Ukraine has come a long way since February 2014, the bloody events
leading to ouster of the Yanukovych regime, the crossing of several societal
Rubicon’s, and the discovery of just how degraded and hollow the institutions
of State actually were/are – to the point of volunteer battalions becoming the
nation’s teeth in eastern Ukraine and civil society becoming its fund raising,
logistical support and promotional tail for the first few months after The
Kremlin decided to open its Donbas front, whilst Kyiv stumbled and fumbled in a
stupefied condition.
Indeed for at least the first half of 2014, perhaps longer, so entirely
useless was the State structure that it was simply avoided and circumvented by
a mobilised society in order to provide any effective resistance and support in
the east, and community action across the rest of the nation to prevent
implosion.
During those early months, it took a good deal of external energy, cash
and expertise to support and organise any form of coherent and even marginally
effective structures of State within Ukraine – a task that is still far from
complete despite the evident recovery of “The State” from a condition of almost
fatal chaos, to that of simply feckless and weak. Nevertheless a recovery
of sorts despite “The State” remaining light years behind society and civil
society in its effectiveness and implementation of solutions to identified
problems. (Notwithstanding solutions that are forced upon “The State” by
external institutions like the IMF etc.)
In short, there has been a move from an almost complete absence of
quality administrative decisions made without expert analysis and input, to the
point now where there is an abundance of both quality domestic and external
expert analysis available to government even before it thinks to ask for it –
and the government is at pains to be seen to be listening to that advice.
The question is whether when it is listening, is it actually hearing the
experts available to it?
If it is actually hearing what it is being told, why for so many within
the Ukrainian constituency, does it appear that the institutions of power and
the State aparatus are still projecting a clear predilection for
controllability at the expense of effectiveness?
The institutions of State remain weak and feckless – notwithstanding
still being chronically and systemically corrupt. The threats, both
internal and external faced by Ukraine, have in no way diminished. For so
long as the State and its institutions remain in their current weak and/or inept
condition, the quality of administrative decision making, effectiveness, and
implementation can afford few errors.
No longer being in Spring of 2014 where civil society and society worked
around the political class to get results, we are soon entering Spring 2016 with
a civil society now trying very hard to drag the political class behind it
toward reform and State development. The feckless political class is a
heavy load to carry, particularly when it still appears to be deaf to the
experts it claims to listen to far too often.
If the truce holds in eastern Ukraine, the political class are very
likely to face multiple issues rising swiftly up the societal expectations
spectrum that it still seems unprepared for – and having failed to reform (nor
lustrate) its institutions in any meaningful way, both the power and its
institutions when forced to make swift decisions are unlikely to be prepared.
That will lead to continuously untimely, and perhaps worse, numerous
wrong decisions being made both centrally and at the periphery. This is
particularly so when effectiveness based upon expert input remains a permanent
sacrifice upon the alter of central political controllability.
Nobody would deny that nation building takes a long time. Indeed
it is a matter of more haste and less speed to get it more or less right and
sustainable. However, “revolutionary reform” would appear more successful
than “evolutionary reform” when viewed empirically – yet Ukraine under its
current management appears to have opted for the later which would suggest
either failure, or a change to revolutionary reform – perhaps under new
management. If that be the case, then the current management will have
only itself to blame.
If the fundamentals of quality decision making can be broadly brush
stroked as being timely, considered, data based, reasoned with clearly
identified trade offs, and actioned, then one wonders where the Ukrainian
political class sit upon either the domestic or international scorecard of 1 –
10 if allocating 2 points to each broadly identified criteria as listed above
in any quality decision making?
Perhaps every governmental decision should be marked against these 5
criteria henceforth to provide a more focused perception vis a vis government
rhetoric. It would make a change from the usual “Buzz Word Bongo”.
(Before the practitioners start emailing Otto von Bismarck —
‘Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next
best’ to
the blog, as part of the previous regime discovered rather bluntly, there are
some very different views between society and the political class as to what is
“possible” and “attainable” (and how quickly it can and should be achieved).)
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