A Battle of Verses for ‘Democratic Dominance’ RL Vol. XI No. CCXC, MMXVII

A Battle of Verses for ‘Democratic Dominance’ –

Existential Menace of an Emergent Post-Truth Politics in the East-West Throngs of an Emerging & World Order

Public Lecture - RL Vol. XI No. CCXC, MMXVII

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy & Sustainable Institutional Reforms

https://addisababa.academia.edu/CostyCostantinos

Abstract

        Post-truth politics, a phenomenon that has now formally been adopted as an instrument of Global Governance, is a political culture in which politics (public opinion and media narratives) have become almost entirely disconnected from policy (the substance of legislation) (Roberts, 2010). Such is the post-truth era that when the Republican presidential hopeful, claimed that President Barack Obama ‘is the founder’ of Islamic State and the Democratic candidate, the ‘co-founder’, even some of his supporters were perplexed. Fake news – active misinformation that is packaged to look as if it comes from a serious news site – is a threat to democratic institutions. Nonetheless, such post-truth politics harping on nuclear threats, populism and trade relations is giving way for emerging market leaders such as China to fill in the void left by the ‘beacons’ of democracy, to chart new courses for global governance institutions. 

        Machiavelli thought pivots around a central, uncomfortable observation: that the wicked tend to win. They do so because they have a huge advantage over the good: they are willing to act with the darkest ingenuity and cunning to further their cause. They are not held back by those rigid opponents of change: principles. They will be prepared to outright lie, twist facts, threaten or get violent. Global governance shared the same fate after WWII, where the acerbic state leaders won the final battle against the dilapidated people of Europe and Africa. Today, history repeats itself by the same token where state leaders that are willing and able to deploy their vast martial power on helpless nations and peoples such as Syria, Yemen and Libya. Global governance in most issue domains is provided by a complex combination of these different bases, rather than by any single one of them. In spite of all of the disorder and complexity associated with global security issues, however, there is a great deal of purposive and authoritatively rule-governed order present in the contemporary international system. It is not always a very just or efficient system of governance, but it is governance nevertheless, and is central to any understanding of attempts to address contemporary security challenges (Biersteker, 2009: 11).  

          The lecture augurs on the analyses of transition to global governance that are marked by several limitations. These include a tendency to narrow global governance to the terms and categories of immediate, not very well considered, political and social action, a naïve realism, as it were; and inattention to problems of articulation or production of global systems and process within local politics rather than simply as formal or abstract possibilities. Moreover, a nearly exclusive concern in certain institutional perspectives on global governance with generic attributes and characteristics of social, economic, cultural and political organisations and consequent neglect of analysis in terms of specific strategies and performances of nations in global governance creates ambiguities as to whether society is agent or object of global change. Further, inadequate analysis of the role of transnational companies and Bretton Wood Institutions and of relations between global and indigenous dimensions of global governance creates serious analytical limitations.

Key words: global governance, analytical limitations, post-truth politics, emerging market

See link here or http://www.academia.edu/35179180/A_Battle_of_Verses_for_Democratic_Dominance_Existential_Menace_of_an_Emergent_Post-Truth_Politics_in_the_East-West_Throngs_of_an_Emerging_and_World_Order_RL_Vol._XI_No._CCXC_MMXVII

Watersheds of Ethical Governance Crises Curbing Resource Plunders in Africa – Theory and Praxis - RL Vol. XI No. CCXCIV, MMXVII

Watersheds of Ethical Governance Crises
Curbing Resource Plunders in Africa –

Theory and Praxis

Public Lecture - RL Vol. XI No. CCXCIV, MMXVII

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy & Sustainable Institutional Reforms

https://addisababa.academia.edu/CostyCostantinos

Public Administration Ethics: Theory and Praxis

Blocks I - Lecture and Seminar Notes, Series IV, AAU, Addis Ababa, 2013

Reviewed 2015

Abstract

Talks of mal-governance and corruption have been a clarion call for government in recent years. This paper looks at the theory and practice in public administration ethics that will be valuable for leaders to take systemic measures to combat unethical governance. In spite of fast growing economies and notwithstanding the slavery and colonial and neo-liberal legacy, that is still taxing the continent, new faces and forces of vulnerability and poverty haunt the Africa region. These series of lectures consider the relations between corruption, security and development. The public service suffers from the pressures of economies, no less than those of politics. The realities prevailing in Africa render expectations of Africa’s public service rather unreasonable. For most junior public servants in Africa daily survival is nothing less than a minor miracle because their wages lag behind the requirements of self-reproduction. At a structural-political level, structural-cultural level and epistemological level, is the conflict of the legitimacy of the received state. Its ‘public’ is nominal with the informal kinship-based; legitimacy of salient values of indigenous African cultures and those of the value systems of the modern state and the antimonies, distortions and confusions of an epistemological stance, which insistently privileges perceives Africa in the image of the West.

  Chronologically, one discerns two overarching themes - the organisational context in which individual administrators must work out ethical decisions and conduct, and democratic values as normative touchstones for public administrative ethics. Chronologically, the first to emerge clearly is that of the organisation as an arena fraught with complicating factors for any would-be rational ethical administrator. Democratic norms are found in the earliest of these works, but are developed neither as lucidly, nor as progressively as the organisational setting. Thus, democratic theory and values are deemed here to constitute a minor theme, not in the sense of being less important ultimately, but in terms of the attention paid to it in these works in particular, as well as in the literature in general. Increasingly serious and systematic attention devoted to the influence of organisational factors, both positive and negative, is quite clear. At the outset, democratic values are assumed the most basic values necessary for the study of public administration ethics...  

Key words: ethics, corruption, public administration, good governance

See link here or  http://www.academia.edu/35208062/Watersheds_of_Ethical_Governance_Crises_Curbing_Resource_Plunders_in_Africa_Theory_and_Praxis_Public_Administration_Ethics_Theory_and_Praxis

The Global Passion for Data-ism – Is it An Emergent Tool for Rapid, Adaptive Public Policy? RL Vol. XI No. CCXCIII, MMXVII

The Global Passion for Data-ism –

Is it An Emergent Tool for Rapid, Adaptive Public Policy?

The environment in which public policy is made has entered a period of dramatic change. Widespread use of digital technologies, the Internet and social media means both citizens and governments leave digital traces that can be harvested to generate big data. Policy-making takes place in an increasingly rich data environment, which poses both promises and threats to policy-makers. Helen Margetts, 2013

Public Lecture - RL Vol. XI No. CCXCIII, MMXVII

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy & Sustainable Institutional Reforms

https://addisababa.academia.edu/CostyCostantinos

Abstract

In just four decades, the systems of statistics in Africa went through three seismic waves. The first of these occurred immediately in the aftermath of decolonisation. During this time, Africa experienced a decade of dramatic rise in the development of its systems of national statistics, particularly in the implementation of population censuses and household surveys. This lecture focuses on the emerging need for good social and economic data that can help African nations develop statistical systems that will provide on time information on socio-economic development that will affect resource mobilization and allocation more proactively. The research questions addressed the relevance Big Data may have to the huge range of public policy questions. Big data challenges policy makers because it can offer real-time results that require a rapid, adaptive policy in return. Big data is often a rich data, offering refined data points and high quality observations that span different levels of analysis and the data is often fragmented, so researchers spend time trying to locate and access diverse data sets. The data requires translation – between languages, and between disciplines. Data-ism is a recently coined term for a kind of data philosophy or ideology. Big data refers to a process that is used when traditional data mining and handling techniques cannot reveal the insights and meaning of the underlying data. Data that is unstructured or time sensitive or simply very large cannot be processed by relational database engines. The lecture further discusses data modelling, data augmentation, algebraic modelling & algorithm and research initiatives on Big Data and Public Policy. It further elaborates on the promises and threats of big data for public policy-making how big data has changed public policy. Data transformation deals with turning numbers into knowledge, conceptualizing data management: the information value chain mapping the flow of data, matching your needs to the software and triangulation.

Key words: data-ism, big data, algebraic modelling, algorithm data modelling, augmentation & transform

See link here

Sweeping Devaluation Version 2 -2017 Propelling the Wheeler-dealer Speculative Trade Regime & a Predator Parallel Currency Markets into a Whirlwind Tailspin - RL Vol. XI No. CCCXCIII, MMXVII

Sweeping Devaluation Version 2 -2017

Propelling the Wheeler-dealer Speculative Trade Regime & a Predator Parallel Currency Markets into a Whirlwind Tailspin

Public Lecture - RL Vol. XI No. CCCXCIII, MMXVII

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy & Sustainable Institutional Reforms

https://addisababa.academia.edu/CostyCostantinos

Abstract

Once again, the Birr has seen a round of devaluation, shearing off 15% of the purchasing power vis-à-vis other currencies, driving the parallel market from 1$ to 27 Birr to 30+ Birr and meteoric rise of prices of goods in stock. Birr has had two drastic & numerous stealth devaluations since the 90s but the nation is still unable to improve its balance of payments; hence, the assumed actions of the state for more devaluations to right this evil. This lecture argues that devaluation alone may not prove right, as aggregate supply suffers after devaluation because of more expensive imported production inputs, wage indexation and costlier capital.  Further, Ethiopia’s trade performance has been held back by a recipe of factors that require macro policy therapy: high trade costs, onerous red tape, baffling macroeconomic framework and policy mix ups that seem with reach, only elude, appears manageable only to resist realisation. Only targeted structural transformation and regional cooperation, juxtaposed to trade-friendly macroeconomic policy and financial reforms would, if properly sequenced, enable it to use its abundant factors of production.

The panacea for its per­sistent balance of payment deficit and debt unsustainability is import substitution of food products by production of cereals (wheat, maize, barley malt etc., edible oil, sugar, fertilizers and other items) that are draining the nation billions. Ethiopia has 72 million hectares of arable land and its river drain 122 billion cubic meters of water out the nation. With proper policy and strategy, this can be and must done. Imports part of the value chain of domestic production (machinery, spare parts, raw material, etc.) for exports have a high import gist; devaluation badly hurts their competitiveness in foreign markets. This can be ascribed to poor governance and fragility of states. Economic governance involves improvements in the technical competence and efficiency under a more accountable, transparent and predictable public domain, whose missing links point to the dismal performance of states. While its economic performance is invigorating, Ethiopia faces predictable armour of trials rife in poor nations with too few wherewithal, while also wrestling with the perpetual glitch of sequencing policy reforms, all subject to doctrinal reins. Given the slim margins for manoeuvre imposed by a complex knit in its governance fabric, getting the priorities right are the central issues to be addressed.

Key words: economic governance, policy, strategy, devaluation, parallel market,

See link here