Notes on how to analyse Government's surplus - Michael Briguglio

By the end of August 2019, #GovernmentFinance reported a #surplus of €83.9 million in the consolidated fund. This must be compared with Government's €250.8 million surplus as at end 2018 and  a deficit of €126 million as at the end of July 2019. 

When analysing such data we should be wary of partisan sloganeering, whether in the forms of triumphalism or doomsday prophecy. We should also be wary of snackable speedy reporting which reveals lack of understanding of budgetary processes and financial trends. Instead we should base our analyses of Government finance on social-scientific evidence. 

For example, analysis of such figures should verify whether increased expenditure is discretionary or not and whether it is sustainable. It should look into whether revenue streams are making the country too dependent on certain sectors. 

It should also look into the mechanisms of financial streams which do not form part of the consolidated fund, such as the fund covering 70% of revenue from sale of passports . The other 30% appear under 'Fees of Office' in the Vote for Office of the Prime Minister in Consolidated Fund). 

In the meantime, #Budget2020 is approaching. I believe that the current positive financial outlook should encourage Government to adopt a #GreenNewDeal. More on this here.

Environmentalism, LGBTIQ and social class - Michael Briguglio

In this article for the Malta Independent I verify whether the environmental movement has anything to learn from the successes of the LGBTIQ movement. Read here: 

https://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2019-09-19/blogs-opinions/Environmentalism-LGBTIQ-and-social-class-6736213673

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Budget 2020: A Green New Deal for Malta? - Michael Briguglio

In this article, the first in my role as columnist with The Malta Independent, I give my views on Malta's upcoming budget. You can read the article here:

https://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2019-09-05/blogs-opinions/Budget-2020-A-Green-New-Deal-for-Malta-6736213116

Note: Since this article was written, fresh government finance figures were published, reporting a surplus. Here I suggest some considerations in the analysis of such figures:
https://mikes-beat.blogspot.com/2019/09/notes-on-how-to-analyse-governments.html

#7SETTEMBRU

#7SETTEMBRU – It is refreshing to see a varied list of 60 civil society organisations team up for the environmental demonstration which will be held this Saturday in Valletta. Hats off to the organizers.

As regards the organizers’ wish for the event not to be hijacked by party politics, I do see the point. The call for a better environment and the respective 6 demands are universally applicable to Malta and people should feel comfortable to attend the demonstration without being labelled as pertaining to one party or another.

Let us keep in mind that as far as elections go, the latest round of European and Local ones showed that the non-party constituencies in Malta are on the increase. It is also not on that one supports or disagrees with an environmental issue depending on who is in Government. The environment belongs to us all: let us have national consensus to protect it and to be sustainable.

If anything, political parties can then take up the demands - MPs and MEPs have the National and European Parliaments at their disposal and are free to put forward their respective proposals within these institutions. Voters are then free to judge the action of MPs accordingly in elections.

To date, the environment has never been a priority of any Government in Malta, and various lobbies such as the developers’ one keep having disproportionate influence over decision and non-decision-making within State and party politics. That is why various activists from different backgrounds have consistently voiced environmental concerns over the years. Long live environmentalism, whoever is in Government.

Update - Columnist role with The Malta Independent

I am pleased to announce that I will be contributing a fortnightly column to the Malta Independent in my capacity as sociologist. I intend it to be a people's column - feel free to send me suggestions, feedback, critique.

Maltese youth activism: a cultural shift to raise awareness - Michael Briguglio interviewed by the Malta Independent

Read the interview with Giulia Magri here.

Checking Malta’s Powerful Prime Minster through Constitutional Reforms - Michael Briguglio

My article 'Checking Malta’s Powerful Prime Minster through Constitutional Reforms'.  has been published in ConstitutionNet. 

You can read the article here. 

This is a follow up of my previous article on the matter published in 2017.  

ConstitutionNet is project created to support legislators, constitutional lawyers and other constitutional practitioners in finding useful and relevant information, sharing knowledge and building a community of best practice. ConstitutionNet is an International IDEA (an IGO headquartered in Sweden) project developed and maintained with generous support from the Government of Norway.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) is an intergovernmental organization that supports sustainable democracy worldwide. Its mission is to support sustainable democratic change by providing comparative knowledge, and assisting in democratic reform, and influencing policies and politics.

Towards a materialism of the environment in Malta - Michael Briguglio

The social media is very valuable in mediating selections of reality: we are prosumers, and some are effectice influencers. At the same time I note that this often results in lack of holistic, deep and investigative engagement with reality: e.g. through facebook-driven journalism which replicates the chorus. In reality however , areas such as the environment go beyond what we post in facebook, important as this is. As a sociologist I must note that environmental challenges such as groundwater salinity, the political economy of development, determinants of air pollution, socio-cultural dynamics, consumer-citizen human behaviour, macro-systematic factors, micro-ethnographic experience, geo-physical factors, technology, dominant discourses, dynamics of power, agency of nature etc go beyond snackable media and require thorough research and evidence. Thus, very often we have photocopies of hot pop rather than an archaeaology of knowledge. The irony is that Malta is rich with the latter, courtesy of scholars who quietly produce a wealth of knowledge. 

Which takes me to the social construction of the environment - and the vitality of discourse in a post truth society. Even if the agency of the real (eg climate change) cannot be superseded by rhetoric or lack of it, it can be sensitized through discourse , possibly resulting in substantive policy making. Here again, policy making is not just about textbook exercises or ideological sloganeering. For example it can have unintended consequences in a risk/opportunity society with natural limits. 

Hence the need for syntheses of (critical) realism with effective social construction. 

For example in the world of academia some are trying to do this through the New Materialism: Bruno Latour is one celebrated example. Same for other scholarly perspectives. 

I think that constructionist icons like Judith Butler and postmodern politicians/communicators of different stripes and colours like Muscat, Trump, Cami, Xarabank, Lovin Malta and Nas Daily show the importance of popular fluid social construction: effectively sensitizing their audiences and beyond in a post-truth society. 

But beyond communication - important as it is - there is the real, even if hiding in a closed drawer and not sensitized by effective influencers: the physical world, scientific discovery, nature etc. Gravity and death will exist even if we don't take selfies with them.

In my view, both constructionist and realist poles need each other. And I believe that Malta needs sensible minds to work with each other on policy issues: Fora where evidence, discussion, networks, agency, transformation are prioritized, beyond bubbles and ideational ghettoes and beyond flat social investigation. This is the approach I adopt as a sociologist and I invite anyone with a similar outlook to get in touch. 

Feedback re Social Impact Assessment public consultation

Feedback re Social Impact Assessment Public Consutation

To Planning Authority, SIA Procedures Consultation - sia@pa.org.mt

I am pleased that my proposal to mainstream social impact assessments in PA procedures is being taken up.

A social impact assessment reviews the social effects of development and social change, both intended and not.

The International Association for Impact Assessment defines an SIA as the process of analysing, monitoring and managing the intended and unintended social consequences, both positive and negative, of planned interventions and any social change processes invoked by those interventions.

Such changes may range from natural disasters to population growth and from policy interventions to singular development projects. Consequently, SIAs investigate the effects on people’s everyday lives in terms of culture, politics, community, health, well-being, aspirations, needs, rights and responsibilities, to name a few.  They provide data for policymaking, which is based on evidence.

Social impacts under assessment should include all those things relevant to people’s everyday life. This may include one’s culture, community, political context, environment, health, well-being, personal and property rights as well as fears and aspirations.

Social impact assessments can help verify the consequences and impacts of development proposals in relation to the communities involved. Hence, a basic starting point for such assessments should be the compilation of a community profile. A social impact assessment that does not understand the society in question is practically worthless.

This can help bring about genuine processes of engagement between communities, developers and authorities as well as identify and implement mitigation measures and compensation mechanisms. As things stand in Malta, various developers do quite the opposite, often causing huge inconvenience to residents and leaving a mess behind in surrounding infrastructure.

Various methods, both quantitative and qualitative could be used within social impact assessments. The former refers to generalisable data especially through numbers, while the latter produce in-depth data on matters.

Research methods in SIAs may therefore include surveys of concerned populations who are asked questions on their perceptions of the change in question. Ethnographic methods may involve a deeper look into everyday practices of people, while elite interviews may verify the advice, concerns and interpretations of persons who are experts or who have experience in the respective field under analysis.

Methods may also involve the analysis of discourse on the subject in question, for example by looking at what is being pronounced in the public sphere, whether by the public, civil society, political actors, the media and the like.

SIAs should involve the participation of different stakeholders, ideally through mixed research methods.

Some other factors which should be included in social impact assessments include the consideration of reasonable alternatives to development proposals as well as comparative analysis of similar development proposals and related good or bad practices.

Analytic indicators should be provided and the entire process should be subject to peer review by independent experts in the field.

Social impact assessments should not be one-off exercises which are rubber-stamped by authorities without any sense of critical engagement. To the contrary, they should be ongoing processes which engage with various stakeholders and which report back so as to ensure effective policy processes. They should also use complementary research methods so as to ensure reliable and valid data.

Recommendations and mitigation measures could therefore be in place, and these would be based on social-scientific evidence.

It is also important that SIAs are peer-reviewed. This means that if a study is being carried out by a team of social scientists, this should be scrutinised by other independent social scientists. This could help identify shortcomings, conflicts and possible improvements to the same SIA.

As things stand, there are no national guidelines on the need for SIAs in Malta. The conducting of such studies on development projects is at the discretion of the Planning Authority.

When exceptionally carried out, they are one-off studies on major development projects. This effectively means that smaller-scale development projects with bigger cumulative impacts are not subjected to SIAs.

Such ongoing processes should also take account of changes in the social context in question, such as cumulative impacts of other developments. For example, a social impact assessment that focuses on one development but ignores another development in the region is not realistic.

If one looks at other policy interventions, SIAs are practically absent. Just to name a few: the dynamics of agriculture, the cost of living, social cohesion and integration, urbanisation, the commercialisation of public land.

Indeed, there are so many areas where SIAs could be introduced in Malta: government consultation on new legislation, proposals in the national budget, the adoption of EU directives, parliamentary committees and local councils are just some areas. For example, the latter could carry out SIAs to establish community profiles, cultural commonalities and differences, social needs, demographics, impacts of development and so forth.

The University of Malta and other educational institutions are currently producing graduates in different social sciences who are equipped to carry out SIAs and who are sensible to the need for evidence-based policymaking.

Grandparents' recognition - Michael Briguglio

Perhaps you are a grandparent. Or maybe an aunt or uncle. Maybe you are involved in care work for your grandchildren, nephews or nieces: emotional and ‘invisible’ work, which does not feature in gross domestic product statistics, but which is rich in social worth, trust and reciprocity. 

The former deals with the care, support and being mindful about other people’s needs, anxieties and feelings and emotions. The latter deals with work such as cooking, cleaning, feeding and washing that is vital in everyday life. 

Perhaps you are a grandparent who juggles family life with employment, or perhaps you experience loneliness in your everyday life. You may also be rich in social networks but have little access to your grandchildren despite your wish to be with them.

As a parent, sociologist and politician I recognise the immense contribution that grandparents give to their loved ones, and I feel more should be done to ensure the right to such access is enshrined in the policy process.  

I believe that the European Union should dedicate a day to grandparents, just as it does to other groups in society. Such a feat can help in raising awareness about the rights, responsibilities, needs and aspirations of grandparents. For they may vary in age, employment or retirement status, health, income, gender, family situation and other factors.

In this regard I also believe that more social-scientific studies are required to analyse the everyday life situations of grandparents. Different types of studies and research methods can be carried out, from macro statistical measurements to micro-analysis of real-life situations. 

Research questions could include: how many grandparents are there in Malta? What is their socio-economic and demographic background? How many persons have similar roles as that of grandparents? How many grandparents lack access to their grandchildren? What are the everyday lived experiences of grandparents? What are their aspirations, needs and challenges? How does grandparenting impact the family economy? 

Such studies can provide evidence for inclusive policymaking.

One area which deserves priority is the access of grandparents to their grandchildren and vice-versa. Such persons may be separated geographically and may have to adapt to their distant love. They may also be geographically close but are experiencing family challenges and boundaries despite their wishes. Maybe they need skills in coping and resilience to face their everyday situations. Incidentally, last year the European Court of Justice declared that the notion of rights of access refers not only to the rights of access of parents to their child, but also to the rights of access of other persons with whom it is important for the child to maintain a personal relationship, among others, the child’s grandparents. 

The court said that in order to avoid the adoption of conflicting measures by different courts, and in the best interests of the child, the same court – as a general rule, the court of the child’s habitual residence – should rule on rights of access.

There may also be persons who do not have grandchildren but would like to assist them – intergenerational community pro-jects may be beneficial in this regard. Local councils and voluntary organisations can be key social entrepreneurs for such purpose. Such practices can enhance inclusion, cohesion, safety and community bonds. 

Malta is lucky to have its own ‘Grandparents Malta’ voluntary organisation, which is raising awareness on the rights and needs of this broad social group. This organisation also organises various social and educational events which also double-up in creating and bonding social networks of persons who share similar concerns. 

Indeed, this is an area which is worthy of political consensus. Let us ensure that the rights, responsibilities, needs and aspirations of grandparents are recognised by society. 

This article appears in Times of Malta, May 1 2019

https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20190501/opinion/grandparents-recognition-michael-briguglio.708692