Another Promise Sworn and Broken…
This week’s Ramble has been thinking. Those of you who know me will attest that this is something worth reporting. It’s rare that my mouth gives my brain time to catch up.
Much like the Ramble, Governments around the world are very good at talking. We discuss and consult, then make assurances, promises and commitments at will. But as anyone who has ever worked in or with a Government before will know, we don’t tend to act quite as authoritatively as we talk.
This is a problem at the best of times. It reduces the trust citizens have in their Government, and since a lot of governance is based on trust (at least that part that isn’t based on coercion), it reduces the effectiveness of the state. In a country like Malawi, which most certainly isn’t in the best of times, the problems run deeper than this. Since we’re so dependent on donors for the money we use to run the country, anything that reduces the trust they have in us has pretty severe ramifications. In the UK, when the electorate stops trusting Tony-tone, they vote for someone else, or send him a message in the local elections. That’s about the extent of it. Apart from a few pensioners, they don’t normally stop paying taxes and get away with it. The odd strike occurs, but its been a while since a strike has been able to bring a Government down. The electorate here has the power to react pretty much the same way with Bingu wa Mutharika. If he was seen to be failing, which he isn’t, he’d be voted out. However, the donor community doesn’t vote, so it has to send its message using the only real lever they have over Government: money.
When a Government like Malawi sets itself a target or promises to implement a reform and then fails, it not only gets egg on its face, it reduces the confidence that donors have in its systems; as a result they’re less willing to spend their money here as opposed to, say, Ghana. What’s more, each failure increases the cynicism of these donors when we, with good intentions, promise further reforms. Donors constantly tell us not to set our sights too high, to do things little by little, pang’ono pang’ono. One understands where they’re coming from; they’ve seen us write out a lot of ambitious targets for reform and development and fail more often than succeed.
But are they diagnosing the problem correctly? I think they might not be. I’m not certain that the targets we’ve set ourselves, at least as far as reform of Government systems is concerned, have been unachievable. Yes, reform is difficult, and requires careful planning, something that hasn’t always been acknowledged within Government, but for the most part, there aren’t large technical problems that need to be overcome in the reform process.
The difficulty usually isn’t that the target is too hard to achieve. It’s that once the target has been set, the people who set them and the people who are meant to achieve them seem to suffer a collective amnesia or failure of will. This problem isn’t limited to Malawi. It’s found in other countries as well, and not just developing ones. The critical question is how to motivate people to undertake difficult, time-consuming reforms, particularly when their own behaviour is what needs to change. Making the target easier might be part of it, but my experience tells me that when someone is lazy, they’ll only do just enough to keep their job; in fact, an easier target will reduce this level and actually make it harder to make any changes. What I’d like to see is a system where for every reform agreed, there are named individuals who have responsibility for seeing them through, and these people are checked up on at regular intervals. If the reforms don’t move fast enough, they’ve got to have a pretty bloody good reason or they get moved out. I know, I know, civil services don’t tend to be that flexible, but we can dream, right?
* * *
Car’s in Mozambique; local police are lazy and incompetent. Interpol seem to have their act together – I don’t know what that means in terms of when I’ll see the damn thing again, but at least someone seems to be working on it.
* * *
One of my colleagues lost his wife last week. The most depressing thing about living in a country as poor as Malawi is the frequency with which funerals occur. You don’t get used to it, but you do have to think back to living in England to remember how infrequently one was confronted by a death within ones circle of acquaintances.
Much like the Ramble, Governments around the world are very good at talking. We discuss and consult, then make assurances, promises and commitments at will. But as anyone who has ever worked in or with a Government before will know, we don’t tend to act quite as authoritatively as we talk.
This is a problem at the best of times. It reduces the trust citizens have in their Government, and since a lot of governance is based on trust (at least that part that isn’t based on coercion), it reduces the effectiveness of the state. In a country like Malawi, which most certainly isn’t in the best of times, the problems run deeper than this. Since we’re so dependent on donors for the money we use to run the country, anything that reduces the trust they have in us has pretty severe ramifications. In the UK, when the electorate stops trusting Tony-tone, they vote for someone else, or send him a message in the local elections. That’s about the extent of it. Apart from a few pensioners, they don’t normally stop paying taxes and get away with it. The odd strike occurs, but its been a while since a strike has been able to bring a Government down. The electorate here has the power to react pretty much the same way with Bingu wa Mutharika. If he was seen to be failing, which he isn’t, he’d be voted out. However, the donor community doesn’t vote, so it has to send its message using the only real lever they have over Government: money.
When a Government like Malawi sets itself a target or promises to implement a reform and then fails, it not only gets egg on its face, it reduces the confidence that donors have in its systems; as a result they’re less willing to spend their money here as opposed to, say, Ghana. What’s more, each failure increases the cynicism of these donors when we, with good intentions, promise further reforms. Donors constantly tell us not to set our sights too high, to do things little by little, pang’ono pang’ono. One understands where they’re coming from; they’ve seen us write out a lot of ambitious targets for reform and development and fail more often than succeed.
But are they diagnosing the problem correctly? I think they might not be. I’m not certain that the targets we’ve set ourselves, at least as far as reform of Government systems is concerned, have been unachievable. Yes, reform is difficult, and requires careful planning, something that hasn’t always been acknowledged within Government, but for the most part, there aren’t large technical problems that need to be overcome in the reform process.
The difficulty usually isn’t that the target is too hard to achieve. It’s that once the target has been set, the people who set them and the people who are meant to achieve them seem to suffer a collective amnesia or failure of will. This problem isn’t limited to Malawi. It’s found in other countries as well, and not just developing ones. The critical question is how to motivate people to undertake difficult, time-consuming reforms, particularly when their own behaviour is what needs to change. Making the target easier might be part of it, but my experience tells me that when someone is lazy, they’ll only do just enough to keep their job; in fact, an easier target will reduce this level and actually make it harder to make any changes. What I’d like to see is a system where for every reform agreed, there are named individuals who have responsibility for seeing them through, and these people are checked up on at regular intervals. If the reforms don’t move fast enough, they’ve got to have a pretty bloody good reason or they get moved out. I know, I know, civil services don’t tend to be that flexible, but we can dream, right?
* * *
Car’s in Mozambique; local police are lazy and incompetent. Interpol seem to have their act together – I don’t know what that means in terms of when I’ll see the damn thing again, but at least someone seems to be working on it.
* * *
One of my colleagues lost his wife last week. The most depressing thing about living in a country as poor as Malawi is the frequency with which funerals occur. You don’t get used to it, but you do have to think back to living in England to remember how infrequently one was confronted by a death within ones circle of acquaintances.
posted by the Maradona of Malawi at 9:20 PM
