Travel Notes: Road Trip: Palmyra, Ma'aloula, and Saidnaya, Syria, 13th January 2007

Outside the Temple of Bel, Palmyra, Syria, 13 January 2007. The building has since been destroyed.

Well before the current conflict, I was able to travel to Palmyra, Syria. The Temple of Bel in the photograph above has since been confirmed destroyed. I am fortunate to have seen it, but it is a sad loss for the history of humanity, not to mention the many people who have lost their lives in the region. Syria is a beautiful country, and I felt safer there than I did in Sydney on a Saturday night. The people were very hospitable, and what you saw is what you got. Like most of the region, religious tolerance is a part of everyday life that is rarely reported in the Australian news media.

The photograph below shows how the building looks today. While going back through my travel diaries, I recalled a story about a travel guide, Fayid, who had studied at the University of Western Sydney, and a young Bedouin camel operator, who Peter Manning and his partner Carole met at Palmyra sometime in 2005-6. The story is mentioned on pp. 130-1 of Manning's (2006) book Us and Them: A Journalist's Investigation of Media, Muslims and the Middle East.

Temple of Bel, Palmyra, Syria, 28 March 2016. Photo by Jawad Shaar CC-BY 4.0

We, too, had met Farid (and the young boy on the camel) at Palmyra on 13th January 2007. I can’t remember whether I read Manning's book or shared the “small world” experience (on p. 130) first. Anyway, yesterday I was writing up some of my travel diaries as blog posts, remembered the encounter with Farid, found his business card, re-read the book, and wondered what had happened to Farid and the boy. Here is the excerpt from Us and Them:

Carole chose to see much of this on the back of a young Bedouin boy's camel. I got talking to another guide, Fayid, who promised to take us to the amazing funerary tombs out to the west of the Roman city. Fayid, who had lived in Australia for seven years and studied at the University of Western Sydney, spoke perfect Australian.

Below, I have transcribed the diary as is, exercising some editorial licence, and removing the parts that are for me alone.

Damascus, Saturday 13th January 2007

Woke to coffee and wake-up call after receiving a wrong number at 1:30am! Taxi driver was waiting at 7:15am, went to Syrian and Overseas Bank - could only withdraw 5,000 Syrian pounds (SYP) [my diary records the following exchange rates: $1 USD = 49.8 SYP; $1 AUD = 32.16 SYP; 1 Jordanian Dinar (JOD) = 64.75 SYP]. Memorial to the north of Damascus built and funded by North Korea. Blue buildings (must have connections) for housing public servants. Railway line east-west built by Ottomans, tax-free zone north of Damascus.

We had agreed $100 USD for the trip with the driver, he was a smoker and we could smoke. The plan was to go to Palmyra, then on the way back to Ma'aloula, then Saidnaya.

After 230-odd kilometres, we arrived at the entrance to the Temple of Bel - it cost me 75 SYP and my wife 10 SYP to get in.

Palmyra, Syria, 13th January 2007

We met a guy who stated he had been to the University of Western Sydney and earned a diploma of interpreting, but his business card [which I still have] read Sydney University.

Palmyra, Syria, 13th January 2007

He charged us 200 SYP to visit the tombs in the Valley of Tombs [Wadi al-Qubur]. He joined us in our cab and took us to the museum to get the keys to the tombs... and we had to take the guide and the guy with the keys in the taxi.

The rest of my notes are bullet points. We visited a number of the tombs, and I recall that the faces of people on the relief sculptures had been scratched off centuries before. Unfortunately, many of the tombs have since been destroyed. Australian Adjunct Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University, Ross Burns, has maintained a comprehensive list of the major historical and architectural wonders of Syria at his website Monuments of Syria.

There was also an enormous castle on the hill overlooking Palmyra. 

Palmyra Castle or Qalat al-Ma'ani. Photo by  Jerzy Strzelecki CC-BY-SA 3.0

After Palmyra, we returned via Ma'aloula, one of the few places where Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth, is still spoken. The photograph below is from the Convent of Saint Takla, Ma'aloula, looking from East to West.

View from Convent of Saint Takla (Mar Taqla), Ma'alouba, Syria, 13th January 2013

In February 2013, twelve nuns from this convent were abducted, and were not released until March 2014. In the photograph, I am standing on the rooftop of the convent.

There is an interesting legend about the location, in that Taqla, a Christian woman, while running away from Roman soldiers and a pagan marriage, came to a cliff. The mountain split open, and she escaped her pursuers. You can read more about the monastery here.

Later, we went to Saidnaya, and saw what is believed to be an original picture of the Virgin Mary painted by St Luke at the Our Lady of Saydnaya Monastery. Much like the churches in Jerusalem, it was super-creepy.

On the trip back, I went to an ATM and made the mistake of withdrawing most of my cash to pay for our hotel room. The hotel would only accept a credit card. After much deliberation, we could pay in US dollars, but we could not exchange the money in the hotel. I went downtown to the black market dealers and they changed my Syrian pounds for US dollars, and I paid for the hotel room with no problems.

This was my first lesson in understanding the consequences of a "weak" state, Sanctions by the US were biting hard. There were no McDonalds or KFC outlets, unlike Jordan and Egypt. The simple fact was that foreign companies would only trade in US dollars, making the local currency virtually worthless.

Cash in Iraq suffered the same fate after Saddam Hussein was overthrown. Incidentally, the former Iraqi leader had been hanged two weeks before this trip, and I did not meet a single person in the region who was happy about what had transpired. Despite the ideas of "freedom" for the region harped on about by the Australian news media, most saw this as little more than neo-colonialism.

It is now more than a decade since I travelled to Palmyra. Everything that has transpired in the region since has been a great shame. Humans and human history have suffered. But one only need to look to the history of this region, the fertile crescent, the cradle of civilisation, the epicentre of faith. It has been there since the beginning, it has survived many conflicts, and its existence has evolved time and again. I daresay it will be there at the end, too.

Book Notes: "Us and Them: A Journalist's Investigation of Media, Muslims and the Middle East" by Peter Manning

Us and Them: A Journalist's Investigation of Media, Muslims and the Middle East by Peter Manning

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I first read this book in 2006 or 2007. It was a refreshing take on Australia's news media reporting and an exercise in personal growth, aired in public, by the author. I re-read this because, while writing up some of my travel diaries from 2006-7, I recalled a shared experience when we travelled in the Middle East not long after the author. Reading the work again was useful and it put perspective on a number of things that happened in the early 2000s, and also gave new light to the trajectory we have been on since the beginning of the 21st century. This is an interesting read, first, for its content, and second, for what the author sets out to do and, ultimately, does.

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Travel Notes: Road Trip Aqaba to Jerash, 18th to 20th November 2009

Desert Mosque, King's Highway, Jordan

Overnight at the Olive Grove

We left Aqaba on Wednesday afternoon, heading to a friend's parents' farm house near Jerash, an ancient city which was once part of the Roman Decapolis. Look in my older posts to see some photos of the ruins there [I have added one of the older photos at the end of this post]. 

Leaving Aqaba, heading north

We drove from Aqaba to Amman and the sky was amazing. We took the King's Highway through the desert. We organised a room at a friend's hotel, the Dove Hotel in Amman. It was a quaint old place with lots of character, and an Irish Pub which had a great feel to it. It is only a two-star hotel, but the bed was comfortable and we were looked after very well. I had a meeting at Princess Sumaya University for Technology, and then we recommenced the road trip. 

The King's Highway, Jordan

I took some photos on the way to Jerash, and we went through an old Palestinian refugee camp which has now become a town. Not far from the old camp, we arrived at the farm house with a view stretching to the distant horizon. Our friend's parents looked after us so well! We had an Arabic barbecue on the balcony overlooking the magnificent view. Within yelling distance was a Mosque, the olive grove (with fig trees), and a gum tree. Apparently these things are native here and it is not the first I have seen. Australia doesn't own the monopoly in them after all! 

Mosque near the Olive Grove

On the trip back we went via the Dead Sea (Jordan Valley Highway). This was so much quicker as the roadwork on the King's Highway is slowing down the traffic. The desert scene on this route was magnificent, as was the Dead Sea, as always. This was my first time in the area south of the Dead Sea, and the sandstone hills and mountains are amazing. We got back late afternoon on Friday and that was it. But certainly a road trip to remember. To top it off, our friend's mum gave us some green olives and some olive oil (among other things). The olives are slightly 'green' (ie not quite ripe) - and believe me there is no other way to eat them!

Temple of Artemis, Jerash, Jordan

Travel Notes: PADI Open Water Diver Course, Aqaba Adventure Divers, Jordan, November 2009

Camping on the roof of Aqaba Adventure Divers, 27th November 2009

The notes below were written during my sabbatical in 2009. I was working with a professor at the Princess Sumaya University for Technology but there was some free time over the Eid break. While in Aqaba, I interviewed some of the local bureaucrats about telecommunications and economic policy. As luck would have it, because it was Eid, Aqaba was completely booked out. Thankfully, Talal at Aqaba Adventure Divers let us camp on the roof. It was cold and wet. 

Hanging out with the dive crew, Red Sea in the background

27th November 2009

We left the apartment the day before Eid started - a hard time to find somewhere to stay! When we asked about accommodation at Aqaba Adventure Divers, everything was fully booked. I asked about camping (many people were camping on the beach nearby) and we were welcome to stay on the rooftop or pitch a tent on the sandy volleyball court out the back of the centre. 

We opted for the rooftop and went to Safeway in Aqaba to purchase a few things such as sleeping bags, tent, camping mattresses, camelbaks etc before moving to the dive centre. That first evening, we started on the course manuals and the video for the open water course. We went hard core on the academic stuff, getting through 3/5 of the material that first day. 

Not-so-good photos under the Red Sea

28th November 2009

The next day we finished off the classroom work and the video. All in all, this took us about 6 hours on the first day and 4 hours on the second. We passed all our tests and headed for the water. 

Typically, the confined water dives are performed in a pool. But at this time of year, the pool was about 10 degrees colder than the Red Sea, so all our diver training was performed just off the beach. The funny thing about diver training at the beach in Aqaba is that, during Eid, the beach is absolutely packed! We were going through our practical tests with kids jumping in on top of us, swimming around in snorkeling gear and doing nothing but staring at us, and generally stinking up the whole experience. 

Gorgone 1 - Aqaba Adventure Divers

After the diving, we were starving. We had tried the poolside cafe food and it was cheap and reasonable, but we felt like something more substantial after diving. We tried the dive centre's restaurant. We had chicken shishkebab and a whole fish. For a total price of JOD 12, it was pretty good! That night we decided to pitch our 2 person tent on the roof, as the night before was freezing because of the gusty winds. The tent certainly fixed the temperature problem, but the noise of the tent in the wind was enough to drive anyone crazy. Hopefully the wind will die down soon but it doesn't look promising. 

29th November 2009 

First Bay South Reef - Aqaba Adventure DIvers

Our confined water dives were all exercises. In the afternoon, we went on our first open water dive. The detail is in the picture showing the map of Gorgone 1. 

30th November 2009

We have three open water dives left to finish the course, so we opted to do two open water dives today and finish our exercises and tests so tomorrow we can have a 'fun' dive. Our dives were at First Bay South. 

1st December 2009

Black Rock dive, swim test 18 laps of the freezing pool in a wet suit with 2kg attached... and final 50 question multiple choice test. Thrown into the pool! Getting our log books tomorrow, and tonight we are staying in one of the rooms. There is nobody here now, everyone left yesterday once Eid was over.

Aqaba, Jordan. Where the desert meets the sea.

Travel Notes: My First Travel Blog, 8th November 2009

My Travel Map from travelblog.org as it was the last time I updated the blog

On 8th November 2009, I set up a travel blog using www.travelblog.org. Blogging was still rather new then. Here I will replicate my travel blog entries word for word. This is a much younger version of myself, but it it (was) me, so here it is as it was written on my travel blog.

Michael de Percy in 2009

8th November 2009

My Travel Map does not include Bahrain (it doesn't get a mention in the program) and my visit to China was really only Hong Kong. My visits to US were actually only Hawaii as lay-overs in airports, so these don't really count either! 

The date of this entry is the day before I first travelled overseas at the tender age of 36 (better late than never, I suppose). I flew to Canada (with Air Canada) via Hawaii to conduct the first phase of my PhD fieldwork. 

Since then, travel has fast become a natural part of life. Thank God.

At the time of setting up the Travel Blog, I was on sabbatical. I was learning to dive at Aqaba Adventure Divers in Aqaba, Jordan. I was diving in the mornings and the evenings, and working on my PhD when I wasn't conducting interviews. I also set up my Dive Record (which is not very impressive, and this is incomplete). We completed the PADI Open Water and Advanced Open Water courses. So for someone who lived in Cairns from 1980 until 1992, I had my first dive in the Red Sea!  The Dive Record is below.

Dive Record as at 29 December 2009.

We've been back to Aqaba since and had a refresher dive, but that has been about it for diving. I am surprised that the websites I was using back in 2009 are still working today.

From this point forward, I intend to transfer some of my numerous travel journals to my blog. Reading Rolf Potts' Vagabonding tends to do that to me! I will use the label "Travel Notes" for all travel-related posts.

Book Notes: "Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel" by Rolf Potts

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the book I would carry with me if I had to sustain myself through misfortune. Frederick the Great carried the works of the Stoics in his saddlebags for the same purpose. I have read bits of this book for more than a decade and the words of Rolf Potts have inspired my blogging and my travel writing since I first left Old Girty's shores in 2006. There are so many quotes in this work, and so many pointers to other books to read, it is like a crystallisation of everything Potts ever read or learnt all jam-packed in a relatively quick read. For me, this book is nothing short of inspiring. Always has been, always will:

As Salvador Dali quipped, "I never took drugs because I am drugs." With this in mind, strive to be drugs as you travel, to patiently embrace the raw, personal sensation of unmediated reality - an experience far more affecting than any intoxicant can promise.

Potts has something special. He is the me I only hope I can be. I don't mean that I want to quit my job and become a vagabond. Far from it. Potts is a philosopher. Vagabonding is a 21st century philosophy book in the tradition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, only better. Potts has what I want, and ever since reading bits of his work all those years ago, I have been inspired by his philosophy. For me, education and travel make us free. Not politicians or political systems. If I had the option of returning to my youth (which I do not want!), I might consider becoming a vagabond. But I am the sum of my experience and rather blessed for it. So for me, the philosophy is key. But a practical philosophy. Think of tending your own garden, like Candide. Then read this book.

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Book Notes: "The Barefoot Investor" by Scott Pape

The Barefoot Investor: The Only Money Guide You'll Ever Need by Scott Pape

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wan't going to write anything about this book. It is written much like a blog, with no real paragraphs, corny humour, "literally", "totally", "like", Americanised adverbs, and sometimes corny drawings. But the central message is important, and after some hesitation I thought it right to record some of the highlights. In my journal, I wrote down this quote from Warren Buffet:

Stay away from debt. If you're smart, you don't need it. If you're dumb you got no business using it.

Pape writes about precisely what he does, including the companies he uses in implementing his financial strategy. There is a story about two alpacas that will bring a tear to your eye, and this adds moral impetus to Pape's purpose in writing. His personal story is an important part of the work. The only part that I was not comfortable with concerns earning additional income through side businesses or freelance work. I have worked more than one job since leaving the regular army in 1997 until 2012. Admittedly, I was doing so to maintain a self-constructed treadmill of stupid decisions, but these days I am content with my earnings and have no desire to increase these more than "natural increase" brings. That said, it would have made no difference to my 18 year old self if I had received this book back then. Fools must learn from their mistakes. But it may be helpful for a disciplined parent to develop themselves as a financial role model for their children or grandchildren, if one finds their time has come and gone. I have taken many of the steps mentioned in this book - indeed, some I took as I arrived at the precise location of the advice on the page. Much of the other advice has confirmed and given me confidence in the steps I have already taken, but I am too shy to reveal this side of my existence. I was sceptical about this book, but now I am glad I read it anyway.

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On Ontology, Epistemology, Theory and Methodology

Image: Laurentius de Voltolina [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This morning I sat at the feet of a professor who wrote many of the texts I studied as an undergraduate student. I still have a sense of wonder whenever I do so. I tend to be a positivist and so far I have ignored normative aspects of the world as I conduct my research. However, recent challenges require me to be more in tune with different perspectives of "being" and "knowledge" as I develop my research philosophy. Here I want to record the key things I took away from the session this morning.

This is the third time I have attended this particular seminar, yet today was the first time I went with an open mind and an open heart. Previously, I have tended to neglect anything that did not fit with my ideas, not about the world, but about the form my research takes. It is clear that this narrow view helped me in the past, but it is of little value today. In many ways, I was ready to attend this seminar for the first time today.

I will start with some definitions. First, ontology refers to a theory of the nature of being. What is there to know? For example, a foundationalist/realist might say that men and women are essentially and eternally different, then this is our ontological stance or statement. Whereas an anti-foundationalist/ constructivist might say that gender is socially constructed, and that across time and space the differences reflect different social constructs, then we have a different ontological stance. The crucial thing is the way we understand the world.

Which ontological statement is true? How do we determine the truth? How do others perceive the truth? And on what basis can one claim to have an accurate assessment of how people understand the world?

Second, epistemology refers to a theory of knowledge, or what and how can we know about the world. There are three broad points of view:

1. Positivism - the dominant view, where we tend to get on and do the research without concern for epistemology. This has been me for a long time but I think I am ready to move beyond a narrow conception of ontology and epistemology in my research (I have never been a pure positivist in my understanding of the world). Put simply, we develop a hypothesis to explain an observed phenomena, and then we test our hypothesis through experimentation or, in the social sciences in particular, by testing our hypotheses using quantitative data based on an appropriate sample size. I have tried to do this using the comparative method - often referred to as a "quasi-experimental" method, but while the text books mention this approach, examples of comparison that are not based on large-N, quantitative methods are rare. This probably reflects the focus on scientific method I addressed in my Essay Notes. Put simply, positivism attempts to make "if, then" statements as broad generalisations about social phenomena. The approach states that, in establishing causal explanations, objective relationships between phenomena can be observed.
2. Constructivism - anti-foundational, where we believe the world to be socially constructed, and rather than existing in "reality". We can only discover how people narrate or understand the world. It is not about "truth" (because there is no "real world" as espoused by positivists), there is only meaning. The double hermeneutic can be useful in conceptualising meaning in the research context. First, we need to discover from people their understanding of their actions. Second, we need to discover our understanding, as observers, of people's understanding of their own actions.
3. Critical Realism. A middle way? I asked about these epistemologies in relation to technological determinism versus social constructivism, and the "middle way" known as technological momentum. Critical realism takes a similar space by critiquing positivism and constructivism. So material versus cultural, structure versus agency, and so on. Roy Bhaskar was known for this approach in critiquing Tony Blair's "New Labour" or Third Way. I was studying commerce and management during Blair's time and when I returned to political science in 2004, I was so far behind. Tiananmen Square, the Spratly Islands, and whether China would retain Most Favored Nation (MFN) status with the United States, in the light of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, were all in vogue. By the time I returned to the fold, it was post 9/11, and things were different.
4. Others. Foucault, Deleuze, and the role played by dominant narratives or dominant discourses about action. I will need to delve into this again soon (I have avoided Foucault since my undergraduate degree as advised by the positivists who surround me!).

These three perspectives relate to the three 'grand old men" of sociology:

1. Max Weber - constructivist
2. Émile Durkheim - positivist
3. Karl Marx - critical realist

The point of knowing these things is an understanding that, as a social scientist, using the right methods in the right way is crucial to sound research. These issues should be in our thoughts, but necessarily all the time.

But we must be aware of "reflexivity" as a key aspect of methodology. This means that our own biases and conceptions of knowledge can influence our research decisions, in particular, how "our" understanding of "their" understanding is affected by these.

My learned professor argued that our ontological and epistemological conceptions are a "skin not a sweater" - they are not something one can easily take off.

Some discussion around Enlightenment thinking and whether neoliberalism had rejected this, rather than attempting to find the "truth" in order to improve things. Thankfully, "post-truth" was ignored, probably out of boredom with the stupidity of it all. But to sum up, positivism looks for a real world independent of our understanding, whereas constructivism argues that there is no real world except how we understand it. There was also a suggestion that there is a third level of hermeneutic, that of the person reading's understanding of your interpretation of their interpretation of meaning. If that doesn't make you want to be a positivist, then nothing will!

Another way to conceptualise the differences is that of the material versus the ideational. Here, the issue is the definition of  what is "real". In my learned professor's view, concepts such as structure and agency are "metatheoretical issues" that all lead back to ontology and epistemology. 

Once we have our ontology and our epistemology under control, we can then look at our methodology. So unless you are a post-structuralist, the crucial link flows from ontology to epistemology to methodology. I mentioned this above, but positivism leads to general statements about the relationship between social phenomena, and points towards "if, then" statements that horde for the population. Now to look at all the research design in series:

1. Positivism: Theory > hypothesis . testing > falsification (see Karl Popper) > re-specification of theory.
2. Critical Realism: Theory > identification of the problem > empirical investigation > interpretation of results which is theory > dependent > changing elements of theory. If your theory can explain what another theory cannot...
3. Interpretivism: Narratives rather than theory as narratives are one understanding of reality. Which narrative or discourse is dominant?
4. Major/minor approach: E.g. positivists major = quantitative, minor = qualitative. Your work must be quantitative if you want to make generalisable statements.

Karl Popper's mention of "white swans" (of course, Canberra has black swans), made me think of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his book The Black Swan. I am currently reading Antifragile, so will need to go back to his earlier book. Interestingly, I am struggling to get through the book because of the exact words used by David Runciman in his review of the book in The Guardian. 

Here's me busting my butt to develop my understanding of the world while Taleb is telling me my whole life has been a crock and he knows all the answers, like some other popular figures at the moment both here and abroad. But I digress.

For the future: Design thinking and co-production?

And finally, why are these differences important? The differences relate to what we can do, how we can do it and, crucially, what we can conclude on the basis of what we find. Some interesting discussion of deduction versus induction caught my attention and I must delve into it in detail.

An example of deduction is rational choice theory. We start with a theory.

But induction starts with a puzzle. Most of what I do starts with a puzzle. I think I have been trying to force a deductive model on an essentially inductive approach. 

Mention also of Herbert Simon's term "satisficing", rather than maximising preferences in rational choice theory. But induction starts with observations and builds a theory based on those observations. This predominantly is what I do. It is a major discovery.

Can we find the truth? How can we do it? We could start by more deliberate reading of our weaknesses. This session today was a good start.

Book Notes: "Meditations of a Solitary Walker" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Meditations of a Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I find it hard not to feel like I am cheating when I read abridged books, but I have a stack of these Penguin 60s classics that need to be read properly, so I started with the master. Rousseau sums up his philosophy in the last line (p. 52):

I laugh at all their scheming and enjoy my own existence in spite of them.

This work is an abridged version of Reveries of a Solitary Walker and I will get on and read the full book this year. But the shortened work does not lose much as a standalone piece of work. I see Rousseau as the polar opposite of Benjamin Franklin. Both Enlightenment creatures but while Franklin looked at the process of becoming a better person by reflection and deliberate self-improvement in the eyes of others, Rousseau worked at self-improvement as living by one's very nature. While you can feel Rousseau's pain in this work, you can also identify elements of Stoic philosophy, and no doubt precursors to Emerson. It is worth reading even this abridged version. The cover is interesting, too, with a painting by Gustave Courbet, The Artist before the Sea. Courbet, too, lived life his way, and is a fitting companion to Rousseau. Both admirable characters in their own right who present lessons for living even in today's times.

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Essay Notes: "Regulation and Time: Temporal patterns in regulatory development" by Joshua Newman and Michael Howlett

Photo: geralt/CC0 

Newman, J. and Howlett, M. (2014). Regulation and time: temporal patterns in regulatory development. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 80(3), 493–511. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852313517995

In this article, Newman and Howlett develop a model of regulatory regime evolution, and then test the model against six case studies representing various situations. I have been working on my own model of policy regime evolution, but need to either find the right space so that my ideas are not lost in interdisciplinary translation, or redevelop the concept so that I can articulate my ideas more precisely.

I find this article fascinating, as it looks at issues of time and space in the context of the comparative method, but where the temporal dimension is of special importance in understanding regulatory regimes. This article was sent to me after my recent presentation at the PPN Conference in Adelaide.

I’ve read the article in detail and it has given me new hope for a model I have been working on for some time based on a comparison of communications technology policies in Canada and Australia. I appreciated the focus on the temporal element observed in regulatory regime evolution. My model has a temporal element based on a most-similar comparison but I am losing much in translation between the political science and policy studies, and telecommunications and technology policy disciplines, and need to articulate my ideas more clearly – or less clearly, I am still not sure.

Previously, I called my model a model of co-evolution of institutions and communications technologies, using Thomas Hughes’ idea of technological momentum. Originally, I was looking at the model being a way to “operationalise” historical institutionalism, but I need to do some more ground work.

The article mentions exogenous “cris[es] in affecting policy change”, and this fits the historical institutionalist concept of critical junctures. But I have found that regulatory regimes (I have been referring to policy regimes but also trying to capture regulatory regime design as a subset of policy) tend to be path dependent. So while they may evolve and mature, in telecommunications at least, regimes tend to be self-reinforcing and mature along the trajectory set at the beginning (for telecommunications this is the telegraph).

If one views a new communications technology as a “crisis” or critical juncture (as these tend to be exogenous), then I can see a deep connection between the model tested by case studies in this article and the model derived from the case studies in mine. I have used words like “evolution” previously but I seem to have a missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to getting traction!

This is the first article that comes close to the space I am working in, and the paper gives me a sound example of how I can develop the sugar, automotive manufacturing, and taxi industry case studies I presented in Adelaide. This is one of the few articles I have read that is "speaking" my language.

Work-in-progress: "Restructuring Protected Industries: The efficacy of policy responses to disruption in the sugar, automotive manufacturing and taxi sectors"

© Depositphotos.com/@Wavebreakmedia

Institutional funding for conference attendance is now a distant memory, and I have sorely missed the opportunity to present my work in progress and receive frank and honest feedback, to the point where I have been self-funding my conference attendances. This article covers my most recent presentation at the Australia and New Zealand Public Policy Network (PPN) 2017 Annual Conference at Flinders University in Adelaide. It still fills me with a sense of wonder when I have the opportunity to have my work critiqued by some of the greats in political science whose names were familiar from my undergraduate textbooks some 23 or so years ago. So when I write about my journey here, it is in the spirit of memories past which I present my work in progress.

So I've decided to write about my research work in progress. It is likely filled with factual errors and poorly articulated ideas, but that is the nature of the process. Since starting this blog I have found that my writing somehow "gets going" if I blog regularly. I recall, too, that regular blogging opened up numerous opportunities for me in the early stages of my career, including the first of a series of paid gigs for ABC Unleashed (which would later become The Drum). This was an important time for me as I observed many others, who were also writing regularly for Unleashed, who went on to change careers and become journalists or freelance writers. But my heart was never in it; certainly not as a journalist, and I am glad I didn't go there. Indeed, if I were writing about the new president in another country for a living today, I would not be glad at all.

But what writing for the media did for me was to create an area of specialisation and to gain the support of my colleagues. It was an interesting phenomenon, amid immaturity, life crises, career change, returning to full time study, and being broke-arse poor, but it has proven a useful vignette for my leadership classes.

I would run around seeking validation for my work. I wanted to be accepted by my colleagues. But it didn't happen. It was all critique and no joy, and, strangely enough, exactly the type of critique I now deliberately seek out! But the point is that my colleagues would not validate my expertise. That is, until my work was validated externally by the media. Then when speaking of me, my colleagues would routinely say "Oh you should speak to Michael. He is an expert in..." Bizarre.

I do not mean to flatter myself. Indeed, one of the comments I received while writing for Unleashed was something like: "Expert! Ha! This guy doesn't have a PhD. He is lucky to have a job!" Besides, my favourite definition of "expert" is: "X being the unknown quantity and spurt being a drip under high pressure". But I do have a spot on expertguide.com.au, so for the point of what I am trying to say, there it is.

So by looking for validation within the organisation, I found nothing and came across as a needy freak. But by obtaining validation outside of the organisation, my colleagues just went with it. It is so strange to think back to these times, and the recent PPN conference was attended by some of the very same people. Nothing much has changed, and their feedback and criticism is as frank as ever. And God love them for it. If anything, their feedback is probably better, because I have grown up just a tad and I suspect they aren't so worried about hurting my delicate little ego!

Why we aren't taught such things, I think, is a function of class. Silvertails won't talk about such things because they might lose some of their silvertailed mystique. I played that game as an army officer and they can have it. Now, rather than asking "Why aren't we taught such things?" - I just get on and teach them.

Of course it takes age and experience, and for some, like me, age and experience are probably not the best ways to gain wisdom. Fools learn from their mistakes and I am a fool. But Rousseau (1782/1995: 11) says it best:

No doubt adversity is a great teacher, but its lessons are dearly bought, and often the profit we gain from them are not worth the cost.

While I am visiting Rousseau (1782/1995: 2), I am reminded of why I do things as I do, and while not so very good at it, I am less inclined to fight against my nature:

For a long time I put up a resistance as violent as it was fruitless. Being without guile, without skill, without cunning, without prudence, frank, open, impatient and impulsive, I only enmeshed myself further in my efforts to be free, and constantly gave them new holds on me which they took good care not to neglect. But realizing eventually that all my efforts were in vain and my self-torment to no avail, I took the only course left to me, that of submitting to my fate and ceasing to fight against the inevitable. This resignation has made up for my trials by the peace of mind it brings me, a peace of mind incompatible with the unceasing exertions of a struggle as painful as it was unavailing.

Interestingly, Rousseau's words echo Stoicism. But again I digress. Below is the work in progress so far.

Abstract
Disruption created by globalisation and emerging technologies has resulted in various policy responses to manage the decline of long-standing, protected industries in Australia. The Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement, cheaper labour rates overseas, and challenges to existing regulated monopolies have affected the sugar, automotive manufacturing and taxi sectors respectively. In the first two cases, the Commonwealth introduced policy responses to manage the decline of the sugar and automotive manufacturing industries, whereas state governments have responded to the emerging ride-sharing providers by lowering the barriers to new market entrants. In each case, different approaches to compensating existing industry players for the impact of market restructuring have produced various policy approaches. This paper, then, compares the rationale for the respective policy responses to disruption in the sugar, automotive manufacturing, and taxi sectors. While the Commonwealth managed industry restructuring with deliberate, well-organised policy responses, the states ignored the need for reform until a disruptive business model had garnered such support from consumers that the states, politically, had little choice but to rush through policy responses that do not augur well for approaches to managing future disruptions. Indeed, the states created a high level of sovereign risk that has had a significant financial impact on small business investors in the taxi industry that may set a precedent for policy responses to the sharing economy in other state-governed industries such as hospitality. The paper argues that the states’ protracted policy responses to disruption, compounded by limited resources for policy-making, have resulted in inefficacious outcomes compared to the industries governed by the Commonwealth. Based on the experience of the three cases, the paper concludes with recommendations for governing future industry disruptions to ensure that small businesses do not bear the financial brunt of poorly implemented anticipatory industry policies.

There are a number of issues with my abstract. The most important feedback I received was not for me, but another. Much like the military appreciation process, where one must constantly ask oneself, "So what?". It is not uncommon in political science research to address some form of injustice, with an aim of improvement, as I discussed previously via Charles Merriam and Gabriel Almond. But to present little more than a series of moral judgements of political happenings, leaving the audience to state "So what!" rather than the researcher to point out clearly the answer to the question "So what?" is not political science, but a form of political journalism. I need to tidy up that part of the story.

Presentation

Restructuring Protected Industries from University of Canberra

The introduction of ride-sharing in Australia presents a number of issues that are of concern for the future. For example, if the state governments did not have the power to reform the regulated taxi monopolies, and then did not have the power to enforce their (or more appropriately "our") own laws, then does this not represent a level of sovereign risk that should be of concern? Again, so what? The word "should" immediately brings in a normative element. While normative questions are fine, does it fit with my understanding of the purpose of political science? I don't think so.

When comparing telecommunications policy in Canada and Australia, I accepted that nation-states wanted to increase the penetration of communications technologies. I did not consider whether broadband, for example, was a "good thing". What I wanted to do was to understand questions like: Why has Canada consistently outperformed Australia in the penetration of new communications technologies? How do governments enable, coordinate, and regulate new communications technologies? And so on. Out of this I hoped to develop a meso- or industry-level theory to explain the interaction of the institutions of the state and new communications technology inventions over time.

When I look back to my abstract and my presentation, I can see that I need to remove the over- and under-tones of moral judgement and focus on explaining the process. To ask "Why?" But also to ask questions such as: How do governments respond to disruption? How does timing influence the policy options available to governments?  And so forth. But I need to be clear and focus on one element of the issue. I need to avoid that great academic disease: conflation.

I will write more on this project later, but in the meantime, it was recommended to me that the temporal aspect might be useful, hence my reading of the following article:

Newman, J. and Howlett, M. (2014). Regulation and time: temporal patterns in regulatory development. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 80(3), 493–511. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852313517995

I hope to have a write-up on this paper in a future post.

Essay Notes: "Clouds, Clocks, and the Study of Politics" by Gabriel Almond and Stephen Genco

Summer Tablelands Storm by Margarita Georgiadis

Almond, G. A. & Genco, S. J. (1977). Clouds, Clocks, and the Study of Politics. World Politics, 29(4), 489–522.

Written in 1977, this article considers the scientific turn in political science. Traditionally, political science focused on descriptions of political systems, laws, and history. I have discussed Charles Merriam, founder of the "Chicago School" of political science, in an earlier "journal note". Along with Harold Lasswell, Merriam encouraged greater scientific rigour in political science research. Almond was notably a product of the "Chicago School" of political science, earning his PhD in 1938, the year Harold Lasswell left and two years before Merriam retired. The adoption of the scientific method of the hard (or natural) sciences, which had influenced psychology and economics, and, by this time, was influencing political science, is the subject of this article. Almond and Genco bring to the attention of political scientists the issue of "philosophers of science and some psychologists and economists [having] second thoughts about the applicability to human subject matters of strategy used in hard science" (p. 489).

The metaphors of "clouds" and "clocks" are from Karl Popper's idea of a continuum of "determinacy and indeterminacy in physical systems", from "the most irregular, disorderly, and unpredictable 'clouds' on the left to the most regular, orderly, and predictable 'clocks' on the right"  (p. 489). This reminds me of Rene Descartes and the beginnings of systems thinking, with mechanical objects functioning as closed systems, whereas living organisms function as open or "living" systems.

I have as yet been unable to connect systems thinking with my research. Almond and Genco connect to this stream of thinking via Newton. But in "systems thinking", the terms tend to come across as buzzwords or jargon and overcoming the limitations cross-disciplinary translation seem like too much effort at this stage.  

I recall from my strategic management studies that the characteristics of living systems tend to follow the laws of thermodynamics, and living systems can be disturbed, but not directed. Here, Almond and Genco refer to Popper, who suggested that understanding "rational" human behaviour required:

...something intermediate in character, between perfect chance and perfect determinism - something intermediate between perfect clouds and perfect clocks... For obviously what we want is to understand how such non-physical things as purposes, deliberations, plans, decisions, theories, intentions, and  values, can play a part in bringing about physical changes in the physical world (p. 491).

I use the concepts of "living" systems in my teaching of leadership. If a living system does not interact with its environment, it dies. So, too, do organisations. For example, if your company is the manufacturer of the highest quality typewriters in the world, nobody cares: you have not kept pace with your environment. Think Kodak. Organisations tend to resist change, and, in my view, leadership can overcome this resistance. To me, leadership is a political process, and, like organisations, policy stasis may also benefit from leadership. My diagram below explains the concept:

Model of Strategic Leadership: Michael de Percy

But I digress. Popper seeks a form of plastic control, that allows for the free-thinking individual, who cannot be forced to submit to the control of our theories: "Not only do our theories control us, but we can control our theories" (p. 491). This relates to the idea of technological momentum, based on the work of Thomas Hughes, which provides a middle position along the continuum between social constructivism and technological determinism, thus:

Intermediate approaches that allow for freedom and constraint.

Popper states that we cannot look at the world as a "closed physical system", but an "open system". The author's cite Popper's approach as accepting "there is a kind of feedback here": terms that clearly relate to systems thinking (and systems theory). If the task of political science is to explain political reality, then plastic control, or the third conceptualisation between chance and determinism, can cope with ideas and:

...human decisions, goals, purposes - in constant and intense interaction with other ideas, human behaviour, and the physical world. At the centre of this complex system are choices and decisions - decisions to command, obey, vote, make demands. The political universe has organization; elites make decisions to command or not to command, what to command, how to implement commands. Citizens and subjects make decisions to comply, how to comply or not to comply; to make demands, or not to make demands. That is the heart of politics, the subject matter our discipline is committed to exploring and understanding.

In such a system, "Political decisions are not made and implemented in a vacuum; they are subject to a complex array of constraints and opportunities". But what of cause and effect in providing explanations for political phenomena? In earlier work I attempted to use Mill's method of difference to provide plausible (as opposed to Popper's falsifiable) causal explanations, but often this was regarded as unsophisticated or insufficiently mathematical. Yet this is precisely the issue taken up by Almond and Genco, albeit back in 1977:

What we seem to observe in this particular area of political research, then, is a rhetorical or metaphorical - rather than explanatory - usage of causal language in formalizations and definitions. This accounts for a lack of a subsequent commitment to actual causal analysis in substantive research. The somewhat incongruous gap can perhaps best be explained as an attempt on the part of political scientists to create a "halo effect" around their theoretical formulations. Our longing for full scientific status has led us to create a kind of "cargo cult," fashioning cardboard imitations of the tools and products of the hard sciences in the hope that our incantations would make them real (p. 504).

The pressure to conform to other disciplines seems to have reached its peak around this time:

Psychology and economics had been the first disciplines in the social sciences to move in this direction, demonstrating the possibilities of experimental methods, sophisticated quantitative methods, computer simulation, and mathematical modelling. The combination of philosophical legitimation and the demonstrated progress of psychology and economics was impossible to resist (p. 505).

Further, Holt and Richardson (1970) argued for more mathematics. Not just statistical, but mathematical, rigour:

[S]tatistics provides a science with a basis for rigorous induction. Our critique suggests that the crying need in comparative politics is for more rigorous deduction and this is where mathematics, not statistics, is relevant (p. 507).

Almond and Genco raise an important issue at this point. Rather than focusing on problem solving, which is a key purpose of political science, commitment to mathematics and the rigour of hard science tended to move political science away from its very purpose. This creates a conundrum where to be more scientific becomes more important than the purpose of political science, where it seems that:

For political science to advance, it must shed this professional commitment to solving social and moral problems (p. 508)... [leading to] priority of method over substance in political science (p. 509).

This "narrowing and technicization" means that the "older intellectual traditions" of political science, including "descriptive institutional analysis have all become defensive, peripheral, and secondary subject matters". The trouble with this approach is the type of science it evokes. Political science is "ultimately a commitment to explore and attempt to understand a given segment of empirical reality". To do so, "Social scientists need to construct their own notions of 'good science', [and] their own methodological approach to their particular subject matter". I have tried to point out "how extensively political decisions now override the mechanisms of the market" in my work, and despite feedback to the contrary, I agree with Almond and Genco that as the "subject matter is becoming more political, it is becoming less susceptible to scientific and formalistic methodologies" (p. 516).

There are some implications for my research philosophy here. First, political science plays "a central role in the study and evaluation of public policy" (p. 520). Regardless of method, work that "contributes to the aims of understanding, interpreting, and exploring political reality and policy alternatives... is crucial to policy analysis (see McRae 1976 The Social Function of Social Science). Lasswell, in developing the behavioural approach to political science, adopted the "scientific hardening of method... set in a context of problem solving, value clarification, and the enhancement of the human condition" (p. 520). Lasswell sought greater rigour to achieve the purpose of political science, not to create a science through processes that happened to involve politics.

The problem now is not that the hard science approach, in particular the quantitative drive, is bad, but that it has not been legitimated "by  successes in the explanation of political reality, but by example and the demonstration effect of the hard sciences (p. 520). Such "clock" approaches try to reduce everything to mechanical laws which deny "the special characteristic of social reality... [especially] man's adaptive behaviour" (p. 520).

In summary, Almond and Genco provide an appropriate guiding principle for my research philosophy:

To progress scientifically, the social disciplines require their own philosophy of science based on explanatory strategies, possibilities, and obligations appropriate to human and social reality (p, 522).

Next week I will be investigating some quantitative methods I plan to use in a new study. In establishing my research philosophy, I must address the issues of methods and scientific rigour. But it would certainly be useful to start with my own view of the purpose of political science.

Essay Notes: "Charles E. Merriam and the ‘Chicago School’ of political science" by Herbert A. Simon

Professor Charles E. Merriam. Photo via University of Chicago website.

Simon, H. A. (1987). Charles E. Merriam and the ‘Chicago School’ of political science. The Edmund Janes James Lecture, delivered by Herbert A. Simon, 10 October 1985. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Political Science.

In my experience, it is not unusual for a metaphysical thread to appear across my various undertakings, often seemingly at random, yet so consistently observable that to deny the empirical evidence goes against my very core. I will expand on such a moment that occurred this morning when reading Herbert Simon's speech about Merriam, which follows my series of déjà vu experiences in the last week. Simon (p. 5) suggests that Merriam, although the political scientist most often credited with bringing about the behavioural revolution in the discipline, was at times "unmodern" in the quality of his evidence. In my other reading this morning, Mark Twain, in Mental Telegraphy, stated that he had been on the receiving end of similar charges. This thread runs everywhere - while it is all rather bizarre, I must write it down before the thought escapes me.

On 2nd January this year, I journalled about the concept of "stamina". Stamina has been one of my strengths, both physically and mentally, but it can be, and I have, on numerous occasions, pushed too far. Nowhere does talk of stamina mention the natural progression of "rest, repeat". It is much like a movie, where people never eat, go to the bathroom, or lock the doors of their cars. It is unseen. Simon refers to his last meeting with Merriam (p. 8):

Human lives, too, have brief Golden Ages. But good ideas can achieve a longevity much beyond a single human life.

Now, how does this all fit together so far? Well, writing a research philosophy while learning to practice Stoicism deliberately, and reflecting and writing each day, provides a thread between thought and action, and a history that would otherwise escape one's memory. For example, at times I can feel the extent of my scholarly or spiritual progress, only to look back at my journal and discover that this other person, the less-advanced version of me, is not a distant cousin but was me sometimes less than two months beforehand. So here is the thread, but what of stamina?

The word "stamina" is derived from the Greek word "stamen", which refers to the "thread" spun by the "three very old women who spin the threads of human destiny". Stamina, then, refers to how long one's "thread" is, of course in individual moments such as running a race, rather than in the sense of one's lifespan. Yet there is a connection between Simon's discussion of Merriam's "followers", as opposed to his "disciples", and the subsequent dissolution of the "Chicago School" after Merriam's retirement. Harold Lasswell, for example (another famous political scientist), had also left the University of Chicago around that time. Of course, when we live our own lives, we do not only see our Golden Age, but we have to live with ourselves before and after the good years that others (hopefully) will recall. Learning to love the process rather than the outcome is essential, I believe. The end, after all, is dying, so better to enjoy the trip - the goal is inevitable no matter how well or poorly we live!

So I go off to check my information on Harold Lasswell, and the collapse of the Chicago School, and I stumble across the work of another great political scientist, Gabriel Almond. This sends me off on a tangent. Years ago, I read Naomi Atkinson's book, Cloud Cuckoo Land (which is set in Ancient Greece), because of the title. It related to Gabriel Almond and Stephen Genko's journal article, Clouds, Clocks, and the Study of Politics. So this will be the next article I review. But I even have Almond talking about threads in his book, From Ventures in Political Science: Narratives and Reflections (p. 1):

I had a long apprenticeship. I wasn't really on my way, so to speak, until 1946, after World War II, when I was in my mid-thirties. It was then that my European and German experience combined with my University of Chicago training to give me access to research opportunities in comparative politics and international relations. How this came about is told in Chapter 5, "A Voice from the Chicago School," where I place my beginnings in the setting of the University of Chicago in the great days of Charles Merriam and Harold Lasswell. The University of Chicago thread takes me from Midway in the 1930s to Yale in the 1940s [underline mine].

Which brings me to Mark Twain. First, it is about telegraphy, which is part of my field. Second, it is about coincidence versus empirical evidence, which is the space I find myself in now. So there is a thread linking all of these different readings and activities. But what does all of this mean for my research?

Given that I have been writing about developing a research philosophy, and given all of the other "coincidences", I would like to think that I am in the right place at the right time, which fits nicely into my theme of politics in time and space. But there are many lessons to be learnt from Merriam's career, provided by his student, Herbert Simon, the Nobel Laureate who brought us the concept of "bounded rationality".

In terms of having a purpose to the process of living, rather than the achievement of death, that final of finals, Simon points out that Merriam's lasting influence on the discipline of political science meant that he had lost the battle but won the war (p. 10):

If Charles Merriam lost the local battle - probably a poor way to describe the impermanence of the Chicago department that he shaped - he gained total victory in the war across the land.

But what seems to matter is that Merriam hoped we would now be "using our new-found knowledge of political behavior to improve the human lot". His purpose was to develop an understanding of human behaviour, as it related to politics, so we could then use that knowledge. Simon points to Merriam's characteristics, and suggests that if Merriam were to have a second lifetime, then he would use the knowledge he had helped to create:

There he would find his new cause, which would occupy all of his optimism about  the potential of intelligence, all of his courage, patience, and humor in the face of persistent difficulty, all of his intellectual and entrepreneurial skills, for another lifetime at least.

For me, this means that the difficulties are a good thing - maybe "the obstacle is the way". It also means that the series of coincidences that have occurred around Merriam - incidentally, I found my original notes dating my first reading of the Merriam quote to 15th March 2006 (the first time I left Australia) - and were brought to light by my other "non-work-related" reading (Mark Twain). Now the challenge is to articulate the purpose that my research might serve. It also means that the process, amid the endless performance reviews that are certain to mean nothing after I am gone, but present "persistent difficulties", is more important.

So better to do what I enjoy doing, rather than do what I am "told" by rules that are changed at whim. Funnily enough, "change fatigue" is a major reason one loses once's stamina. Better to play the long game, doing the things that I enjoy, so when that final of finals comes along the daily process meant something to me. After all, any personal Golden Age is but a snapshot of the outside, like someone's Facebook profile where for a fleeting moment it looks as though you are living the high life, while the reality of the other 99% of the time, which is the daily grind, is agony and torment for your soul. It doesn't have to be so.  As Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations, 6.31:

Clear your mind and get a hold of yourself and, as when waking from sleep and realizing it was only a bad dream upsetting you, wake up and see that what's there is just like those dreams.

But to conclude, another coincidence. Today is my birthday, and on reading and journalling this morning, based on my Daily Stoic ritual, Raymond Chandler appears: "I never looked back, although I had many uneasy periods looking forward". I finished my first Raymond Chandler novel last week. Is this a mere coincidence? So something else for the research philosophy: What is knowledge, and how do we know?!