Firstly, there’s this delightful violation of direct government intervention from my own neighbourhood:

Governors of Nightingale Primary School removed by Education Secretary

Education Secretary Michael Gove today removed Nightingale Primary School’s board of governors after they refused to bow to pressure to become a sponsored academy.

The board was told this morning it would be dismantled and replaced with an interim governing body, which includes Deborah Absalom [the former director of children and young people’s services at Conservative-run Bexley Council] as its new chair…

I’m not sure that Gove has the constitutional power to remove the boards of individual schools, but what I do know is that the decision to go down the academy route is one that should be made at the institutional level by the internal democratic bodies of individual schools. This kind of muscular involvement is chilling as an isolated event. However…

Doctor who criticised NHS reforms is threatened with disciplinary action

Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, has been accused of “bullying” NHS staff who speak out against his NHS shakeup after a senior doctor who signed a letter criticising the proposed changes was threatened with disciplinary action.

The doctor has been told to attend a disciplinary hearing later this week by the NHS primary care trust (PCT) that employs him. It claims he breached the NHS code of conduct by airing his concerns.

Two such stories in 24 hours must surely be a coincidence! But not really. The government’s tactics on the NHS bill – such as only consulting with bodies that already agree with it – have always been shady at best, and this kind of strong-arm bullying is the natural end result of a process that has largely failed to convince anybody at all.

As the parliament goes on, and divisions between the coalition partners widen; and as the limited policies of austerity that have attracted consensus get enacted one by one, leaving only controversial measures that are subject to competing principles and agendas, the Tories will find it harder and harder to achieve their policies through debate and persuasion. I am concerned that this is a presentiment of the kind of tactics we can expect from the government going forward.

Seen from the state centre, this enclosure movement is, in part, an effort to monetise the people, lands, and resources of the periphery so that they become, to use the French term, rentable… The objective has been less to make them productive than to ensure that their economic activity was legible, taxable, assessable, and confiscatable or, failing that, to replace it with forms of production that were.

This strikes me as being fundamentally true, and gets to the heart of why empire lead to modern capitalism. But it also reminds me that the internet represents a new frontier in that effort; the growing online black markets are unacceptable not because they subvert a status quo, but because they cannot be integrated. Legislative efforts to curb online freedom are the logical response of a system of government that has profound cultural homogenisation at its ideological core.

Zomia is a political and geographic oddity first remarked upon by a Dutch historian, Willem van Schendel, in 2002. Loosely speaking, it refers to a massive, octopus-shaped tract of land in south-east Asia that is the subject of increasingly heated academic attention.

The map above is wrong – not only is the extent of the shaded area quite arbitrary in places, it mislabels Tajikistan as Uzbekistan – but it is presented here as illustration.

Zomia is a huge territory, conceived as being the largest contiguous area that, despite falling beneath the aegis of various national governments, is essentially beyond their control. The exact boundaries are inevitably imprecise, given that they shift with national priorities and the ability of central governments to exert power, but certainly the highlands set away from the coast of Vietnam, all of Laos, most of Thailand, the Shan Hills of northern Burma, and the mountains of Southwest China are all functionally lawless, and the famously unstable regions of Kashmir, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan and the areas on either side of the Durand line can be said to extend this further.

Zomia is, of course, a metaphor. It does not describe a physical reality in the way that a national border does. While it is fair to assert that the area under attention is characterised, broadly, by a territorial ambiguity and general lack of statehood, giving it a name and a border ascribe a coherence to it truthfully lacks. Frank Jacobs at the NYT piece linked to above falls into that trap, using Zomia to illustrate a point about modernity and its discontents. Joshua Foust takes issue:

Unless one equates modernity with answering to a central government you did not choose, this is all wrong… the idea that these transitional regions resist their governments because they reject modernity is nonsense. Afghanistanis and Pakistanis do not reject modernity writ large: they love running water and sanitation and schools and iPhones and electricity and the Internet. Even the Taliban enjoy and appreciate these aspects of modernity. What they are rejecting is a government they view as abusive and unrepresentative. Moreover, most Afghans still identify as Afghans, even (or perhaps especially) when explaining why they reject rule-by-Karzai. So it’s not as simple as rejecting a national identity or modernity.

But while the metaphor can be over-applied, there is a real truth on the ground that is interesting and worth discussion. In his book, ‘The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia,’ James Scott describes Zomia as “the largest remaining region of the world whose peoples have not yet been fully incorporated into nation-states,” and that’s a much fairer – albeit narrower – point. The idea of an area that is beyond the reach of a central government may feel anachronistic, but in truth the Western idea of a government with total reach is a relatively modern historical oddity. There are still other parts of the world where borders are notional – think of the Western Sahara, or parts of Latin America. Zomia represents a way of life that is dying out – an area that is not anti-modern, just ruggedly regionalist. Foust again:

The idea of a lawless region as an object of analysis is fraught with issues. These regions are not “lawless,” as Jacobs calls them. They just operate under different laws that are neither drafted nor enforced by the state. The tribal areas of Pakistan, for example, actually follow a long-established pattern of competition between local and central methods of control. Similarly, Southwest Kyrgyzstan isn’t rejecting modernity by any stretch, it is just coming under the control of mafia dons who have taken up high-level positions in the local and regional government. It’s not lawless, it’s just a different kind of law, however un-ideal and crappy.

The racially-charged Super Bowl commercial put out by former Rep. Pete Hoekstra featuring an Asian actress speaking broken English has backfired and hurt the Michigan Republican’s campaign for U.S. Senate, according to a new poll on Tuesday.

[...]

In July, Hoekstra’s favorability rating was 31 percent favorable, compared to 30 percent unfavorable (+1). It now stands at 28 percent favorable and 38 percent unfavorable (-10).

While it is generally not unfair to suggest that electorates have been making increasingly poor choices for the last 40 odd years, it is nevertheless clear that no-one thinks less of voters than politicians.

The Arab Spring (which, incidentally, has claimed no Arab scalps; perhaps calling it the Maghreb Spring would be more accurate) was a bizarrely rare one-off. Western media got caught up in the idea that a sufficiently commited population can overthrow any dictator, but there’s plenty of counterfactuals to that – China, Iran, Zimbabwe, Libya, and North Korea, to name but a few.

Assad has a few things in his favour that suggest that he may be in this privileged majority. The Army of Syria is not independent, as it is in Libya and Tunisia; it was set up by Assad Snr and its upper echelons are packed with loyalists, loyal to the family more than the regime. The resistance hopes for rank and file desertions, but entropy has been slight thus far and there’s no reason to suspect that it will quicken. That alone is enough – as long as Assad has might, he can reign.

Russia will almost certainly continue to support the regime. Russia has a naval base at Tartus and won’t throw that away lightly. As long as Russia continues to veto international action, China will join it, to give credence to a counter-western voting block.

The international community, for that matter, has nothing. No more room for sanctions, no will to act unilaterally, no capability to overturn Russian intransigence. Syria reflects the West’s impotence back upon itself and gets away with it. The Syrian airforce hasn’t taken off so they can’t use the no-fly zone excuse again. And the longer it goes on, the more it gets normalised. While there are some limited options – like arming the rebels, flooding the region with guns and destabilising it for decades to come – they are almost all awful. So change probably won’t come from without.

The Syrian Resistance is a mess; the Libyian Liberation was co-ordinated by NATO, and without that the guys in Syria are basically an aimless mob.

The Syrian population is too fractured to unify. Syria is a tribal, sectarian country, and the protests are being led by the repressed Sunni majority. Not only do the country’s other factions fear reprisals if the Sunnis regain power, they increasingly fear that Syria’s secularism and pluralism will be under threat from a hardline Wahabist influence. Somewhere between a half and a third of the country will not support a Sunni rebellion under any circumstances.

Taken together, it appears that the ingredients to see the regime deposed just aren’t there.

News International, through its Management and Standards Committee, is now being ruthless and commercial in dealing with the alleged wrongdoings of all its British titles. In doing so, News International is showing no more sentimental attachment to its reporters than it did thirty years ago to its print workers. It is akin to when a despot withdraws his favour from certain underlings: they are not “thrown to the wolves” but they suddenly are treated like any other subjects, and they then have to account for their actions when they thought they could get away with it.

David Allen Green in the New Statesman.

National identify can inform the behaviour of its citizens. Greek students have always been a bolshy lot – the University of Athens has long been a stronghold of the Greek Communist Party, the unions are punchy, and protests (bordering on the riotous) are a common fixture of the streets around Syntagma Square, the seat of Greece’s parliament. The population mainly reacted with delight when their politicians took the country into the Euro in 2001; it was widely known that the Greek government had cooked the books in order to qualify, but this was perceived as the wily Greeks getting one over on the stuffed shirts of Brussels. Mutterings in Berlin about chickens coming home to roost are not without justification.

Last night the Greek government passed an austerity bill (after a torturous negotiation process) that cuts another 150,000 public service jobs and slashes the national minimum wage. The response has been muted; social unrest has been restrained (by Greek standards; reports of 80,000 on the streets yesterday is big for any other European country but the fact that they were only out for a day or two speaks volumes), despite the lurid images being broadcast to the rest of Europe. The country of no seems beaten into submission.

Greece’s role in all of this is to be the sacrificial goat. Greece has the option of default, ejection from the Euro and an internal restructuring – which would be painful in the medium term, when the country has restructured enough to want to go back to the bond markets, but far less painful in both the short and long terms than the current retrenchment being enforced upon it. Greece can’t grow, and will thus never be able to pay its debts under the current status quo. But Greece’s parliament has been persuaded that the Euro crisis is Greece’s fault, and that its sacrifice is necessary for the sake of the Euro. And so it falls on its sword.

Unquestionable, however, is the claim that a Greek default would cause massive contagion. Talk of a Greek collapse triggering a tumble in Spain, Italy and even France is not scaremongering; it’s a very real and present threat. The ECB’s strategy is not to prevent a Greek collapse; it’s simply to stave it off for long enough to make sure that the fire won’t spread.

In 1940, when Greece was the only country in mainland Europe to stand up to Hitler and Mussolini, its spirited intransigence was hailed as a moment of national identity shining through. In 2012, Greece is once again singled out. I doubt that “yes day” will be remembered with quite as much fondness.

There’s a reason why this post is happening today, and it’s not going to be a surprising one. The Huhne departure and the subsequent intake provoked fevered speculation (£) and even a a flurry of moves on the betting market. All of which is marvellous, and I’m sure that the merits of the Huhne story will keep us all entertained for weeks to come. But what was noticeable was the change in the way that such political events were handled.

For a start, the reshuffle was announced by Clegg rather than Cameron. I wouldn’t care to dig back into the stats, but it’s certainly the first time since the beginning of Thatcher’s government that a reshuffle was announced and presented by someone other than the PM.

The significance of this is heralded by the fact that it was widely referred to as a “Lib Dem reshuffle”. And lo, only Lib Dem ministries were affected, and hardly any of those at that – Ed Davey, a grassroots favourite, joining the bigtime, with Norman Lamb picking up his old seat at Business. And that’s pretty much it: a tiny reshuffle, by any measure. This mirrors the replacements of David Laws and Liam Fox, both of whom were replaced in straight promotions.

What’s the point of all this? I find it interesting that three high-profile exists have resulted in no shuffling of the deck chairs. Nearly two years into the parliament and the only changes to the roster have been those enforced by circumstances. What’s going on?

Well, partly it’s a reversion to the norm. The Blair and Brown ministries were tumultuous; the former was a famous reorganiser, making no fewer than fifteen discretionary changes during his 12 years in office. Wikipedia has the movements of the Brown Ministry (which just over two years, remember) in handy diagram form:

Click to enlarge

This frenetic pace was due to the tactics prioritised by both Blair and Brown during their times in office, and is due in part to the dual nature of a cabinet role.

On the one hand, a seat at the Cabinet table is a job. It requires understanding, dedication, and knowledge, often of a broad area of policy with far-reaching effects on the lives and livelihoods of a chunk of the population.

On the other, it is a perk – a position of power and responsibility, and a visible measure of one’s position in relation to one’s colleagues and coevals. It is a springboard for further career development, or an acknowledgement of distinguished service.

These two impulses are often found in opposition to one another. An MP who is granted cabinet office as a political stepping-stone, as part of the process of being groomed for leadership or simply to keep a talented public figure inside the tent tend not to have a background in their designated office, and tend not to have a very developed interest in its minutia. In a climate where political offices are treated as tools of favour rather than jobs, any MP who has a background in a specific area tends not to be ambitious beyond the remit of that area, and thus simply gets stuck. Chris Mullin MP said in his valedictory speech, and transcribed into his diaries:

“Mr Speaker, government needs to become a little less frenetic. The practice of annual reshuffles is massively destabilising and confers enormous power on the civil service. There have been eight secretaries of State for work and pensions in the ten years since that department was invented. Of late we have been getting through Home Secretaries at the rate of almost one a year. Goodness knows how many Health and Education secretaries we have had. We are on our tenth Europe minister. Our ninth or tenth Prisons minister. I was the sixth Africa minister, the current incumbent is the ninth. Mr Speaker, this does not make for good government.”

One of the things that the Cameron government has done right has been to settle the ship in that area. I’ve written before about the merits of Iain Duncan Smith as a knowledgeable and capable Secretary of State, but it is notable that most members of the cabinet have a background in their chosen area. There is a real reticence towards moving people around for the sake of securing political obedience. When Tory rising star Louise Mensch was misquoted last year about being discontent at her lack of ministerial position, the response was tepid – not because Mensch is uncapable (she is capable) nor because she is unpopular (she is one of the leading faces of the 2010 intake), but simply because this is not a government that reshuffles lightly.

But this is part of a broader tactical change brought about by the coalition government. One of the key advantages of the approach taken by the government towards reshuffles is that it means that Secretaries of State can spearhead their own Departments’ initiatives. This is a big tonal shift from the recent past, and one that the opposition has failed to fully adapt to.

The effect of this is that backlashes to unpopular policies – and there have been many over the past two years – are effectively confined to their silos. While private schools (Michael Gove), NHS cost-cutting (Andrew Lansley), benefits cuts (IDS), banker-bashing (Vince Cable) and baton charges (Theresa May) – not to mention austerity (George Osborne) – have roused ire on both the left and the right, David Cameron’s popularity has stayed more or less completely static, and the damage to the government’s popularity as a whole has been surprisingly muted. Because David Cameron is not perceived to be spearheading any of these initiatives, attacks from Ed Milliband on him personally – both in speeches and at PMQs – have failed to stick. But because he represents the government in the mind of the electorate, he provides his party with a degree of cover even as his ministers’ reputations get progressively worse and worse.

This is a huge shift in the way that government is conducted. Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown all ruled, to a greater or lesser extent, in a presidential style, taking political ownership of policies enacted by their cabinet and ultimately coming unstuck when they could no longer evade the consequences. Cameron is returning to an older style of politics which prioritises collective responsibility. It has its weaknesses – back-bench unrest is harder to quell with the promise of patronage, as seen by the growing number of Tory and Lib Dem mutineers (the latter part has seen more defiance against the whip since 2010 than it did in the entire prior decade), and in the unlikely event that the government enacts some popular provision it is, by the same token, unlikely to rub off on Cameron himself. But it is also an astute response to a time of coalition and austerity. Whether it can keep the poll numbers of the coalition partners robust until 2015 remains to be seen.

What’s going on in the world?

Now, her answer was “build roads”, and as a line it works – it’s intended to help a TV audience think about problems of third world countries in a different way. Solutions don’t have to be purely political; lives can be changed through more earthy means. Roads mean access, which means supplies can be provided to struggling settlements and trade networks can develop over greater distances. The yields of infrastructure spending increase exponentially from a lower base; the upgrade from dirt tracks to tarmac roads is massively more worthwhile than an upgrade from conventional rail to high-speed rail, for example. And physical infrastructure as an aid project carries long-term benefits for the aid giver; to this day, a British passport will get you preferential treatment in Saudi Arabia, beyond that even accorded to US passports, because – yes – Britain built the roads. From one of the most intelligently-written shows in recent times, it’s a solid B+ answer.

A fair critique of the road-building plan would be that gains from infrastructure investment rely on other indicators. In a sense, the question is flawed – you can’t fix all of Africa with a single policy, because Africa is bigger and has more diverse problems than any other continent, and if there was a silver bullet even the singularly incompetent political classes of the baby boomer generation would have stumbled upon it eventually. Infrastructure development would work wonders in countries like Botswana, Ghana, Namibia or Mali, which are democratic, broadly stable, but underdeveloped and in need of greater access. It would even have possible benefits in countries like Liberia and Zambia, which, although very unstable, are steadily normalising and could use the positive economic impact to bed in positive change. However, improved roads would be meaningless in places like Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Ivory Coast or Nigeria – the countries that need development the most. On the one hand, production levels are simply not high enough that infrastructure development would add meaningfully to economic opportunity. On the other, any fresh outbreak of hostilities would shred the roads, or – worse yet – use them to spread conflicts further and deeper.

A better use of donor time and money would, sadly, be to go back to the slightly dry and tedious stuff of political institution-building. Before economic growth and access can truly begin, the constant cycle of instability, megalomania and bloodshed has to be stopped. An armed madman with an army and a significant chunk of the nation’s wealth will always trump any supply-side reforms that international donors can impose, and that is still too common an occurrence in a continent that has provided the ICC with 100% of its indictees.

The aim is not necessarily even to promote democracy, however, although of course more democracy would be delightful – the crucial factor is not mode of government, it’s rigour of governance. More important than jump-starting elections are the processes of implementing reliable judiciaries, building functioning civil services and ensuring that such national services as are provided – schools, policing, and medicine in particular – are run according to standardised norms. Ideally, that can be extended further – the commissioning of public works via PPP models, which has brought huge benefits to Central and Latin America, and the implementation of patent regimes and intellectual property laws.

Isn’t this all rather ephemeral? Can it really be more useful to implement patents than it is to build something as fundamental as a road, or as important as universal suffrage? Well, yes. History demonstrates that societies cohere when they have both something to protect and a viable means of protecting it. Both democracy and broad economic empowerment tend to be lagging indicators; the great powers of Europe all had functioning, largely independent judiciaries long before they had suffrage, unions, or widespread road networks. Meanwhile, the stark difference between resolute non-democracies such as Singapore and Zimbabwe can be explained by means of the application of the rule of law far more effectively than the reach of their respective road networks. Governance institutions, vulnerable as they are, are the building blocks upon which stable societies are built. Any attempt to move forward without them is a construction built on sand.

Francis Fukuyama is embarking on a project to examine the relationship between western aid efforts, their emphasis on democracy promotion and the actual effects that this can have on governance. At a time when Libya is engaged in building a democracy without any functioning institutions of governance to speak of, his findings may turn out to be important.