Cuba's 6th Party Congress and the Lineamientos (Guidelines) For Structural Change In Cuba

The Cuban Communist Party and state apparatus has been considering a set of Guidelines (Lineamientos) that have been in circulation since late Summer 2010.  These Lineamientos serve as a detailed, though still general, basis for reordering the economic framework within which Cuban socialism is understood.  They suggest the opening to potentially significant structural changes in Cuban economic policy.  

 

  (From EMBASSY OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA IN THE KINGDOM OF DENMARK, Information Bulletin Issue No. 2,  May 2011; Prensa Latina News Agency).

The Guidelines were debated formally at the recently concluded 6th Party Congress of the Cuban Communist Party and approved in the following form: 

VI Congreso del Partido Cominiosta de Cuba,  Lineamientos de la política económica y social del partido y la Revolución (aprobado el 18 de abril de 2011).  

The Guidelines are divided in a number of subparts:  model of economic development, macroeconomic policies, external political economy, investment policies, innovation policies, social policies, agricultural policies, industrial and energy policies, tourism, transport policy, construction, housing, commercial policy, and implementation issues. "The finalized document, however, provides few specifics about how the changes outlined in the 313 approved guidelines will be implemented. It does call for a government-created commission to manage the implementation of the Guidelines, including the development of a legal and institutional base to support the changes. No timeline is given for the creation of the commission or implementation of Guidelines." From Cuba’s government releases ratified Economic Guidelines, Center for Democracy in the Americas, May 10, 2011. 

A companion booklet was also published:  

VI Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba, Información sobre el resultado del debate de los Lineamientos de la Política Económica y Social del Partido  y la Revolución (Mayo de 2011) (Tabloide).   

The Tabloide presents a summary of the changes from the draft Lineamientos and the official reasons for the changes.  Both are required reading for getting a sense of the cope and direction of the economic (and necessarily political) changes that are being contemplated in Cuba.

The character and scope of the changes contemplated by the Guidelines was summarized in a press release of the Cuban government published through its Danish Embassy.

  The 6th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) concludes after three days of debates in which delegates focused on the updating of the country´s economic model.  Participants in the meeting which started on Saturday, April 16, discussed and approved the event´s Central Report, presented by the second secretary of the party, Raul Castro, at the opening session. Delegates met in five commissions and plenary meetings to discuss the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines of the Draft Party Program, approving them after further exchange and a mass consultation of the population. The 6th PCC Congress instructed the government to set up a standing commission for the implementation and development of the guidelines, without damaging the functions of the state´s Central Administration agencies. It also recommended that the Parliament, the government and corresponding agencies draw up and approve, according to the case, the necessary legal norms to create the legal and institutional basis to support the foreseen functional, structural and economic changes. The delegates stated that the Central Report is essential to undertake future tasks, mainly in the economy, and is an objective assessment of this crucial time for the nation. (From EMBASSY OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA IN THE KINGDOM OF DENMARK, Information Bulletin Issue No. 2,  May 2011; Prensa Latina News Agency).

(From Alta demanda en Santa Clara del tabloide con información sobre los Lineamientos de la Política Económica y Social del Partido y la Revolución, El teclazo por the verdad, May 9, 2011).

It has been reported that "many US and European news organizations viewed the changes as a great stride towards a market economy, with headlines like “Havana frees up markets—with a caveat” (The Miami Herald) and “Raúl Castro apuesta por reformar la economía y el Partido Comunista en el VI Congreso” [es] [“Raúl Castro is committed to reforming the economy and the Communist Party at the VI Congress”] (El Pais), the rhetoric of the congress itself demonstrated a commitment to strengthening and modernizing, but not marketizing, Cuban socialism." (Cuba: Bloggers Reflect on Reforms at Communist Party Congress, Global Voices, April 28, 2011).  But of course, that is the usual indulgent and exaggerated wishful thinking driving the creation of flashy items for a readership increasingly only sated with news of an extreme sort.  On the other hand," Bloggers in Cuba, and those who follow Cuba from other parts of the world, offered a diverse range of reactions." (Id.). Indeed, within Cuba there is an acute sense that even the limited reforms reflected in the Lineamientos may face opposition by an entrenched bureaucracy.  "A pesar de no haberse logrado la esperada "renovación generacional" en el más alto nivel de dirección del gobernante Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), este país podría entrar en una nueva etapa de desarrollo socialista si se lograr superar la resistencia al cambio de los sectores más conservadores." Dalia Acosta, Carrera de obstáculos hacia la renovación, IPS, April 22, 2011 (Despite not having achieved the expected "generational renewal" at the highest level of leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), this country could now enter a new stage of socialist development if it can overcome resistance to change from its most conservative sectors).

Raul Castro emphasized both the limited nature of the reforms (despite their comprehensive scope) and the speed with which they will be implemented. 

Raul Castro Closed the Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (CPC) of Cuba Raul Castro, staid the main task now is to fulfill the agreements of the congress under the common denominator of order, discipline and exigencies. Raul Castro defined as the most important commitment to achieve is to update Cuban economic model with the help of all, to ensure the irreversibility of socialism in Cuba. The updating is not a miracle achieved in the overnight; it will be gradually accomplished over five years, as lot of planning and coordination work is needed in both, law and in the training of those involved in it, he said. . . . The main enemy is in our own shortcomings and therefore, in such a great task to the future of the country we will make needed changes if necessary as indicated Fidel and at the pace demanded by the circumstances. (From EMBASSY OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA IN THE KINGDOM OF DENMARK, Information Bulletin Issue No. 2,  May 2011; Prensa Latina News Agency).

(Central Committee of the PCC; From  Dalia Acosta, Carrera de obstáculos hacia la renovación, IPS, April 22, 2011).

While the Western press was at pains to emphasize the extent of the changes in the Guidelines, internal coverage in Cuba tended to stress continuity and the seamlesness of socialist development represented by the Guidelines.  For a nice example (in Spanish) see Angel Guerra, Cuba: otros apuntes sobre el Congreso, Caminos, May 4, 2011.

Los medios fundamentales de producción continuarán como propiedad estatal de todo el pueblo pero se ampliará considerablemente el campo a las formas de propiedad o gestión no estatales en numerosas producciones y servicios mediante un gran impulso al autoempleo y la microempresa; se elevará el límite de tierras ociosas que está permitido entregar en usufructo a particulares y cooperativas. La ampliación de actividades económicas fuera del ámbito estatal permitirá que el Estado deje de realizar funciones que hoy desvían su atención, concentrarse en elevar la eficiencia de la producción y los servicios básicos y crear un espacio para la reubicación de cientos de miles de trabajadores del sector público. La educación y la salud gratuitas y universales, la seguridad y la asistencia social, conquistas históricas de la Revolución, continuarán dentro de la esfera estatal, que estará en mejores condiciones de elevar su calidad y continuo perfeccionamiento, logrando mejor servicio con menos gasto. Es el pueblo, la elevación de su nivel de vida, de sus valores éticos y políticos lo que anima este proceso.

La autonomía de las empresas y la descentralización del Estado son indispensables para potenciar la participación de los trabajadores en la gestión económica, comunitaria y estatal, logrando el nivel superior de democracia socialista requerido por este complejísimo programa de cambios. . . . 

Igualmente, el éxito de este proceso depende de una elevación del papel dirigente del Partido Comunista, de un cambio en sus métodos y estilo de trabajo que exige deslindarlo de funciones gubernamentales. El poder del partido, señaló Raúl Castro, descansa básicamente en su autoridad moral, en la influencia que ejerce en las masas y en la confianza que el pueblo deposita en él. . . . .(From Angel Guerra, Cuba: otros apuntes sobre el Congreso, Caminos, May 4, 2011.)

(Rough Translation: The basic means of production will continue as property of the state owned by  all the people but forms of property and enterprise in the non-state sector will be considerably augmented in numerous areas of production and services through a big boost in self-employment and microenterprises; the limit of idle land that may be transferred to individuals and cooperatives in usufruct will be increased. This expansion of economic activities outside the state level will allow the State to stop performing functions that now divert its attention, so that it can focus on increasing the efficiency of production and basic services and create a space for the relocation of hundreds of thousands of public workers. Education and free and universal health, safety and welfare, historic achievements of the Revolution, will continue within the state sphere, which will be better able to raise their quality and movement toward perfection, achieving better service at less  cost. It is the people, raising their standard of living, its ethical and political values ​​which encourages this process.

The autonomy of enterprises and the decentralization of government are essential for boosting the participation of workers in the development of the economy, community and state, achieving the highest level of socialist democracy required by this very complex program changes. . . .

Similarly, the success of this process depends on an elevation of the leading role of the Communist Party, a change in its methods and work style that requires that the role fo the Party be separated from government functions. The power of the party, said Raul Castro, lies primarily in its moral authority, in its influence with the masses and the trust that the people places in it. . . .)

 (From Los cubanos podrán viajar como turistas, La Razón, May 10, 2011 (Gobernante. Raúl Castro durante el desfile del 1 de mayo.  (Raul Castro at May Day celebrations)).

But influential elements within Cuba also stressed the long term importance of the changes, while some in the United States remained skeptical.   

Omar Everleny Perez, deputy director of the Center of Cuban Studies of the University of Havana, told me in an e-mail from the island that “we are witnessing a profound updating of the Cuban economic model, much like those of China and Vietnam, with the existing differences of each model.”

Everleny Perez said the economic “transformation” of Cuba will give the private sector “a significant weight, which it has not had in the past.” He said that, among other things, Cuba will eliminate more than 1 million jobs to reduce its “bloated” government payroll — the figure may be as high a 1.5 million — and that it will give land to private farmers so that they can increase food production. . . .

Carmelo Mesa Lago, a University of Pittsburgh economist who is one of the most respected analysts of the Cuban economy, is more skeptical. Barring surprises once the Congress’s resolutions are published, this is not comparable with China’s or Vietnam’s economic openings decades ago, he said. . . .

Mesa Lago said that the most important steps for Cuba to solve its economic crisis would be — in this order — giving private farmers greater property rights, implementing the announced layoffs of up to 1.5 million government workers, and implementing the new rules letting people own homes and cars. “The latest reforms are very timid, and with too many strings attached,” he said. (From Andres Oppenheimer: Cuba’s regime buys time for aging leaders, pojo.com, April 24, 2011).

None of this should surprise.  Cuban leaders have made it clear that however radical the ideas, all changes must be understood as being "within the Revolution."  However that standard is applied, its logic will be compelling for all sectors of the CCP.  Outsiders continue to look at the changes suggested in the Guidelines as opening a door to structural changes that will undo the Revolutionary ideological matrix that has dominated the state since 1959.  That analytical perspective misses the point and distorts the reality of what will and will not happen as a consequence of the gradual imposition of the Guidelines within the ideological parameters of the "any change means Cuba is moving to undo the Revolution stance". 

There is another important perspective that most analysis seems to have avoided, one that might be far more useful in understanding the internal logic driving the Lineamientos and its development. The comparative emphasis of the Guidelines among influential sectors within and outside of Cuba has been with China and Viet-Nam.  That comparative perspective makes sense at the surface.  One tends to look for similarly situated political systems and then compare among them.  In this case much has been made of the move in the 1980s by Viet Nam and China, which starting from more orthodox Marxist-Leninist positions, moved towards market tolerating economic models and more fully engaged with the global economic order grounded in private markets and free(er) movement of capital.  The debate, then, centers on the extent to which Cuba might follow (more of less) the course taken by either of those two states, and the possible deviations therefrom.  Much is made of the differences between the Communist Party architectures of these states, the relative development of their economies, their comparative relationships with the United States and other countries and the role of the revolutionary generation (or its passing) in the move toward change.   

That is all very useful.  But Cuba is essentially Latin and European (and perhaps still Soviet) in its culture and perspectives.  It might be as useful to compare the movement represented by the Guidelines not toward Asia but toward Europe.  The hint of the utility of the approach is suggested by the form of the proposed reform--as Guidelines.  It is also suggested by the (for Cuba) extra-ordinary forms of consultation--the Guidelines were first debated (in the form such debate is permitted in Cuba) among the people, academics and functionaries, and then instituted as more or less binding Guidelines by the political leadership of the state through the endorsement by the Cuban Communist Party. The Guidelines were even debated (among the Cuban elite) outside the Island.  This methodology of change, this form of movement toward economic reform within the ideological parameters of the current situation, this ostentatious form of consultation and deliberate movement is peculiar in this form not so much to Asia as it is to the European Union.   

As described briefly in the official website of the EU: "The worldwide economic recession in the early 1980s brought with it a wave of ‘euro-pessimism’. However, hope sprang anew in 1985 when the European Commission, under its President Jacques Delors, published a White Paper setting out a timetable for completing the European single market by 1 January 1993. This ambitious goal was enshrined in the Single European Act, which was signed in February 1986 and came into force on 1 July 1987." (From Europa, Europe in 10 Lessons).  That White Paper, written i the form of a set of objectives with a large number of concrete steps to be undertaken over a perod of less than a decade suggests the form of the Lineamientos.  See Completing the Internal Market: White Paper from the Commission to the European Council (Milan, 28-29 June 1985) COM(85) 310, June 1985 {Main text [2890KB]; Annex .  The White Paper itself set out the objectives of European integration in line with the ideological position embraced by the institutions of the then European Communities.  It was accompanied by an Annex that served as an "action programme of the measures needed to meet that objective."  (White Paper, supra, Annex at I).   And in language suggesting the methodological approach of the Cuban state to reform, it was noted that "[c]learly, the Internal Market cannot be completed at a stroke.  The interim period leading up to 1992 must be put to the best possible use to ensure that the adjustments needed to cope with the final dismantling of the internal frontiers are not too abrupt." (Id.). 

It might be useful to keep the earlier European experience in mind, within the quite different ideological framework of the Cuban state apparatus and its circumstances.  The European experience stressed the need to identify and implement hundreds of small technical changes, none of which individually threatened the structure or ideology of the state system supporting the construction and understanding of the European Communities itself.  However, together, the aggregate of these small technical changes over time succeeded in fundamentally changing the architecture of European governance, again without threatening the ideology supporting the Europeanization project itself.  This is the sort of technically driven bottom up approach that would most likely produce some chance of real success for the Guidelines and is suggested by the methodology of the Guidelines themselves.  As Cuba goes about the cautious task of changing the operation of its internal economy through the adjustment of "little facts", technical changes below the threshold of ideology,  while it seeks to keep unchanged the larger ideological architecture within which the state is organized, it may well be able to fundamentally alter the operation of its economy "as applied" while remaining loyal to the macro ideologies on which the state organization is founded.  The European Union's experience suggests that technical reform from the bottom up can work, and have profound practical changes without the need to disturb the ruling ideology of the state apparatus.  It will be interesting to see if Cuba can successfully manage this very European approach to "change without changing. "

Democracy Part XXIII: The Transfirguration of Anonymous--Mass Mobilization and its Organizational Conundrums

A recent report reminds us of the power of mass mobilization as the great phenomenon of the last century.  Mass movements have became the signature legitimate instrument of social and political change.  Yet it has also come to serve as a force, the institutionalization of which undoes its mass power and transforms it into something else.   Mass movements can both overturn old institutions and replicate the forms and functions of those vanquished institutions. 

 (From Nate Anderson,  The hackers hacked: main Anonymous IRC servers invaded Ars Technica, May 2011).

The specific object of this lesson is the collective Anonymous.  Nate Anderson,  The hackers hacked: main Anonymous IRC servers invaded Ars Technica, May 2011.  Mr. Andeerson reports:

War rages between competing factions within the hacker collective Anonymous after this weekend's drama-filled takeover of the main Anonymous IRC server network. That network, used by Anons to plan and conduct attacks, was taken over by one of its own, an IRC moderator known as "Ryan."

His attack has sparked a debate over the "leadership" of Anonymous.

Hacking the hackers

The main Internet chat servers used by Anonymous have been run by a group called "AnonOps," which provides communications platforms for the group. Pointing IRC clients at anonops.ru or anonops.net would connect anyone to the servers, where they could then join channels like "#OpSony" and participate in various Anon activities.

Though Anonymous is often described as leaderless, factions like AnonOps by necessity have a loose structure; servers must be paid for, domain names must be registered, chat channels must have at least some moderation. Ryan was one of those IRC mods, and this weekend he proceeded with an attack that seized control of the AnonOps servers away from the small cabal of leaders who ran it.  (From Nate Anderson,  The hackers hacked: main Anonymous IRC servers invaded Ars Technica, May 2011.)

The collective has now divided into ideologically distinct camps--one looking toward the use of collective mobilization as a non-structured force and the other suggesting the need for institutionalization and bureaucratization within an identifiable territory (in this case an intangible territory) to preserve the collective and better direct it as a singularity--a unified collective of single minded parts willing to conform its behavior to the will of the leadership.    This is an ancient pattern.  One of its latest and most iconic manifestations occurred at the birth of the Soviet Union and pitted the state centered totalitarian bureaucratism ultimately perfected under the Soviet regime controlled by Josef Stalin with the more amorphous revolutionary mobilization of Leon Trotsky that rejected the notion of the political state as a limiting site for mass democratic society.  The factionalism within Anonymous reminds us, as well, of the ease with with mass movements can be transformed from a mass movement guided by principle to an organizational form managed by groups of leaders  who appropriate for themselves the power to divine mass will. 

In order to avoid it, the leading organs of the party must lend an ear to the voice of the mass, without regarding all criticism as a manifestation of the factional spirit and thereby driving conscientious and disciplined communists to maintain a systematic silence or to constitute themselves into factions. . . .  It is incontestable that factions are a scourge in the present situation and that groups, even if temporary, may be transformed into factions. But as experience shows it is far from enough to declare that groups and factions are an evil for their appearance to be prevented. They will be forestalled only by a correct policy, adapted to the actual situation.. . . .It would be “organizational fetishism” to believe that regardless of the development of the party, the mistakes of the leadership, the conservatism of the apparatus, the influences from without it, etc., a decision is enough to preserve us from groupings and from the disorder inherent in the formation of factions. To look at things in this way would be to give proof of bureaucratism. (From Leon Trotsky, Bureaucratism and Factional Groups, Marxists Internet Archive, Dec. 1923; First Published: 1935 [in English]; Source: New International, New York, Vol.2 No.1, January 1935, pages 16-19; Transcribed/HTML Markup: David Walters, February 2005.

(From Wikopedia, Permanent Revolution).

Trotsky, of course, thought there was a means of removing the cause of faction; and Stalin used these ideas to remove Trotsky as factious.  Earlier, the designers of the American Republic took a different view--one that also resopnates with the current  situation of Anonymous. In his famous essay on faction, part of the Federalist Papers, James Madison started with the same suspicion of faction as Trotsky: " By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." The Federalist No. 10 The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection (continued) Daily AdvertiserThursday, November 22, 1787[James Madison].   

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.
There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. . . .

The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot removed; and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects. (From The Federalist No. 10 The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection (continued) Daily AdvertiserThursday, November 22, 1787[James Madison]

 (From American philosophy.net).

Ironically, both Madison and Trotsky were sensitive to the dangers of faction and the problems attendant on the removal of its causes. But they differed on both the inevitability of faction and the dangers chosen for the means to control its effects.   Trotsky believed that its causes could be removed by giving all citizens the same passions and opinions and that such a process was both scientific and inevitable.  Madison rejected the idea of the possibility fo perfectibility of thought and its resulting harmonization of opinion. This difference had a great effect on their approach to an understanding of the management of faction.  Because the causes of faction might be cured, Trotsky thought that management was the more dangerous alternative,leading inevitably to bureaucratism, stagnation, repression and the triumph of anti-democratic values in hierarchy and control.  Because Madison believed that the causes of faction could not be overcome, it could be managed by a system of representative democracy in which elected representatives would have to cobble factions together to win elections and by encouraging enough factions that no one would come to dominate.

These two visions suggest some of the conventional parameters of the behavior of collectives and their embrace of or resistance to systematic constitution into organizational forms.  Madison provides us with a view grounded in the idea of the self constitution of communities through an organic process in which coalitions can be contained through a system in which any such coalition is unstable. For that purpose Madison relies on a particular view of human nature.  Madison, then, would control its effects by institutionalizing and channeling its behavior in ways that might contain its tendencies to move form faction to tyranny.  Trotsky relies on a different view of human nature to suggest the inevitability of hierarchy in collective relations and the need to control  organization for the purpose of avoiding faction by curing its causes. "Is it possible that there is no intermediate line for the party between the regime of “calm” and that of crumbling into factions? No, there is one, and the task of the leadership consists, every time it is necessary and particularly at turning points, in finding the line that corresponds to the given real situation." (From Leon Trotsky, Bureaucratism and Factional Groups, Marxists Internet Archive, Dec. 1923; First Published: 1935 [in English]; Source: New International, New York, Vol.2 No.1, January 1935, pages 16-19; Transcribed/HTML Markup: David Walters, February 2005). Trostsky would create a controlled environment in which a hierarchical discourse ultimately eliminates the causes of faction--everything within the revolution.  In either case, though, the possibilities of a politics grounded in mass mobilization that is not guided in some way is dismissed. 

These ancient conflict types recur now in a new context, and with different stakes.  The object is no longer control of political space, or the territory within which a state may impose a political government apparatus.  Instead, the contest is over the intangible space of substantive norms whose enforcement might be effectuated through the sort of mass mobilization that serves as its own legitimating force as democratically constituted. 

The "old" leaders released a statement this morning explaining what happened over the weekend and why IRC remained down:

We regret to inform you today that our network has been compromised by a former IRC-operator and fellow helper named "Ryan". He decided that he didn't like the leaderless command structure that AnonOps Network Admins use. So he organized a coup d'etat, with his "friends" at skidsr.us . Using the networks service bot "Zalgo" he scavenged the IP's and passwords of all the network servers (including the hub) and then systematically aimed denial of service attacks at them (which is why the network has been unstable for the past week). Unfortunately he has control of the domain names AnonOps.ru (and possibly AnonOps.net, we don't know at this stage) so we are unable to continue using them.

Not everyone buys the explanation. One Anon pointed out that the Zalgo bot in question is controlled by a user named "E," not by Ryan.

Second, Zalgo can only see chan msgs and msgs to zalgo. The net staff is saying (pretty much) Ryan used Zalgo to steal server passwords (false, I know server protocol) which were tranfered in channels in plain text for the to see (true).

Third: Take everything AnonOps says with a grain of salt. They're putting out lies and not telling the whole story.

Others pointed out that E and Ryan are friends and that E was actually recommended as an op by Ryan. (From Nate Anderson,  The hackers hacked: main Anonymous IRC servers invaded Ars Technica, May 2011.)

Even this explanation, then, revealed the difficulty of operationalizing a leaderless structures without guidance--and therefore leaders.  And thus the old revolutionary conundrum in the modern context of political legitimacy through mass mobilization and popular expression of mass will, now caught between an instrumental vision of the masses and a "naturalist" sense of mass legitimacy in which the collective itself chooses its path by its aggregate activity.   ""

Clashing factions

Ryan is associated with 808chan, a 4chan splinter site and apparent home of the recent denial of service attacks on AnonOps. Ryan is "DDoSing everything that he doesn't own with his band of raiders from 808chan," says one Anon.

The 808 brigade apparently valued big botnets, and made users prove their abilities before letting them participate. AnonOps had a more democratic ethos; anyone could show up, configure the Low Orbit Ion Cannon attack tool, and start firing at Sony or others.

"It's an open network where everyone, mostly newfags can join and not have to prove they're able to wield a botnet and can just join a channel of their choosing, fire up LOIC and hit some organization for reasons they believe are right," said one Anon.

Ryan's control of AnonOps extends to some of the actual domain names, including AnonOps.ru. This wasn't a hack; he was actually given administrative control over the domains some time ago by AnonOps leaders.

One Anon explained the reason for this, saying: "As for the domains, they were transferred to Ryan after some of us got vanned so he can keep the network up. What he did certainly wasn't the plan." (Getting "vanned" refers to getting picked up by the police.)

According to another Anon, the current fight was precipitated when Ryan's IRC credential were revoked. "You morons don't realize Ryan IS LEGALLY THE OWNER OF DOMAINS," he wrote. "Nerdo and Owen removed Ryan's oper, Ryan took domains."
Smoky back rooms?

Among Anons arguing over what happened this weekend, the key debate involves the issue of leaders. Anonymous also said it was leaderless and memberless, but is it? The AnonOps statement above claims that Ryan was angry at the "leaderless" structure of the group and wanted to set himself up as king; again, though, not everyone is so sure.

Owen, for instance, helps to shape the conversation and planning in IRC. One Anon complained privately to me that Owen has booted him from the IRC servers—and thus from the place where all the real work against Sony was taking place several weeks ago. "Owen has not only told me that he doesn't really give a shit about freedom of speech, he's also moderately against the action that's being taken on Sony," this Anon said.

Owen and others conduct some of their work in private, invite-only channels, which leads some Anons to suspect that the really important operations and hack attempts are only discussed in a virtual back room. As one Anon put it yesterday:

"Have you ever been in one of their invite-only chats? This is no bullshit. EVERYTHING is decided on them, the eventual course of the operation, the hivemind's target, the channel's topic, everything. Why all this secrecy? These invite-only chats have NO reason to exist. You want to keep out trolls? Turn on mute, and give voice to a few. At least we can see what is being written." (From Nate Anderson,  The hackers hacked: main Anonymous IRC servers invaded Ars Technica, May 2011.)

(From  Eric Stoner, Experiments with truth: 10/27/09, Waging Non-Violence, Oct. 27, 2009).

And thus the tender underbelly of mass mobilization becomes exposed--its leaderless quality inhibits its ability to assert positive power (it can exist only episodically and in reaction to the prodding of collectives which are used as instruments in the service of some form of political. social, economic, religious or cultural agenda) or leaderlessness actually serves to mask the hand of those who would guide the collective in directions. The organization of mass mobilization begins to serve not the substantive principles that served to constitute the mobilization but rather to serve the people who would substitute themselves for principle. Aristotle reminds us that democracy takes a variety of forms, each with its own consequences for the organization of power.  "Another sort is in which every citizen who is not infamous has a share in government, but where the government is in the laws . . . Another is like these in other particulars, but there the people govern, and not the law:  and this tales place when everything is determined by a majority of votes, and not by law; which happens when the people are influenced by demagogues . . .where the power is not vested in the laws, there demagogues abound:  for there the people rule with kingly power: the whole comprising one body."  Aristotle, Politics,  Book IV, ch. IV, 1292a (William Ellis, trans., London: J.M. Dent  1912).

As the old AnonOps team attempted to get a handle on what had happened—and after they switched to an Indian domain name—they expressed irritation with early media mentions ("fail reporting") of the attack.

"Some 'mainstream' media is calling this the 'insider threat,'" they wrote, "which isn't really a fair representation, AnonOps doesn't have any corporate secrets, its run by the people for the people on a basis of mutual trust. Drama happens almost 24/7, occasionally drama overspills the network.

"Also we must remind the press AnonOps DOES NOT EQUAL Anonymous, saying they are one and/or the same thing in a blog/article just makes you look stupid. AnonOps is just a IRC network and a few other services that ANYONE can use, its not the only place Anonymous gather, and unlikely to be the *last* (see Streisand effect)."

But will the AnonOps leaders ever gather on a forum they don't control? Ryan took great delight in posting the following alleged comment from Owen to another AnonOps leader: "yo odnt honestly think we're goign to some other irc where we have no control do you?"

Of course, Anonymous has always been about drama and "the lulz," so the current confusion may not even bother them that much; this is just par for the course. But it's certainly amusing to others. (From Nate Anderson,  The hackers hacked: main Anonymous IRC servers invaded Ars Technica, May 2011.)

I have suggested both the place of collectives, like Anonymous, and the possible consequences of their organizational form.  Larry Catá Backer, "Anonymous": Organizing Collective Action and Coercive Power Beyond the State, Law at the End of the Day, Jan. 4, 2011; Larry Catá Backer,  Taking Anonymous Seriously: The State Strikes Back, Law at the End of the Day, Jan. 28, 2011.

Anonymous appears to have come to the place in its evolution that the Soviet apparatus encountered, in the context of its own circumstances, in 1923.  

In meditating well on the situation created in the party and which has showed itself in a particularly clear light in the course of the discussion, one sees that the future presents itself in a double perspective. Either the organic ideological regrouping which is now taking place in the party along the line of the resolutions of the Central Committee will be a step forward along the road of the organic growth of the party, the beginning of a new great chapter – and that would be the most desirable way out for all of us and the most beneficial one for the party, which will then easily overcome excesses in the discussion and in the opposition and, with greater reason, vulgar democratic tendencies. Or else, passing over to the counter-offensive, the apparatus will fall more or less under the sway of its most conservative elements and, on the pretext of combating the factions, will throw the party back and reestablish “calm”. This second eventuality would be incomparably more grievous; it would not prevent, it goes without saying, the development of the party, but this development would take place only at the cost of considerable efforts and disturbances. For this method would only still further foster tendencies which are harmful, disintegrating, opposed to the party. These are the two eventualities to envisage. (From Leon Trotsky, Bureaucratism and Factional Groups, Marxists Internet Archive, Dec. 1923; First Published: 1935 [in English]; Source: New International, New York, Vol.2 No.1, January 1935, pages 16-19; Transcribed/HTML Markup: David Walters, February 2005).

Like revolutionary mass mobilization parties of the past century, Anonymous will likewise have to consider the consequences of the organizational choices that will be made.  Where it will lead those who are engaged in the struggle for a space within the territory inhabited by Anonymous remains to be seen.Whatever course, the collective remains an important example of both the organization of mass power and the paradoxical pressures on that power to organize itself in ways that would undo its fundamental construct.

   

John Sherman on Integrating Human Rights Impact Assessments into Enterprise Risk Management Systems

My friend and colleague, John Sherman recently delivered a presentation entitled "Integrating Human Rights Risk Assessments into Enterprise Risk Management Systems", at the conference Engaging Business: Implementing Respect for Human Rights, held in Atlanta, Georgia and sponsored by the United States Council for International Business (USCIB), U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the International Organization of Employers and hosted by the Coca-Cola Company.

Mr. Sherman is a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative, where he is an adviser to Professor John Ruggie, the Special Representative tot he U.N. Secretary General for Business and Human Rights. He is a former Vice Chair of the Corporate Responsibility Committee of the International Bar Association and is a member of the UN Global Compact Human Rights Working Group. He retired in 2008 as Deputy General Counsel for National Grid, a major international utility company. Mr. Sherman is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School.

Mr. Sherman started by reminding his audience that enterprise risk management in its current form is a relatively new business process innovation. From his first encounter, about a decade ago, enterprise risk management proved to be a flexible and useful tool with benefits for the company and its stakeholders.

It was a top down, bottom up, collaborative annual assessment of all of the risks that kept us up at night as an organization. This wasn’t a mathematical, computer driven exercise, designed to reduce all risks to a single dollar number. Rather, it was based on face-to-face conversations and workshops throughout the company. We looked at all major risks to the company’s stakeholders, internal and external—including shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, regulators, and the environment, among others. These included many impacts that are covered by human rights, such as the right to life and the right to be free from discrimination. We assessed ways to mitigate the impact and likelihood of each major risk, and assigned responsibility to specific people in the organization to implement them. (John Sherman, Integrating Human Rights Impact Assessments into Enterprise Risk Management Systems, supra).

Enterprise Risk Management serves a useful institutional purpose. It provides a framework for corporate monitoring that serves a large number of purpose. These include corporate obligations to develop and integrate monitoring systems that touch on the fiduciary obligations of U.S. corporate directors (Stone v. Ritter, 911 A.2d 362 (Del 2006)). It is also a critically important element of corporate compliance with monitoring and surveillance requirements under federal securities law. See, e.g., Backer, Larry Catá, The Duty to Monitor: Emerging Obligations of Outside Lawyers and Auditors to Detect and Report Corporate Wrongdoing Beyond the Securities Laws. St. John's Law Review, Vol. 77, No. 4, p. 919, 2003. It serves the interests of management and its investor stakeholders and was related in direct and indirect ways to the core objectives of corporate management--the maximization of shareholder/corporate value.

But the framework was not necessarily tied to the traditional sources of risk to corporations. As a system, it might also be usefully applied to emerging areas of corporate risk (or better put, of corporate obligation to refrain from adverse consequences) .

So when I first heard about human rights impact assessments a few years ago, I thought that it could be integrated with an enterprise risk management system like ours. I still think so, because the key challenge is embedding human rights impact assessments into a company’s DNA. That means ensuring that the process doesn’t expire shortly after the departure of the executive who initially promotes it. The insertion of foreign systems into a company’s bloodstream can generate antibodies that will attack it. So if a company already has an Enterprise Risk Management System—and the best-run companies do—a human rights impact assessment should be integrated into it. (John Sherman, Integrating Human Rights Impact Assessments into Enterprise Risk Management Systems, supra).

Mr. Sherman first connected human rights due diligence to its source within the U.N.'s proposed Guiding Principles for business and human rights. See Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, John Ruggie Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework.

The commentary to Guiding Principle 17 says that: 

Human rights due diligence can be included within broader enterprise risk management systems, provided that it goes beyond simply identifying and managing material risks to the company itself, to include risks to rights holders.

GP 17, Commentary, par. 3., p16. Moving to prioritization, the Guiding Principles focus on the importance of a human rights risk’s severity as the key factor in prioritizing company action. GP 24 provides that:

Where it is necessary to prioritize actions to address human rights risks and impacts, business enterprises should first seek to prevent and mitigate those that are most severe or where delayed response would make the impact irremediable.

By their very nature, the severity and irreparability of impacts on life and safety are self-evident. But there is no hard and fast definition. (John Sherman, Integrating Human Rights Impact Assessments into Enterprise Risk Management Systems, supra).

Clearly, human rights due diligence of the sort at the heart of the Protect-Respect-Remedy framework and its Guiding Principles lend themselves to the sort of monitoring framework that corporations are now accustomed to implementing. But is the enterprise risk management framework a suitable umbrella for the implementation of human rights due diligence systems? John suggests a close normative connection between systems.

Enterprise Risk Management grew in stature and power in companies in response to the need for companies to address the impact of their business on external stakeholders. Historically, therefore, Enterprise Risk Management was never focused solely on the risk to company shareholders. From the start, it has included the perspectives of all of the company’s important stakeholders, both internal and external. 

Contemporary enterprise risk management principles have carried this view forward. ISO 31000, entitled “Risk Management—Principles and Guidelines” is the global risk management standard adopted by the International Standards Organization in 2009. It was created through the same international consultative process that led to the development of ISO 26000 in 2010—that’s the international standard organization’s Guidance on Social Responsibility, which contains a chapter on human rights due diligence inspired by the Protect, Respect, and Remedy Framework. (John Sherman, Integrating Human Rights Impact Assessments into Enterprise Risk Management Systems, supra).

Mr. Sherman suggests that ISO 31000 is a particularly solid grounding on which to anchor human rights impact assessment.

(From Broadleaf Capital International, ISO 31000 ("With its new definition of risk as “the effect of uncertainty on objectives", ISO 31000 endorses the central, value-creating role that risk management plays. ")

Thus, for Mr. Sherman, "an ongoing and dynamic human rights impact assessment that looks at impacts from the perspective of the rights holder is well within the scope of ISO 31000." (John Sherman, Integrating Human Rights Impact Assessments into Enterprise Risk Management Systems, supra). Conceptually, then, enterprise risk management appear up to the task of serving as a structural framework for incorporating human rights due diligence within corporate cultures of monitoring and behavior assessment.

But ISO 31000 also serves another purpose--it helps a company determine how to respond to information its monitoring and assessment systems bring to light. The Guiding Principles suggest that corporations do not choose between human rights. Yet there is an element of prioritization in responses to negative human rights impacts that suggest the need to create hierarchies of responses that mirror or parallel the prioritization of risk in other areas.

Severity and likelihood are typically linked, but there are circumstances—and human rights impacts are one of them—in which likelihood must take a back seat to severity in determining the priority of a company’s response.

The reason is something called “risk tolerance”—which is a concept that most risk managers understand. Take the old Ford Pinto case as an example. A company’s shareholders may be able to “tolerate” the economic consequences of a wrongful death suit from a poorly designed gas tank that explodes in a collision. But from the perspective of the driver and her children in the car, the consequences are intolerable. And this is the perspective from which a human rights impact must be assessed. This is not as much of a conceptual hurdle for companies that recognize that the perspective of external stakeholders must be factored into their risk assessments. (John Sherman, Integrating Human Rights Impact Assessments into Enterprise Risk Management Systems, supra).

Mr. Sherman here acknowledges a point of potential tension between risk assessment systems, like the enterprise risk management system, and the fundamental approach of human rights due diligence which is grounded in the presumption that the object of assessment is to prevent and mitigate all adverse human rights impacts of corporate activity. Yet there may be common ground between the risk assessment approach and its tolerance for risk and the impacts approach of the Guiding Principles.General Principle 24 provides that

Where it is necessary to prioritize actions to address actual and potential adverse human rights impacts, business enterprises should first seek to prevent and mitigate those that are most severe or where delayed response would make them irremediable. (Guiding Principles Principle 24).

The Commentary to the Guiding Principles emphasizes that prioritization is tolerated though but risk tolerance falls outside the parameters of the principles. That is, the Guiding Principles suggest that one need not remediate or avoid all risk, but that over time all adverse impacts must be addressed and none tolerated because, for example, the cost to mitigate exceeds the shor term financial costs to the company.

While business enterprises should address all their adverse human rights impacts, it may not always be possible to address them simultaneously. In the absence of specific legal guidance, if prioritization is necessary business enterprises should begin with those human rights impacts that would be most severe, recognizing that a delayed response may affect. (Guiding Principle 24 Commentary).

Mr. Sherman suggests that enterprise risk management systems can be adapted to this orientation toward impact assessment and remediation by moving from an internal to an external assessment framework. For that purpose, ISO 31000 again provides a conventional basis for the operation.

ISO 31000 asks companies to appreciate the tolerance of risks by those external stakeholders who must bear the risk, knowingly or unknowingly. One company can agree with another company about who should bear the risks of a transaction, or they can buy insurance, in order to achieve a risk tolerance level that is comfortable. But these options are not available to those whose human rights are infringed upon by business conduct. Moreover, they may not even know that they are assuming a risk. (John Sherman, Integrating Human Rights Impact Assessments into Enterprise Risk Management Systems, supra).

Mr. Sherman reminds us that such impacts approaches rather than a tolerance-assessment approach are not unknown in conventional business responses to risk.

The importance of severity in prioritizing company response to human rights impacts is highlighted by a trio of recent corporate disasters—the global financial liquidity crisis in 2008; the Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010; and the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in 2011. Each had severe human rights impacts. Each was thought virtually impossible the year before they happened.

Yet few are saying that the seemingly low likelihood of these disasters justified taking less than the most robust and rigorous steps to prevent them from occurring. It simply makes sense from the perspective of all stakeholders—internal and external—to prevent these severe impacts from happening. (John Sherman, Integrating Human Rights Impact Assessments into Enterprise Risk Management Systems, supra).

Substitute adverse human rights impact for "severe" and you have the essence of an enterprise risk management system in which monitoring and assessment of risk are identical but in which remediation and avoidance are substituted for cost balancing. It is in this sense that business already has developed the infrastructure for human rights due diligence. It has the tools for the job and it has already wholly embraced the culture of monitoring, surveillance and reporting at the heart of any assessment program. The difference, and perhaps the critical one, is not on assessment, but on the consequences of assessment.

(From Ohio Tort Reform Damages Summary)

For human rights risks, assessment always leads to remediation if necessary and avoidance if possible. The only real questions are how and when. For other risks, the traditional system of remediation rather than avoidance, if the costs of remediation are smaller than that of avoidance, remain a viable alternative. That is not the fault of the company, nor any criticism of the approach that produces risk tolerance. Rather, it suggests that the system of laws under which the state complies with its human rights duties may require adjustment. The use of tort and contract principles for the assessment of the impacts of risks itself promotes within law-state systems, the incentive to risk tolerance and post facto compensation that emerging human rights regimes suggest is itself fundamentally flawed. The Guiding Principles, especially Principle 1, suggest that perhaps the greater deficiency lies not with companies, which comply with the law and reasonably react to incentives provided through law by the state. Rather the greater fault lies with states, which has imposed through law a system that encourages the sort of risk tolerance that is built into the culture of corporate activity. Changing the law, rather than changing corporate behavior despite the law, should be the primary task of states that seek to comply with their own duty to protect human rights under the Guiding Principles.

Cuba and Its Bloggers: Cyber Civil Society, Surveillance, Control and Academic Research

The story of the emergence of a small but vocal group of bloggers and other social commentators in Cuba is well known. The Cuban state has alternatively tolerated a measure of this development, in part because access to the internet is both limited and expensive, but at the same time it has sought to suppress some blogger and civil society voices that were deemed to politically sensitive or a threat to the political order. The development of the cyber civil society sector is particularly sensitive in Cuba because it is also well known that the United States, and sometimes the European Union, views this as a means of fostering political change in Cuba.

(From Cuba Blog Event, The Embedded Citizen, February 25, 2010 (quoting in part, Yoani Sanchez: "-Y.S.: The Cuban blogosphere is growing rapidly. They also use Twitter. And they have so many things to blog about... - Y.S.: Cuban bloggers hope that the world will understand the diversity of opinions in Cuba. They need support to protect the security for bloggers ad others who voice their opinions. And there should be pressure from the outside world when it comes to the regime censoring / closing blogs.")

From the Cuban perspective, then, blogger civil society can be both internally useful and also pose a threat to the security of the state and the stability of its government.


This view is not unique to Cuba. The Chinese tend to share this perspective, at least in part.

Unfettered cyber freedom is merely an impractical slogan, a Chinese expert on world politics told the Global Times Thursday.

"In the US, a country that boasts its Internet freedom, governmental supervision virtually infiltrates across the nation, and its influence further extends to worldwide servers," said Wang Yizhou, deputy chief of the Institute of World Politics and Economy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "The information-searching via Google and the online chatting through Windows Live Messenger are all under stringent surveillance, and the relevant agencies are tasked with compiling backups."

Wang was responding to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who made a speech Thursday on Internet freedom at the Newseum in Washington and called on China to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the alleged cyber attacks on Google and other US companies.

Liu Dong, Clinton's Internet freedom speech sparks worries, Global Times, Jan. 22, 2010. Mrs. Clinton's Speech may be accessed here.

Indeed, the United States has not been shy about expressing its views and extending at least symbolic support to Cuban cyber civil society in ways that both embarass and threaten the state apparatus. Former President Jimmy Carter's Maery 2011 trip to Cuba provides a case in point.

Former President Jimmy Carter, met in Havana Wednesday, March 30, with independent bloggers and other Cuban dissidents during the third and final day of his visit to the island in an effort to help to improve decades of tense relations between the United States and Cuba, the BBC and Reuters report.

Participants in the meeting included the leader of the Cuban blogger movement Yoani Sánchez, and other well-known opponents, such as Elizardo Sánchez, leader of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, and Oswaldo Payá, winner of the European Parliament's 2002 Sakharov Prize and leader of the "Varela Project," which sought political reforms on the island in favor of greater individual liberties.

Monical Mendel, Ex-President Jimmy Carter meets in Havana with leader of Cuban bloggers and other dissidents, Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas Blog, March 30, 2011.

 (From Issa Villareal, Bloggers Cuba, Global Voices, Dec. 7, 2009; "November 27 marked the date of the first anniversary of Bloggers Cuba [es], a community of bloggers dedicated to write about their country “from the inside”. Along with their collective blog, their work also includes the “Cuban reader” [es], a collection of RSS feeds from more than 30 blogs of the Cuban blogosphere, that can be used as a starting point for any visitor who wants to read about the country.")

The recent popular manifestations in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly in Egypt and Tunisia, has both suggested to the United States the value of cyber civil society as a tool for political change and heightened the worry of the Cuban government that cyber civil society might be used by foreigners to destabilize the state apparatus or that an indigenous opposition group may form. Yet the development of cyber civil society is not viewed as wholly threatening and indeed the state appears to believe that some forms of cyber civil society--at least those that appear to remain "inside the Revolution"--may be useful and ought to be either encouraged or at least tolerated.

Peering at the upheaval thousands of miles away in Egypt, the Cuban government is increasingly concerned about a burgeoning opposition movement growing through the Internet. . . .

In a 53-minute video leaked last week, a Cuban counter-intelligence staffer warned an audience of Castro government officials that pro-Democracy organizers in Cuba and the United States were using social media, like Facebook and Twitter, to foment a political uprising in the island nation.

"The technology in itself is not a threat, but the threat is what the people who use the technology can do with it," the lecturer said in the video, identified by the Miami Herald as 38-year-old Eduardo Fontes-Suarez. "The Internet is a battlefield." . . . .

But the Cuban government has taken steps that seemingly contradict the premise that they fear the Internet. On Tuesday, Cuban authorities recently unblocked Sanchez' blog, allowing it to be accessed and read within the island for the first time.

Serafin Gomez, Protests in Egypt Spark Fears in Cuba Over Growing Internet Opposition Movements, Fox News, Feb. 10, 2011.

(AP Photo from Serafin Gomez, Protests in Egypt Spark Fears in Cuba Over Growing Internet Opposition Movements, Fox News, Feb. 10, 2011, caption reads: "Fidel Castro, left, and his brother Raul Castro attend a special session of parliament in this 2010 file photo.").

These tensions have not left American academics untouched. I recent story reminds us both about the importance of the issue of cyber civil society in many states and the effect that this worry may have on public policy and the ability of academics, especially academics from abroad, to work in countries in which the issue of cyber civil society remains volatile.

CUNY Professor Ted Henken just spent 12 days in Cuba talking to bloggers. But the Cuba researcher says the trip may well be his last.

In a posting that should serve as a warning to journalists and academics alike, he reports on his El Yuma blog that upon his exit at the airport, state security agents had a daunting question for him: Who did you get permission from? Well, Henken said, I asked the bloggers’ permission.. . .

Henken acknowledges that he traveled on a tourist visa, as he has since his first trip in 1997. The agents had lots of questions for him, questions they already had the answers to. . . . .

The agents told Henken, the chair of the Black and Hispanic Studies Department at Baruch College, that this 15th trip would be his last. 

Frances Robles, CUNY Prof Banned From Cuba, The Miami Herald, May 4, 2011.

 (Image form Frances Robles, CUNY Prof Banned From Cuba, The Miami Herald, May 4, 2011).

Professor Henken's more detailed description may be found on his blog, Ted Henken, "Esta será tu última vez" - Memorias de la última conversación que tuve en Cuba, El Yuma, May 4, 2011. The description of his trip and his interaction with Cuban cyber civil society is well worth reading.  He ends the essay with his description of the conversation at the airport with Cuban officials:

"Lo que si sabemos es que no eres ningún turista sino que viniste a escribir un libro sobre los blogueros." Y con mucho sarcasmo añadieron, "a nosotros nos gustaría leer este libro y ver qué tan justo y abierto al diálogo realmente eres."

"Bueno," dije, "a ver cuando lo termino si puedo tenerlo traducido al español y les mando una copia."

"Así es. Sabemos que escribes mucho sobre Cuba y que has venido aquí más de 13 veces."

"Sí. He venido a Cuba mas de 15 veces. Es cierto."

"Bueno," dijo el encargado con gran satisfacción dando por terminada la conversación, "estamos aquí para informarte que esta será tu última vez. Entendiste?"

Salieron del pequeño cuarto rápidamente, dejándome un poco frustrado porque me quedaban un par de cosas por decir. Primero, hubiera querido avisarles que realmente no me gusta la playa (pero los mojitos, sí). Además, debería de haberles preguntado por qué el presidente Jimmy Carter, con quien estoy muy de acuerdo, tiene derecho de reunirse con lo que llaman "la contrarrevolución" sin ser tildado enemigo de la patria y yo no.

Ted Henken, "Esta será tu última vez" - Memorias de la última conversación que tuve en Cuba, El Yuma, May 4, 2011. He wonders why it is that Jimmy Carter can come to Cuba and meet with critical members of Cuban cyber civil society while U.S: academics are essentially expelled for doing something similar.  I suspect that from the perspective of the Cuban state apparatus the answer is simple and clear--Jimmy Carter is viewed as an official representative of the U.S; foreign academics, whether form the United States or elsewhere are not.  For a state founded on Marxist-Leninist principles, conduct of political officials, even those from unfriendly states, are treated as matters of state.  Those actions may be tolerated to the extent that it suits the Cuban state apparatus and the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party but that falls within established categories of political strategy and behaviors grounded in the relationship between states.  But, like Cuban cyber society, foreign academics act in the absence of official capacity.  For Cuban cyber society, that produces the tensions inherent in the state's long held policy that "Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing." (Fidel Castro Ruz, Discurso pronunciado como Conclusión de las Reuniones con los Intelectuales Cubanos, efectuadas en la Biblioteca Nacional el 16, 23 y 30 de junio de 1961).  See, Larry Catá Backer, The State of Civil Society in Cuba; The View From the International Conference--Cuba Futures: Past / Present, Law at the End of the Day, April 6, 2011.  For foreign academics it produces a parallel tension--do they serve the state from which they operate? Do they serve the interests of the Revolution from abroad?  Do they mean to destabilize the state apparatus deliberately or otherwise? Do they mean to participate in the internal political struggles?  Even research, or perhaps especially research, can be imbued with significant political effects.  It is to those effects rather than to the production of knowledge, that states like Cuba are likely to be particularly sensitive.  They may be viewed either as agents of a foreign state or as individuals who may be tolerated or who may produce knowledge of value to the state (because for example they may raise issues that might be more difficult to consider internally), or perhaps who may be managed  on the basis of standards of threat or political strategy or convenience that may shift with the needs of the state or the leadership currently in place.  For academics, of course, this is a reminder of the connection between politics, ideology and the production of knowledge.  It is also a reminder that while the political role of the academic enterprise operates is well incorporated into the political ideology of structures of governance in the West, those rules might operate differently elsewhere.

Measuring Outcomes

One of the most interesting manias of the age in which we live  is the obsession with measurement.  That obsession actually takes two forms.  The first involves the quantification of knowledge and the resultant reduction of reality to a set of number and number relationships.  Effectively neither facts nor relationships among facts exist unless they can be reduced to the symbol system of numbers.  The second involves the transformation of numbers, that is the measures themselves,  into fetish objects. Numbers appear solid, they seem to represent something that may not be manipulated--like words.  There can not possibly be ambiguity in a number, or a set of numbers or a set of relationships among numbers memorialized in some sort of equation or the like. 

 (From 10 Ways to Measure Your Event (ROI) with Social Media, Event Manager Blog, March 25, 2009)

But numbers can be as easily manipulated, and as ambiguous, as words.  And measurement can be used to effectuate substantive changes in behavior as easily as any command of law written in words.  Two recent writings suggest the difficulties and politics of numbers in a society obsessed with measurement and convinced that numbers, unlike words, neither lie nor manipulate. 

The first is a posting by Jason Saul entitled "The Dirty Little Secret About Measurement" Mission Measurement, March 23, 2011.  What one chooses to measure and the measure chosen may be asmuch about the entities for which measurement is conducted or the need to construct a reality for those who depend on the existence of that reality than it is about "objectivity" or the the production of facts.  Indeed, there is a suggestion that facts, like numbers, standing alone, mean about as much as a single word unconnected to anything that comes before or after. The entire post is worth a read, here are some highlights:

For the last 15 years I have been focused on a single knotty question: how do you measure social impact?   . . .   How is it that we can measure the temperature on Mars, but we can’t measure what happens within the orbit of a nonprofit organization?  Why is measurement so confounding?  

Getting the Right Measurement

After years of consulting with thousands of nonprofits on this issue, it finally struck me: we’re focusing on the wrong problem.  The problem isn’t actually a problem of measurement - it’s a problem of strategy.  The reason why it’s so hard to quantify impact is because, far too often, nonprofits are trying to measure outcomes their programs are not designed to produce.  Simply put, we’re trying to cheat our way to the answer. . . .

Where we get in trouble is when we try to “stretch” our statements of impact beyond the outcomes that are reasonably proximate to our work.   Take the case of an after school sports club that we recently advised: in an effort to attract “Gates money,” the executive director wanted to demonstrate that her program was impacting high school graduation rates.  The only problem was that the program primarily involved playing basketball with kids after school.  While there was a study program, few attended it and those that did basically just worked on their homework.   So I guess we could bemoan the measurement challenge of estimating the program’s impact on high school graduation, or we could just be intellectually honest.  There are many bone fide (and valued) outcomes that this program produces: reducing risky behaviors, increasing student interest in school, encouraging healthy lifestyles, etc.  While those outcomes may not be as “sexy” as improving graduation rates, they are quite important predicates.   

Intellectual honesty is one way to solve the measurement problem.  . . .  If you’re an advocacy organization looking to pass a law, substantial contribution means you led the coalition, lobbied the legislature and helped craft the legislation. If you’re running a direct service program, substantial contribution to an outcome is a function of dosage, frequency and duration. . . 

A New Generation of Social Strategies

Of course, the other way to solve the measurement problem is to just improve our programs.  If we want to be able to say more, we need to actually do more.  I recall meeting with an arts group whose primary goal was to engage younger artists and support them in their careers.  The organization spent 80% of its budget on a weekly newspaper for artists. When I asked whether young artists ever read the paper, the executive director replied: “no, they’re all online!” Yet the organization kept publishing the newspaper because that’s what it always did.  Measuring this organization’s impact on young artists would have been extremely difficult – but not because of measurement, because the strategy was never designed to produce that impact.  Put simply, we are using yesterday’s strategies to produce today’s outcomes. If we want to really make a difference, we need a new generation of social strategies, not a new generation of social metrics. . . .

Setting a New Standard

Funders have a role to play, too.  Instead of goading nonprofits to prove the impossible, let’s set reasonable expectations for results.  Funders should ask organizations to state their intended outcomes upfront, and make the case for how they will make a substantial contribution toward achieving those outcomes.  Instead of requiring 10% of the grant be used to hire an evaluator, foundations should require that 10% of the grant be used to design the program for greater impact. 

(From Geeky Wrapping Paper).

But numbers, and measures, can also produce substantial substantive effect.  What one chooses to measure, and what one chooses not to measure, expresses substantive presumptions, and creates strong incentives, to skew reality to meet the measure.  The second appeared in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the ouster of the University of Nebraska from the prestigious Association of American Universities.  Jeffrey J. Selingo and Jack Stripling, Nebraska's Ouster Opens a Painful Debate Within the AAU, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2, 2011. 

The moral of that story is not so much that numbers can produce an efficient way of measuring conformity to reality, but that measures grounded in numbers can disguise decisions about choices and preferences the articulation of which in words would be politically or socially unacceptable.   The article provided, in relevant part:

In the end, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln lost its bid to remain in the exclusive Association of American Universities by just two votes.

Nebraska’s chancellor, Harvey Perlman, learned the institution’s fate on April 26 after an angry, isolating month in which he had fought to keep it in the association. A two-thirds majority was needed to remove Nebraska, and 44 ended up voting against the institution during a balloting period that was extended to solicit votes from as many members as possible. . . .

Though two member institutions had left on their own before, the association had never voted to throw out a member. The unprecedented move was fraught with intrigue and politics not typical of staid and collegial academic associations, say several presidents in the AAU with knowledge of the process who asked not to be named because of the group's confidential proceedings. . . .

The AAU's two-phase membership criteria focus primarily on an institution's amount of competitive research funds and its share of faculty members who belong to the National Academies. Faculty awards and citations are also taken into account.

Presidents say that in recent years discussions about membership in the association have become much more quantified, with an increasing emphasis on a rankings methodology developed by the membership committee and senior AAU staff. Last April the association as a whole adopted revised criteria that compared AAU institutions with nonmembers on research dollars and eliminated the assumption that current members would automatically continue on.

"It was very clear that the easiest path to scoring high on the criteria is to have large medical schools or large science and engineering faculties," said Nancy Cantor, chancellor of Syracuse University, which was reviewed along with Nebraska and has decided to leave the AAU voluntarily in the coming months (see a related article).

The membership committee was responsible for drafting the new criteria, and presidents who recall last spring's meeting said there was little discussion of the new method among the full membership before it was adopted. "Many of us didn't realize the full impact of that new criteria," Ms. Cantor said.

Another university leader said that, given that the association is made up of presidents who regularly criticize university rankings, "there's concern by some of us that too many membership decisions are being made purely by the numbers." . . . .

 A year ago, the AAU invited its first new member in nearly a decade, the Georgia Institute of Technology. Some presidents don't want the group to get too big, and so as it adds members, they believe those at the bottom of the rankings should be pruned. . . .

'Strong Forces Against' Nebraska

The vote on Nebraska began at an association meeting at the Four Seasons here, on April 10. That Sunday evening, as AAU presidents prepared for a reception, Mr. Perlman learned that the group's Executive Committee had voted 9 to 1 to end the relationship. Now the question would go to the full membership for a vote. . . .

AAU leaders asked that the ballots be cast before the presidents left town on April 12. Ballots were sent to those presidents who didn't attend the meeting the next day, and all ballots were due by April 18.

The April 18 deadline for votes apparently caused some confusion among several presidents. Those who talked with The Chronicle said it was clear that April 18 was the day ballots would be counted. But AAU officials told Mr. Perlman that April 18 was the deadline for ballots to be postmarked, according to an e-mail exchange between the chancellor and Mr. Berdahl, which was released with other documents on Friday by Nebraska at the request of The Chronicle.

When April 21 arrived and the AAU still hadn't heard from several presidents, the association e-mailed them, asking them to vote by overnight mail or indicate they didn't intend to vote.

"We have established no hard deadline after which we would disqualify votes," Mr. Berdahl wrote in an e-mail to Mr. Perlman on April 22. "We have two cases of presidents out of the country from whom we will hear on Monday or Tuesday at the latest, and we will then have heard from everybody."

The deadline was significant because any abstention would be counted as a vote in favor of retaining Nebraska, Mr. Perlman said. When the AAU appeared to be seeking additional ballots beyond the deadline, Mr. Perlman concluded that "they probably didn't have the votes" and were determined to get them. . . .

Quantifying a University's Research

It's not clear what prompted the special reviews of Nebraska and Syracuse last year, except that they ranked at the bottom of the AAU metrics.

What particularly hurt Nebraska in those metrics is that as a land-grant institution in a farming state, it gets a large share of its research dollars for agriculture. The entire University of Nebraska system had $13.2-million in federally financed farm-related research in 2008, or about 10 percent of its total federal research dollars, as compared with a nationwide average of about 3 percent.

The AAU, however, does not give such research the same weight in its membership criteria because much of federal support for agricultural work is awarded through formulas and earmarks rather than peer-reviewed grants. As a result, presidents of land-grant institutions say that the AAU metrics are stacked against them. They maintain that differences between states in climate, soil, and crops necessitate formula-driven funds.

Large public institutions like Nebraska are also hurt in the AAU rankings by a process the association calls "normalization," which seeks to determine per-faculty research rewards by dividing total research dollars by the number of faculty members at an institution.
For Nebraska, that means the total research dollars are divided by a significant portion of faculty devoted to agricultural research, even though their research rewards are not considered as valuable under AAU metrics. The normalization process tends to help smaller members with smaller overall research budgets, like Brandeis and Rice Universities.

Mr. Cohon stressed that the metrics are a product of years of discussion and analysis by the organization's membership. It is possible that a large number of faculty conducting agricultural research could penalize an institution, but "that's not the case here," he said.
"While there is no perfect set of metrics, I think there is a broad sense of satisfaction with the metrics we have," Mr. Cohon said.

In his e-mail to the campus and in interviews with The Chronicle, Mr. Perlman said what put Nebraska at a particular disadvantage was the lack of an on-campus medical school.

While other AAU members, such as Cornell and Pennsylvania State Universities, for instance, lack medical schools on their main campuses, Nebraska's medical school is also under a totally separate administrative structure from the Lincoln campus, an arrangement that is unlike the ones at those other institutions. As a result, its research dollars are not counted by the AAU, even though, as a medical school, it can't belong to the association on its own. . . . .

Plea for a 'Qualitative Judgment'

The AAU also put Nebraska at a comparative disadvantage by not penalizing institutions that rely heavily on a small number of academic fields for their overall research dollars, despite the association's stated commitment to diversity of mission, Mr. Perlman said. . . .

Rather than emphasize exact national rankings on those points, Mr. Perlman told The Chronicle, he asked the AAU to "make a qualitative judgment, as their rules require, about whether we were compatible with other AAU institutions.". . . .

Mr. Perlman's plea for counting medical-school activity isn't necessarily supported by data from the National Science Foundation, which publishes a tally of university research spending from all sources by institutions with medical schools. The NSF's latest annual compilation, for 2008, shows that the University of Nebraska system ranked 39th in the nation.

Mr. Perlman's strongest claim may be that of recent growth, even if it isn't a major factor in the AAU evaluation process. From 1999 to 2009, the University of Nebraska system had the fifth-largest percentage growth in federally financed research expenditures of any college that was in the top 100 for federal money in 1999. Its federally financed expenditures more than doubled over that period, to $148.6-million. The Nebraska system also rose 19 places—to 68th from 87th—on the list of universities reporting the most federally financed expenditures. . . .

In the case of the University of Nebraska's ouster, numbers camouflaged a decision that only universities with strong science and engineering programs would be privileged over universities with a strong presence ion the production of knowledge, at the highest levels, in other fields.  The numbers did not say that, and the AAU did not say that, but the aggregate effect of the measures chosen said that precisely without the bother of having to be held accountable for the policy choices the measure represented.

Of course, this is not to suggest that quantification is a bad thing.  Nor is this to suggest that quantification has no value as a tool for generating facts that are useful for analysis.  But it is to suggest that ignoring the fundamental importance of the qualitative element in quantitative analysis is folly.  Turning numbers into fetish objects and measures as aspect of the face of the divine opens quantitative analysis and measurement in general to the sort of manipulation that both distorts reality and serves to mask intentions.  There is a short step between this sort of exercise and the diminution of accountability--a perverse result, indeed.  A greater focus on assumptions underlying measures, and on the production of numbers, on the qualitative measure of definitions of what constitutes facts worth measuring is as important as the production of numbers and measures--perhaps more important than either.

And so, the University of Nebraska lost its position in the AAU not with the vote but with the adoption of standards of measures that while purporting to be neutral and a realistic measure of quality, actually served to mask substantive decisions about the composition of a university worthy of membership, that is, it masked the decision that AAU universities  would have to favor large science and engineering departments and treat medical schools in a particular way.  Those universities that conform will be rewarded, and the quantitative measures will be proof of both conformity as the basis for reward.  

These sorts of issues are at the center of law and governance as well.  As law and governance systems move from systems grounded in direction to systems grounded in objectives, they become more and more dependent on measurement for implementation.  The issues that shape the measurement of compliance with objectives and the misuse of measurement to shape objectives--the subject of the first essay--and the issues that substitute the choice of measure for substantive rule, the subject of the second essay, are as relevant to regulatory systems as they are to the travails of grant recipients and the fight over membership in organizations.