‘N’ ways of modernisation; not all are bad

This one by way of introduction....

Where did ‘Walking the Dog’ come from? A particular canal towpath was the immediate source of dog walking as metaphor. A brother’s dog is my sometime companion. George Gershwin’s chirpy tune provides the actual title and may have influenced the tone and pace of thought[1]. But in actuality the image and the title serves no more than to assert the importance of eccentricity - literally meant - a point outwith the inevitably bounded if not closed circles of thought and action that society sets up to support and justify its means of governing itself. It is a great trick to be able to step outside - made easier in my case by not having to teach the stuff or advise on it any more.

Another question follows: where is it going? Answer; through a discussion, hopefully a conversation that must be ongoing. Several iterations are set out below. As text set out in chunks they are a bit too one sided to be conversation but other friends and thinkers - sometimes they are both - are acknowledged [or not] to have chipped in. Other chips will be welcomed and may be responded to; or ignored. Such is the nature of conversation. And who knows, a conversation started within the chaos of contemporary governance, may change the world; the butterfly behind the storms. Mind you, a gentle wind of change would serve better.

* * * * *

If I were a Chinese leader, which I am not, I would put a number on this ‘N’ in my headline on modernisation. It would be ‘Three Ways’, or five perhaps, numbers that serve to identify a graspable span of mildly contrasting ideas, a list to be rattled off in public speech, signalled, item by item on the digits of one hand. Four points? Never; because four is unlucky, even in a regime that boasts a thoroughly modern commitment to rationality in all things. Seven would be good, though already stretching our basically binary minds beyond practicable limits - requiring the use of more digits or toes. In any case I find, on reviewing the this accumulation of essays that I cannot put a limit on the number of things that are done or claimed, achieved or not achieved, in the name of modernisation. Link the word modernisation to the word governance and ‘N’ may be doubled. Throw in the word management and the opportunities for both ambition and error multiply. None of this would matter perhaps if the word modernisation [or the derivative pre-modern or post modern] actually added predictive meaning, or if governance was an idea that could be bounded, or if management was something more than a rag-bag of tangled imperatives. In practice however these words and concepts have an elasticity that stretches in many directions to the earnest tugs of their proponents. If this were an academic thesis these would have to be exhaustingly explored. I won’t go there, but find that I have in practice simplified and I had better state how.

Governance I have taken to be about some form of social control - or another. There are of course innumerable social conditions such as drugs on the streets, or economic circumstances such as collapse of the banks, or environmental trends, such as global warming that cry out for better governance, some of which have exercised me in these essays. The use of the word governance rather than government is more than a fashion. It allows that there are many potential ways of achieving social control besides setting up a central body, some of which involve many different agents working together; even in opposition to each other, but still with governance outcomes.

Management is about getting things done, in one way or another. I could say again; there is a lot that could be better managed. The ‘how’ of it in either case - how govern, how manage - will have something to do with the nature of the task and the characteristics of the context. Both ‘task’ and ‘context’ are rather complicated, and, as I have stated above, adding the word modern does not bring clarity.

I find that I can go a little further. Theory creeps in. Underlying the observations in the essays are two different sets of ideas or frameworks. One line of thought draws from economics to note the characteristics of ‘goods’; a ‘public good’, such as clean air being, if there at all, available to all regardless and from which it is difficult to exclude non-contributors; a common good, such as village pond or a cooperative society being only achieved if shared but from which non-contributors can be excluded. A private good is, like an apple, both divisible and individually consumable. These different kinds of goods structure choice in different ways. Many minds have been busy over the last half-century in seeing how these notions fit with or tie into ideas about institutions and forms of governance[2]. Elaborate games and simulation exercises - Axelrod leading the way - have been devised to show that competitive individualism is quite compatible with cooperative strategies, given enough ‘plays’ to provide for learning. The innumerable instances of governed commons were found to have rational behavioural foundations. But a problem has since emerged. A lot more rounds of play in the real world, having led to many more emergent institutional forms - think financial derivatives - chaotic patterns of institutional breakdown and distrust have spun out of the same interactive processes. More scope for exhaustive exposition here - which will also be avoided.

I put this kind of economic theorising together in my mind with a bit of anthropology - an odd and much contested bit of anthropology - called Cultural Theory[3]. This theory elaborates in different directions and has its own explanation of irrationality but what I take from it at this stage is this: that the ways in which societies achieve necessary coordination boil down to three; they build hierarchies [sometimes as states], they look for solidarity in groups [communities, civil society organisations] and/or they interact as individuals [through markets or networks or other types of dyadic exchange]. This sounds simple, though the key finding about these modes of coordination is that they build upon quite contradictory sets of values and relationships which do not always fit well together and often leave the conceptual door open to quite irrational, even perverse kinds of social reasoning and behaviour.

At this point, if I were in teaching mode, I would chalk up a three by three matrix on the board and start filling in the boxes. But I am not in teaching mode. In any case, the outcome would be to point to further contradictions. It might seem obvious enough for instance that private ways of interacting with others go neatly into a private goods box, which is fair enough but then some brands of economic theory assert that the greatest good of the greatest number is the public good - best served through private interactions in a market and that there are very few goods - even clean air - that cannot be apportioned somehow and made subject to market access and control. At another corner of my imagined matrix Hierarchy and Public Goods might be boxed together; logical enough, but the biggest thrust of the late 20th Century in many countries besides the UK was in de-constructing state hierarchies to find ways for private and sometimes community institutions to function within the public sphere. Other countries were there already, having never attempted to grant the state total competence.

The conclusion of this section of my imagined lecture - I am allowing myself three points - would have to be that theory alone does not satisfy. It abstracts beyond the point that practitioners - I have been one in several ways; or teachers - I have been one such also and have not entirely abandoned the trade - can readily apply as practice or use to either predict or to explain. To be armed with theory alone would leave one tilting at windmills; and there is plenty of that in the trade. Try another approach?

* * * * *

Maybe we have to deconstruct the method a bit. Note that all analysis entails comparison, of like with like, like with some thing contrasting, or like with a model or simulation of the same. My second point then is to note that several of my reflections make use of comparison. The little that I understand about governance and public management in Britain has benefited greatly from my work as a consultant or student in other parts of the world. That inevitably has entailed comparison. Funnily enough, while the donors, international agencies, (national governments even) that paid for my services were often committed to the idea that it would be useful for Government officials from Bangladesh, or Laos, or Botswana, or Nigeria, or wherever, to learn by comparing their [‘traditional’, ‘inadequate’, ‘failing’] governance systems with the virtues that were assumed to be found in our British [‘modern’, ‘democratic’, ‘advanced’] public service reforms [ongoing without end]; the comparison that I most often found myself making went the other way around[4] .



There is self-learning in this. To open your eyes to ‘foreign’ enables you to ‘see ourselves as others see us’ - just a wee bit[5]. And that bit has often been uncomfortable [as is reflected in these essays, I hope].

An early reflection, long before I indulged myself with writing these essays, took place on the long flight back from India. A colleague and I had been engaged with a small Planning Cell in Gujarat, an adjunct of a massive, India wide, government directed scheme for getting productive assets to very poor people: state agency at its most energetic and was coming back to Britain where a commitment to ‘rolling back the state’ and liberalising the market was in full swing. The Thatcher project was leading to a flight of capital and the collapse of nearly all productive activity in the West Midlands. The contrast could not have been more stark or more gloomy for a homecoming Brummie. The comparison was not was simply a matter of contrasting political philosophies - the one still clearly Fabian Socialist in ambition, perpetuating Jawaharlal Nehru’s intellectual commitments, the other essaying to invert all that through neo-libertarian radicalism [India has since caught the bug] with resulting public policies in free trade, privatisation and state disinvestment. It was also, in a deeper, multi-layered way, about comparisons that arise from shared bits of history, different ways of using the same language, jokes that unite and divide. Truth or understanding is deep buried in these layers. Does this mean that the only method of comparative analysis that works is historiography or cultural studies perhaps?

I am not sure, but recognise that all comparison requires both abstraction and simplification. To make abstract and to simplify may sharpen one’s capacity to observe but also puts a mass of detail or circumstance out of focus or out of sight altogether One is caught in the business of rationalisation after the event; O.K. for a bit of detective work, a tool for a Sherlock Holmes of government, but not reliable as a research tool. No, there is no ideal method; understanding remains a matter of judgement; of thinking oneself into the situation, seeing the points of view of others [a method that any 60s Sociologist was trained to think of, following Weber, as ‘verstehen’ [and my spell check does not recognise]].

A further complication - if I may slip it in under point two - is that social or economic thinking has to serve both analytic and prescriptive purposes. As prescription, theory has to present authoritative reasons for doing things; or persuasive grounds for accusations by the done-unto of failures by the doers. It has to show, not only what needs to be done but also how it should be done, because the doing will have a dynamic of its own.

So go perhaps a further step away from theory towards deep analysis of practice; observe what people say and do and how they explain themselves to themselves or others. This approach is sometimes called ‘native theory’?[6] The problem here, explored at great length by French Anthropologist, Pierre Bourdieu, is that no native anybodies anywhere seem to feel the need to be consistent in their ideas about what they say or what they do[7]. My essays show that this generalisation goes just as well for politicians in Westminster as for anyone else. Nor is it possible for an observer to avoid bringing ideas or comparisons from elsewhere. The result is that the practitioner does not see the world of government or public management as being governed by theory, either academic or ‘native’. I open Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice (Polity Press 1990) at random and find the following ….. “Only….acquired mastery, functioning with the automatic reliability of an instinct, can make it possible to respond instantaneously to all the uncertain and ambiguous situations of practice” (p104)

* * * * *

My third point goes back to the question of what it is that makes up the subject of these short vignettes. The word ‘governance’ has opened the door to allow many different social institutions or types of relationship to be discussed as social control. It has let us recognise that many aspects of our life chances and the uncertain and ambiguous circumstances that surround us need to be governed or managed.

Consider the governance of financial markets [this has a certain topicality in early 2009]. Is it the good sense of the innumerable buyers and sellers of money [or other financial products] that can or should govern the market? Is it the internal mechanisms within financial institutions which monitor the performance of those involved in external transactions, much as a regulator governs a steam engine? Is it the sector wide collective bodies that represent the banks, the building societies etc., intent upon maintaining the reputation of their sector by being willing to bring ‘rogue’ institutions into line? Is it, on the other hand a government regulator with audit powers that acts as a central, hierarchical control? Is it a central bank which attempts to regulate the banking trade by altering the interest rates at which institutions are obliged to lend to each other; seeking to steer the sector as a sailor steers his ship with a touch upon the tiller? Is it in fact the mutual risk-sharing that financial institutions engage in when they do lend to each other? If the answer is that it is not one of such agent but a combination of agents that is necessary then the question becomes what kind of combination will be successful? The answer, in early 2009, is that we do not know.
There are goodish grounds for thinking however that in such complex interrelationships there are multiple grounds for moral hazard. In other words, individuals won’t think about risk properly when they assume that government will look after their interests. Self-regulation by the banking sector in the interest of good reputation of the sector may not work when a central agent is willing to play policeman and can be made to take the blame when things go wrong. Every internal bank regulator may be willing to bow to an over-ambitious boss in the hope that an external regulator will say ‘no’ on her/his behalf.

Governing financial markets is not a new game. On a world scale it has been in play since the early 20th Century. Governing the use of the World’s resources in the interest of environmental conservation and sustainable development is by comparison only in its first rounds of play; though there does now seem to be some urgency in getting viable rules established. The money game has got more complicated over the years and is hopefully still evolving. It can be thought about - in principle - as being just about money, though the millions around the world who are loosing their livelihoods probably take the view that it should be about money as facilitator of valued human transactions; ‘roof over head’, ‘food in stomach’, that kind of thing, rather than money as money. Governing the environment will inevitably be more difficult because there can be no concept of sector independence; it is about human consumption, production and the generation of side effects through waste. As such it opens up challenges to the way we think, the way we decide, as well as what we do and the way we go about it.

With this broad brief I find that I need to understand;

….cycles of consciousness … narratives, discourses….

….processes of disputation and choice… politics…

….doing governance….looking forward…carrying through…looking back to make corrections….or more likely ….muddling through…

….as well as the always hovering …always present ... inevitabilities of risk and blame

Each of these areas of potential analysis comes replete with sets of thinkers who have spent their careers finding interesting things to say; quite daunting. Each has its tentative frameworks of ideas and practices of one kind of another that have enabled people to think and act or blunder along in society. That adds another challenge. Somehow that opened door calls for a wider view and a lighter touch in trying to understand or explain. Hence I think my inclination to turn to metaphor or simile.

A quick glance through the accumulation of essays and I find that all sorts of comparisons and likenesses have been called into play; models of governance likened to types of landscape [4 -mono-crops and things, 6, rolling roads - borrowed from Chesterton…] to geography more broadly [3, known ways and labyrinths] and so on. Curiously I seem to have missed the body; the most common likening used by governance writers. Body imagery is deeply embedded in language of governance in all cultures; ‘the body politic’; ‘the head of government’, ‘the arms of the state’ and so on that I suppose it is lost its edge analytically. So other likenings have had to do[8].


The reflections

The reflections that follow have accumulated, and will hopefully go on accumulating; this is work in progress. Some have been spurred into existence as reactions to particular events, some in provocative reaction to what have struck me as particularly curious or questionable policies or government postures. Escape from the demands of teaching, researching, advising or project management - my particular engagements with public policy and governance - has liberated my pen [well, you know what I mean, my word machine]. Odd comparisons that spring to mind are allowed, which scholarly principles might disallow. Personal value judgements that might have been hidden can show their face. But, as I contemplate publication I find that there may be some order to the observations which I had better explain [in case it is not obvious!]

[1] George Gershwin, 1937, ‘Walking the Dog’, for the film Shall we dance, in which Fred Astaire chats up Ginger Rogers aboard a luxury liner, fun, but for me the tune has wider resonances.
[2] The game playing, observing, theorising Elinor Ostrom has been my guide.
[3] The late Mary Douglas my second academic mentor.
[4] Just occasionally I managed to make the point in print; ‘"Owning" without owners, managing with few managers: lessons from Third World irrigators'. in Sue Wright and Nici Nelson, eds Anthropology of Organisation Rouledge 1990.

[5] Robert Burn’s poem fits the aid trade and many other forms of government that are prone to arrogant pretensions of superiority. The last verse of Tae a Loose’ goes;
O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us! / It wad frae monie a blunder free us, / An' foolish notion: / What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, / An' ev'n devotion!

[6] Or emic and etic viewpoints; emic accounts being attempts to see cultures within their participants terms, while an etic perspective seeks to explain within a universalistic observer framework.
[7] Furthermore, as I found when being an anthropologist in Manyana village, Botswana, trying to make sense of people’s behaviour in the micro-political arena of the village assembly, evidence that one value was being followed could be denied by the need to accentuate another contradictory value. The men would sit in a semicircle. I observed that the seating order reflected their seniority within the elaborate kinship structure of the village. An elder brother coming late would ask his junior to move round. When I recounted this observation in the presence of the Paramount Chief, he completely denied that this could be the practice. All men are equal in court was his theme, and have equal voice. This was also an observable fact, but one that sat so awkwardly with the assertive status differentiation that rank ordering had to be denied.
[8] though I was tempted to use the Heads, Bodies and Legs game when searching for a way of describing some contemporary government created hybrid organisations