which suggests some adjustments to corporate legislation on similar lines to Hutton.

2. Meso-change; community enterprise

·         Perhaps the most coherent and readable text, however, comes from an Irish economist Richard Douthwaite whose 2003 book Short Circuit – strengthening local economies for security in an unstable world  is a marvellous combination of analysis and case-studies of successful community initiatives. The opening pages give a particularly powerful visio.

·         Bill McKibben’s writings are also inspirational- eg Deep Economy: Economics as if the World Mattered

3. The system changers

The indefatigable writers on the left are stronger on description than prescription –

-  David Harvey’s The Enigma of Capital does try to sketch out a few alternatives.

- Olin Wright's Envisioning Real Utopias which instances the amazing Mondragon cooperatives but is otherwise an incestuous academic scribble.

But the people at the Centre for the advancement of the steady state economy have a well-thought through position – see their report Enough is enough  (CASSE 2010).

Comment

I'll keep the "micro" school of thinking (best represented by Robert Quinn) for another post. 

The pity is that there is not enough cross-referencing by the various authors to allow us to extract the commonalities and identify the gaps. Each writer, it seems, has to forge a distinctive slant. Douthwaite is one exception.

One of David Korten’s most recent books suggests that - Leadership for transformation must come, as it always does, from outside the institutions of power. This requires building a powerful social movement based on a shared understanding of the roots of the problem and a shared vision of the path to its resolution.

This definition contains three of the crucial ingredients for the social change on the scale we need –

·                     External pressure

·                     Shared understanding of causes of problem

·                     Shared vision

Round up the Usual Suspects!

One of the questions which nags away at me is why “progressives” don’t spend more time trying to seek a consensus agenda which can halt the downward spiral into which our societies have plunged since the 1970s.

Since the global crisis, it has been obvious (to most) that the economy (if not society) was broken – trouble is that people could not agree what the causes were. Energies ( and time) were wasted in parading "the usual scapegoats".

But there was too ready an assumption that those responsible would be contrite and change their behavior; and/or that governments would enact strong measures (in the style of the Roosevelt New Deal of the 30s). Only slowly did it seem to dawn on people that, far from slamming the brakes on, corporate power and the political class were driving relentlessly on – imbued, it appears, with an ideological fervor for what, rightly or wrongly, we call neo-liberalism. Colin Crouch dealt with this question in 2011 in his The Strange Non-Death of Neo-Liberalism - although the book it a bit theoretical. 
Philip Morowski gives a more trenchant (and political) explanation for the survival of the neo-liberal dogma in his Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste (2013) - arguing that progressives have failed to understand that the neo-liberal rhetoric about the market cloaks a continued build-up of state power (bolstering corporate interests).

The economists have had at least six years to publish their analyses of the process of collapse; to identify the reasons and to suggest measures – both rectifying and preventive. Most serious accounts look at least 15 causes….and the guy was chairman of the British Financial Regulatory body actually produced 39! 
But, as Morowski argues, the vast bulk of economists adhere to a fallacious doctrine and are incapable of producing relevant prescriptions.

Immediately someone puts his or head above the parapet and suggests concrete actions, they are labelled and dismissed. – whether by those in power or, more discouragingly, by other progressives. This presumably is one reason why such voices are rare.

But there must be other reasons which discourage the mass of discontented people from uniting under a common banner.

Most people are confused; some are just skeptical if not fatalistic; but a significant number of highly educated people are infected, I suspect, by the social disease of individualism which lies, I feel, at the heart of our malaise.

We simply no longer believe in the possibility of effective collective action. And too many of the big names who write the tracts about the global crisis present their analyses and prescriptions with insufficient reference to the efforts of others. They have to market their books – and themselves – and, by that very act, alienate others who could be their comrades in arms. For example, I'm just beginning to look at David Harvey's latest book - Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism - and can see no mention of alternative ways of dealing with the crisis.  

That’s why I suggested that Henry Mintzberg was one of the few people who seemed able to help create such a consensus - a set of minimum requirements. He is a management guru from whom one does not readily expect to hear the message that the world has gone mad. More usually management theorists celebrate the bosses. But Mintzberg (like the discipline’s founder, Peter Drucker) know enough about the real world of business to know when things have got out of hand.

I am not a fan of Malcolm Gladwell but his popularisations have included the important notion of the Tipping Point 

Gladwell suggested (in 2010) that there were three key factors which determine whether an idea or fashion will “tip” into wide-scale popularity - the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context.

The “Law of the Few” proposes that a few key types of people must champion an idea, concept, or product before it can reach the tipping point. 

Gladwell describes these key types as Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. (And a maven – in case you didn’t know - is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. The word maven comes from the Hebrew, via Yiddish, and means one who understands, based on an accumulation of knowledge).

If individuals representing all three of these groups endorse and advocate a new idea, it is much more likely that it will tip into exponential success. The other 2 concepts are, frankly, not so well dealt with – and  need to go the wider literature of change management and social marketing to get the whole picture.

My point is simply that most writers on the global crisis seem to focus their thoughts and text on the WHAT rather than on the HOW. – the ideas about the causes of and remedies for the crisis rather than the process by which “change for the better” might be managed. 
Of course we are still missing the "shared agenda" - the identification of which requires a "maven-like" character. And then the networkers and the organisers. 

The Centre Cannot Hold.....

I’m delighted to report – however belatedly – that management guru Henry Mintzberg has duly published his long-awaited pamphlet Rebalancing Society – radical renewal beyond left, right and centre which mounts a strong critique of the direction the Western world has taken in the last 25 years and suggests (but all too briefly) an agenda for change. It is the key part of what is to be a series of pamphlets which he has been encouraged to embark by people like me talking to him as one of the knowledgeable and sane voices in a mad world.

I had contacted him last year after re-reading his 2000 “Management in Government” paper which started with the assertion that it was not capitalism which won in 1989 but "the balanced model” ie a system in which there was some sort of balance between the power of commerce, the state and the citizen. Patently things have got badly out of balance in the intervening 15 years!

The push to privatise everything will, he asserted, lead to the same disease of communist societies. His discussion is particularly helpful for the distinctions he draws - first the 4 different roles of customer, client, citizen and subject. Secondly the 4 types of organisations - privately owned, state-owned, “non-owned” (?) and cooperative. Then four models/metaphors of state management - government as machine, network, performance control and normative. In between he explodes 3 basic management myths. I had the full paper on my website but was forced to remove it when someone from Harvard complained…Oddly, however, some of my blogposts still have a link to the paper which must be buried somewhere inside the hidden intestines of the website. My E-mail to him said simply that

This concept of re-balance is crucial and you are one of the few people in a position to try to pull together all the disparate voices which have been searching over the past 5 years for a coherent programme which will attract a strong and active consensus. Few of those who write on this issue bother to deal with the other writing on the matter in the required detail. We need a proper typology; and critique of the literature to justify the specific steps in any ‘better way’ 

I was amazed to get a positive response and a request to allow him to include the comment in his pamphlet. For a sense of his writings see his article on managing quietly and his ten musings on management.

Mintzberg's analysis is one of the best reads on the global crisis - and will get pride of place in the update of the paper I was writing about earlier in the day whose title I am still disposed to make "Draft Guide for the Perplexed"  .

 He also has an interview about the pamphlet here

The heading is, of course, taken from the famous Yeats's poem which also contains these lines-

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

What is to be Done?

Since 2001 I’ve been worrying away at a long essay variously entitled “What is to be Done?”, “Living for Posterity” and “Draft Guide for the Perplexed”

The original note was written around 5 questions (which are in the opening page of the "Living for...".link) relating to the fundamental question of what someone with my experience and resources could and should do to contribute to an improvement (rather than destruction) of the human lot.

That basically involved a quick sketch of global conditions and assessment of the impact of a variety of (the obvious) agencies to those conditions of injustice and powerlessness.

Ten years later, with the global meltdown confirming the grip of neo-liberal theft, I readily confessed not only that I still didn’t have an answer – but (in section 6) that I had whittered away some of my allotted time…

In an update I added that I was struck with the absence of realistic and critical studies of the efficacy of the British governance arrangements at this point in the 21st Century – although most Brits (or rather English) accept that their political system is in a dreadful state.

I have thought long and hard – and can produce only four analyses which might be read with benefit by the concerned and perplexed in that country. Two are 10 years old – the other two 5 years old…..We have, of course, countless academic studies of the operation of the British Parliament, of political parties, of voting systems, of local government, of devolved arrangements, of the civil service, of public management (whether Ministries, core executive, agencies), of the Prime Minister’s Office, of the European dimension etc – and a fair number of these are reasonably up-to-date. But most of it is written for undergraduates – or for other academic specialists who focus on one small part of the complex jigsaw. There is so very little which actually tries to integrate all this and give a convincing answer to the increasing number of citizens who feel that there is no longer any point in voting; that politicians are either corrupt or hopelessly boxed in by global finance and corporate interests.

The four studies I picked out were by a journalist (George Monbiot), a consultant/academic (Chris Foster) and two commissioned by a charitable foundation (Rowntree Trust) – although 2 real academics( Colin Leys and Allyson Pollock) did get honourable mentions.

The question today is whether the last four years has seen any significant additions to our understanding of power in Britain - let alone Europe - and how it might best be challenged. These years have seen the various "Occupy" movements but have they seen a clear agenda for change emerge? 

In a future post, I want to look in particular at the extent to which political scientists have tried to deal with this question…..

For the moment I would have to say that there seems only one serious challenge – that that is the very serious possibility that Scottish voters will vote to break away from the rUK in September. That would set off an earthquake – and who knows what would fall down and be built in its place……

Stalking the Big Beasts

For the past few days, as I’ve commuted between the mountains and the plain, I’ve been considering starting a(nother) series of posts – this time on the lessons I feel I’ve learned during the 45 years I’ve been working on the promotion of democracy and the building of the appropriate institutions, first in Scotland and latterly in Central Europe and Central Asia. This was going to build on various papers I’ve written over the years – not least the draft “Search for the Holy Grail”  But I then came across some recent academic valedictories and realized that there was bigger game to stalk – namely the anglo-saxon political scientists who have shaped how we perceive the political system in the post-war period.

Readers will know that I have always had a problem when I’m asked what I do – even my mother had a problem understanding this after, in 1985, I quit the respectability of academia and became first (for only 5 years) a full-time Regional Politician and then something called a “consultant” working in various countries which, until then, had highly dubious reputations. But her brother had been a famous British academic in political studies (Wilfrid Harrison) so I was allowed my louche inclinations….My focus was more mundane – an idiosyncratic combination of traditional public administration and more radical urban studies.

But, suddenly I was in Central Europe in the early 1990s - nobody had ever lived through a triple transformation (Markets, nations, democracy) ever before. People had been writing profusely about the transition from capitalism to communism – but not the other way around. The collapse of communism was a great shock. Few – except the Poles and Hungarians - were at all prepared for it.

And understanding such systems change requires a vast array of different intellectual disciplines – and sub-disciplines – and who is trained to make sense of them all?

In the 1990s I basically used my experience of Scottish local government (described, for example, in this paper) to draft advice notes to those trying in Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Latvia to decentralize power…..But I understood only too painfully how I lacked a real understanding of the processes of change in those contexts – and did rapid “teach-yourself” exercises in both European systems of local government and in organisational change….

I was also reading what anglo-saxons were writing about both democratization (in The Journal of Democracy) and about public administration reform. And there was so much writing – not least after the Clinton/Gore initiatives and the 1997 New Labour programmes…..

The names of Donald Savoie, B Guy Peters, Chris Hood, Chris Pollitt and Chris Foster became particularly important to me – I grasped their work like a drowning man…..

A paper I drafted and presented to a couple of Annual Conferences of the body which brings together specialists in training and public administration reform in Central Europe tried to summarise a critique I had been developing for a decade - it was called The Long Game - not the LogFrame. 

Those of us who have got involved in these programmes of advising governments in these countries had a real moral challenge. After all, we were daring to advise these countries on how to construct effective public organisations – we were employed by organisations supposed to have the expertise in how to put systems together to ensure that appropriate intervention strategies emerge to deal with the organisational and social problems of these countries. We were supposed to have the knowledge and skills to help develop appropriate knowledge and skills in those in charge of state bodies in these countries!
But how many of us could give positive answers to the following 5 questions? -
·         Do the organisations which pay us practice what they and we preach on the ground about good organisational principles?
·         Does the knowledge and experience we have as individual consultants actually help us identify and implement interventions which fit the context in which we are working?
·         Do we have the skills to make that happen?
·         What are the bodies which employ consultants doing to explore such questions – and to deal with the deficiencies which I dare to suggest would be revealed?
·         Do any of us have a clue about how to turn kleptocratic regimes into systems that recognise the meaning of public service?  

Identities

In 2011 did a post about identities which recounted how, when I was going through some difficult times, a friend tried to help by encouraging me to explore the various roles I had – father, son, husband, politician, writer, activist etc. I didn’t understand what she was driving at. 

The penny dropped only those few years ago – when I realized that I had become a collector – and could also add the word “explorer” to the list of more conventional epithets such as - lecturer, politician, maverick, leader, writer, consultant, resource person

I was reminded of this earlier this week by a review of a collection of Stefan Zweig’s stories in which Zweig was described as an 

“affluent Austrian citizen, restless wandering Jew, stupendously prolific author, tireless advocate for Pan-European humanism, relentless networker, impeccable host, domestic hysteric, noble pacifist, cheap populist, squeamish sensualist, dog lover, cat hater, book collector, alligator shoe wearer, dandy, depressive, cafe enthusiast, sympathizer with lonely hearts, casual womanizer, man ogler, suspected flasher, convicted fabulist, fawner over the powerful, champion of the powerless, abject coward before the ravages of old age, unblinking stoic before the mysteries of the grave.” And this is only a partial catalogue!!