Ronald Young: Passion, networking and moral imperative are the key ingredients to success in cross-border cooperation

Interview by Vladimir Mitev

Ronald Young was a Scottish politician and academic for 20 years before becoming one of the EC’s first consultants in its programmes of Technical Assistance – which make his various critical assessments worth listening to. His blog – Balkan and Carpathian Musings – has been posting regularly since 2009. 

Mr. Young, when was you first real contact with this part of the world (Bulgaria and Romania)?

I arrived in Bucharest in January 1991 to heavy snow and dim lights and, for a week, was ferried to places such as Brasov and Alba Iulia in an ambulance (I was on assignment for the WHO) to meet various dignitaries; subsequently travelling to Iasi in the East of the country by train. 

I came to Sofia first a few months later on what turned out to be May Day and my first experience was therefore walking up Vitosha! My other memories are of browsing in the lace stalls which were (and still are) placed at the edge of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral with Vitosha towering over the scene – and, a rare honour, dining enfamille in the flat of an academic who was part of the Quaker-based network I used for some of my visits those days…..

In mid 1992 I took up a year’s assignment in the Prime Minister’s Office in Bucharest (where I met my partner Daniela), working with the newly-elected big city mayors and the Ministry of the Interior to design the country’s first EC project of support for local government – during when I had discussions with several very senior politicians and officials and had a vague sense of the iron fists and years of experience concealed in their gloves, eyes and voices.…

I remember taking part in the mid 1990s in workshops for example, for Young Political Leaders led by American advisers who really shocked me for the disdain they showed for policy matters – everything was about political marketing….These, of course, were the days when everyone was preaching that the State should be dismantled….only in 1997 did the World Bank Annual Report grudgingly admit that they may have gone too far in their exhortations about privatisation…….

You have been living for 10 years in Sofia and in a Carpathian village in Romania. What made you settle in two of the newest member states of the EU after decades of consulting work in countries in Europe and Central Asia?

By the late 1980s Scotland had lost its charms for – my career was going nowhere and its weather was wet and drab. So when the wall fell in 1989, new paths opened from which I soon realised there would be no returning. After some good project experiences in Copenhagen, Prague, Bucharest, Miskolcs and Riga, I spent the last half of 1998 writing a little book In Transit – notes on good governance which became my calling card for what turned out to be an 8 year spell in Central Asia – on civil service and municipal projects in capacity development.

In 2000 Daniela and I bought an old mountain house in the Carpathians to whose resuscitation she devoted several years and which has served as an important base for me since 2007 when I felt that my CV required me to return to Europe and find out how countries such as Romania were coping with the transition.

I was able to snatch a few summer months of 2007 in the mountains before a friend invited me down to Sofia to help him complete a bid for what was the last of the EC PHARE projects in Bulgaria. I felt very much at home in Sofia and therefore quickly accepted an invitation to take the Team Leader role in that project – which we, surprisingly, won.

I say surprisingly simply because such projects were “already spoken for” through “under the table” deals and transactions. And we (and the lead Italian company and its Bulgarian partner – an IT company headed by an arms contractor!!) were quickly punished for our daring to challenge the unwritten agreements about the procurement process – by significant delays in the project’s timetable…

But, after 12 months, we had managed to hit most of our targets. And, in the process, I made a lot of Bulgarian friends and started a significant collection of Bulgarian painting which I write about in my E-book Bulgarian Realists – getting to know Bulgaria through its Art.

I liked the atmosphere in Sofia so much that I have continued to keep a flat here ever since….winning another project in 2010  under Bulgaria’s Structural Funds – which basically gave me the opportunity to drive around Bulgaria checking out the regional galleries – and wineries!

I have to say that Bulgarian projects suffer even more than a decade ago from “clientelism” and my friends now bid only for cross-border work – whose decision process is more open…..

What are your impressions when you compare your experiences with Romanians and with Bulgarians? You say that you have more friends in Bulgaria than you have in Romania. At the same time your partner in life is a Romanian.

I’m not one of these monolingual Brits – I do speak pretty good French and German and even some Russian – but I have to confess that, despite dividing my last 10 years between the two countries (summer in Romania, winter in Sofia), I don’t actually speak either language. In the case of Romanian, this is sheer laziness, since it is a Romance language. My only excuse is that I am so wrapped up in my writing and therefore think (and read) in English. This does, of course, rather affect my appreciation of things Bulgarian and Romanian and perhaps explains why it’s the art of these countries that appeals to me – I can access your literature only in translation.

And that brings me to another point – Romania is the larger country and prides itself on the strength of its intellectual tradition.  I can therefore find more articles in English about Romania than about Bulgaria – which shows in the much larger number of literary references in my E-book about Romania – compared to my E-book about Bulgaria. And there are at least 6 significant histories of Romania in the English language – compared with 2 Bulgarian (Crampton and Iltchev).

I feel therefore I understand the Romanian mindset better than I do the Bulgarian – plus, as you say, my partner is Romanian. But this can cut both ways – after all, what do they say about familiarity….? Daniela sometimes accuses me of being fonder of Bulgaria than her own country. And, as you rightly say, I do seem to have more Bulgarian friends – particularly in the artistic community….My book about Bulgaria probably reveals a certain fondness. Somehow I appreciate what I have called Bulgarian “bourgeois” “modesty”

Your business card describes your as “an explorer” and “aesthete”. Given that you have spent the last decade in Romania and Bulgaria, you probably have your own discoveries about our two nations. What are they?

The cultural differences I notice generally relate to scale, with everything (houses, streets, wealth, behaviour) being more modest on the Bulgarian side of the Danube – which also tends to respect its artistic traditions more than Romania. I can see the power of that tradition even in the lines and colours of modern Bulgarian ceramics!

I have counted about 50 small art galleries in Sofia – whereas those in Bucharest can be counted on the fingers of both hands…..Ditto the publication of books and monographs about individual painters. Over the decade I have, from my visits to second hand bookshop, built up a nice little library collection covering the artistic tradition of both countries – my collection of Bulgarian art books (which you can see at the end of Bulgarian Realists – getting to know Bulgaria through its Art is at least three times larger than the Romanian. That tells me a lot about the respective art specialists, publishing houses and buying publics…..

Satire is a skill I appreciate – in both the visual and verbal senses – and this has certainly been strong in both countries in the past century – with Romania perhaps being stronger on the verbal side (with dramatist Caragiale) and Bulgaria (with its Beshkovs, Behars, Zhendovs) on the visual.

I love walking and cycling around the narrow streets of Sofia’s centre, dropping into my favourite galleries where often a glass of white wine will mysteriously appear; discovering a new gallery; scanning the shelves of the Elephant bookshop in Shishman St; or tasting one of Kallin’s new wines at “Tempus Vini” ….Bucharest, sadly, offers no such pleasures of serendipity – particularly since the Anthony Frost English bookshop stopped trading and forced me to end my Amazon boycott.

Although the older and more remote Transylvanian villages such as mine have residents even older than me, its villages haven’t (yet) died in the same way as is sadly the case in so many villages in central Bulgaria – presumably because they are all geographically nearer (relatives in) cities than is the case for Bulgaria.

Both Bulgaria and Romania are orthodox countries but I feel there is a touch of paganism in Bulgaria which you can experience in some New Year events and the Rila mountain in August.

“Resilience” has become a fashionable term – and I feel that Bulgaria has more potential to buckle its collective belt and make the necessary adjustments to life as austerity continues to grind us all down….

It’s also curious that traditional village music seems to be choral in Bulgaria – whereas the traditional vocal music in Romania is solo.

Having said all that, I find it interesting that the latest Change Readiness Index has the 2 countries sharing the 49^th and 59^th places respectively – with Romania having registered the fastest jump up the rating (due it seems to its greater government capability)

How do you explain these similarities and the differences between our two nations?

As you know, Vlad, I’m very interested in this idea that history has a more powerful effect on our values, behaviour and institutions than we imagine. Most of the literature is highly academic but one book brought it all together in a pretty clear way – Culture Matters – how values shape human progress (2000) …. For some reason, however, people don’t talk about this these days – political correctness could be one of the reasons?

In the mid 90s, the Head of the European Delegation to Romania (Karen Fogg 1993-98) used to give every visiting consultant a summary of Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work – civic traditions in modern Italy (1993). This suggested that the “amoral familism” of southern Italian Regions (well caught in a 1958 book of Edward Banfield’s) effectively placed them 300 years behind the northern regions. Romania, for its part, had some 200 years under the Ottoman and the Phanariot thumbs – but then had 50 years of autonomy during which it developed all the indications of modernity (if plunging latterly into Fascism). The subsequent experience of Romanian communism, however, created a society in which, paradoxically, deep distrust became the norm – with villagers forcibly moved to urban areas to drive industrialisation; the medical profession enrolled to check that women were not using contraceptives or abortion; and Securitate spies numbering one in every three citizens.

A fellow Scot once wrote about the strength of these family networks in business and political life in the country in the following terms:

“Beyond the core social network, Romanian social and business behaviour can be described as intuitive, vivacious, romantic, destructively egotistical, hopelessly optimistic and often centred on money beyond all other consider­ations. None of these characteristics lend themselves eas­ily to teamwork and Romanians are therefore incredibly individualistic.

You can easily observe this when you see a group of people gathered in your office discussing a project or a particular business problem. Everyone will be talking at the same time, absolutely no-one will be listening; be­cause, outside of their core social network, every Romanian is unwilling to give way to others that by definition cannot be trusted…”

The experience your two countries had under the Ottoman Empire was actually very different. Romania, as I understand it, got to negotiate a certain distance from Istanbul via the Phanariot

Princes – whereas Ottoman rule was more direct and brutal in Bulgaria. And communist rule was certainly more brutal immediately in Bulgaria – whereas it had to be eased more subtly into Romania whose committed communists were initially numbered in the hundreds….. Of course, the Ceausescu repression left behind a horrifying  DNA imprint (ironic that this is the Romanian acronym for the highly effective Romanian anti-corruption agency!!)

The institutions of both states collapsed after the changes started in 1989 and were subsequently held together simply by the informal pre-existing networks – not least, in Romania, those of the old Communist party and of the Securitate. Sorin Ionitsa’s booklet on Poor Policy Making in Weak States (2006) captured brilliantly the profound influence of the different layers of cultural values on political and administrative behavior which continue to this day. His focus was on Romania but the explanations he offers for the poor governance in that country has resonance for Bulgaria. The civil service and state bodies are highly politicized – with no real interest in implementation and a focus instead on the literal letter of the law.

Clearly we are all impressed with the progress Romania has made with judicial reform – although it’s still vulnerable. That is one field which Bulgarian activists should be closely following and drawing lessons from. …Quite how Romania has managed to start and sustain such reform is an important question to which I suspect the answer is Romania’s size…..it is simply too large and therefore visible to get away with its kleptocracy….

You have not only a passion for topics such as public sector reform and social development, but you also have a hobby of collecting paintings by Bulgarian painters. Among the Western Europeans you probably have one of the largest collections of Bulgarian paintings. What attracted you to Bulgarian art? What are you achievements as a collector so far? What are your plans for the future with regard to your stock of Bulgarian paintings?

What, people might reasonably ask, attracted me to particularly the older Bulgarian masters (but also quite a few contemporaries) to lead me to spend time and money seeking them out and buying (modest) exemplars? I’m not an artist myself – and my motives not at all commercial.

My tastes are traditional – so it was land- and sea-scapes which initially attracted.

My first purchases were an Alexander Moutafov (from the 1950s) and a 1942 Alexandra Mechkuevska (of the port of Thassos) and were more expensive than the limit I quickly established for individual paintings of 500 euros.

I can’t afford the big names such as Tanev or Vesin – and have taken particular pleasure in going for some of the more neglected names from the middle of the last century – such as Kolyo Kolev (landscapes with a thick pallet), Peter Boiadjiev and Boris Stefchev (superb seascapes). The colourists Dobrei Dobrev and Stoyan Vassilev are also favourites of whom I have at least 3 apiece

When the Ottoman yoke was suddenly lifted in the 1880s, artistic creativity thrived. Forms of art previously censored were now open – at precisely the time European realism and impressionism  were knocking aside old idols. Landscapes and figures may have been old hat for West Europe but I have this feeling of a sudden awakening when I look at the vitality of the work which Vesin and Mrchvicka (the 2 Czech masters) helped launch on the Bulgarian art world at the end of the 19^th century. And I quickly noticed that, in the most remote old churches, the colours of the frescoes were almost erotic – as are the murals in Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

But I wanted to know more about the individual artists – and what started as a list literally penciled on the back of an envelope in the gallery of someone who quickly became a very good friend soon turned into first a 50 page booklet (with CD) and then a 250 page E-book

The core of that book consists of my short annotations about more than 200 painters but the first part offers a good intro for the visitor to the country and then impressions from various incidents and visits…..

I am particularly pleased with the dozen or so examples I have of the aquarelles of Grigor Naidenov who painted the café life of Sofia from the 30s through to the 60s….as well as an unsigned portrait of a blacksmith which I bought unframed and slightly damaged – almost certainly a Stanyio Stamatov.

I now have almost 200 paintings in my Bulgarian collection which you can view for yourself here – plus about 150 drawings and sketches. It does include more than 50 examples of contemporary painters – of whom favourites are Adrian Bekhiarov, Milcho Kostadinov, Atanas Matsoureff, Angela Minkova, Juliana Sotirova, Tony Todorov and Yassen Golev as well as old-timers such as Elsa Goeva, Vasilka Moneva and Vasil Vulev.

The collection is currently scattered in 4 locations (3 in Romania) and does deserve a higher profile – as indeed do all private collections….I do, sometimes, feel guilty about this privacy aspect and am consoled only by the knowledge that, for every painting on display in public galleries, about 50 languish in basements and are brought out only once a decade (if they are lucky) for inclusion in a special exhibition .

That’s why I admire the initiative of Sofia City art gallery which has, on at least 4 occasions in recent years, invited outsiders to prowl the basement to make (and explain in a small catalogue) a selection for a special exhibition.

I would like to approach one of the Bucharest galleries (and the Bulgarian Embassy here) to explore the idea of mounting an exhibition of some of the pieces in my collection – as far as I am aware, there has been only one exhibition in recent years of Bulgarian art (in the National Gallery) and am discouraged simply by the fact that my collection represents not so much Bulgarian art as the partial tastes of one foreigner – and his budget!

But, with an appropriate introduction, a little catalogue based on my E-book would make a nice introduction for Romanians (if not foreigners) to a neighbour’s painting tradition. And, who knows, the Sofia art establishment might be persuaded to offer a few examples of some of the big names such as Angelov, Dmitrov-Maistera, Vesin, Skitnik, Tsonev? Although this would probably introduce difficult cost and security issues…..

What are the possible forces from the two countries that could improve Romanian-Bulgarian mutual knowledge? Can this be realized only by way of European funds? What other organisations, people and sources of support could contribute to building bridges between the two nations?

Borders and bridge-building have been a very important part of my life – whether the borders have been those of class, party, academic discipline or nation – although it was only when I came to live in central Europe in 1990 that I heard the joke about bridges – “in peacetime, horses shit on them; in wartime the first thing to be blown up!!”

That’s why I am so pleased to boast that the top of the garden of my Carpathian mountain house marks what was once the boundary between the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian Empires. What is currently the boundary of 2 counties was the boundary between Transylvania and Wallachia – the two countries which merged with Moldova in 1877 to form the new country of Romania. I feel it so appropriate that this is where I am now resident…just 45 kms from the city of Brasov whose medieval centre still bears the strong influence of the German Saxons.

Indeed, within Romania to this day, Transylvanians are seen as more reliable than their fellow citizens on the southern plain! In turn, Bulgarian hotels on the Black Sea are compared favourably (even by Romanians) with their neighbours north of the Black Sea.This, perhaps, confirms the point I was making earlier about the strength of cultural values – but equally should warn us against generalisations about country characteristics!

I’m a bit skeptical about European Structural Funds – for reasons we can come back to….. Apart from anything else, the project funding is so short-term that they lack sustainability – and involve so much dreadful paperwork. However they can be useful for those organisations on either side of the Danube who genuinely want to engage in a long-term relationship – obvious examples are universities, municipalities, NGOs, cultural and perhaps religious bodies.

You have a digital book where you have gathered hundreds of links about cross-border activities in the field of culture and tourism between Romania and Bulgaria. You also share in this book your desire to realize a cross-border project that could make the two people closer in these spheres. What is your book’s feedback and what is going on with the project at this moment?

It’s true that, for a few weeks in January 2016, I contemplated designing a possible cross-border project to strengthen cultural links across the lower Danube – but I soon realized that I lacked legitimacy and clout.

I tried to map as much of the material on recent projects which I could find in a short paper which I hope others will find useful – “Cross-Border Relationships between Bulgaria and Romania – scope for improvement? A resource” (2016 38pp)

It would need a Bulgarian or Romanian journalist (or a team of both) to tackle the respective Regional Development Ministries of both countries to try to get aa better picture of the strengths and weaknesses of such collaborative work – steering around the PR puff they would get from such sources. And, of course the best written-up projects will not necessarily be the projects which actually worked best! Perhaps I can help make such an approach?

You’ve written some critical papers about how EC Funding works….but surely EU Structural Funds have been essential for Bulgaria and Romania?

The major share of this money goes on infrastructure  and few, if any, can dispute the importance of modernising the infrastructure in central europe – whether that’s physical or social – although one can certainly dispute the priority given to investment in roads rather than rail.

But I am surprised that so few people have made the connection between the massive EC funding and the corruption about which people have been complaining for so long. The apparachnik were the only people with the skills and networks to take advantage of the new opportunities which opened up in 1990; people like Tom Gallagher and Alina Mungiu-Pippidi have superbly documented the kleptocracy which subsequently developed here (Gallagher in “Theft of a State” and how it was able to outmanouevre the EC (in “Romania and the EU – how the weak vanquished the strong”). Romania has at least been able, through its judicial reforms, to send hundreds of politicians to jail in recent years. Bulgaria, sadly, has made no such progress…

I readily concede that it was almost inevitable that a criminal class would quickly emerge in the “transition” countries – the lustrace laws of Czechia were difficult to sustain – but European technocrats and politicians were guilty of taking at face value the rhetoric and Potemkin-like institutional facades with which they were regaled in the negotiations of the late 90s….

That apart, my major criticism, however, has been with the “softer” side of EC Technical Assistance which now forms about 20% of the Structural Funds – particularly my field of institution building and human resource management. My own experience tells me that there is such a lot of kidology going on…

Since 2007, of course, it has been local experts who have been employed as consultants but they have essentially been singing from the same song-sheet as western consultants – using the EC’s “best practice” tools – which anyone with any familiarity with “path dependency” or “cultural” or even anthropological theory would be able to tell them are totally inappropriate to local conditions..…They know that the brief projects on which they work have little sustainability but – heh – look at the hundreds of millions of euros which will continue to roll in as far as the eye can see…..!!!

This younger professional class of consultants and academics who take European funding seem, as a result, unable to even entertain the thought of questioning the relevance and effectiveness of the programmes

A lot of money is spent on consultants evaluating the projects but clearly those who write these evaluations have no interest in biting the hand that feeds them – so no fundamental critique will emerge from that quarter.

I might expect journalists and academics to tackle such basic questions – except that they too have their reasons for not wanting to upset a gravy-train.

The French used to talk about La Pensee Unique as a way of criticising The Washington Consensus – but the EC has its own Pensee Unique which exercises hegemonic power over the continent – take, for example, the hundreds of Jean Monnet Chairs in European Universities which supply the academics who provide, for example, the incoherent evaluations of the thousand billion programmmes.

And, lest some readers imagine they are reading the ravings of a Brexiter, let me assure them that I voted for membership in the 1975 referendum and was appalled last year at the results of the British referendum. But as a good European, I am disgusted by the salaries paid to Eurocrats – which spill down to the salaries of judges and generals in countries like Bulgaria and Romania. A few years ago, a Romanian PM admitted that some Generals were getting 8,000 euros a month in pensions – the average pension in the country is 200 euros. At least MEPs are subject to the vagaries of the election process.

Your blog has been running since 2009 and is very active – with more than 1,200 posts. It’s called Balkan and Carpathian Musings – but its focus is a lot wider than just 2 countries…How have its aims changed in these eight years?

Actually if you look at the tags, Romania and Bulgaria tie at the top – with 80 references apiece, with Scotland coming third with 50 plus. But you’re correct that most of the posts deal with what I call “reflections on our social endeavours”. The blog was initially called “Carpathian Musings” simply to flag up that I was writing from this location – and I added “Balkan” when I found myself still living in Sofia after 2012….I looked recently at how I had set out, all of 8 years ago, my motives for starting the blog

• I started this blog to try to make sense of the organisational endeavours I’ve been involved in; to see if there are any lessons which can be passed on; to restore a bit of institutional memory and social history – particularly in the endeavour which used to be known as “social justice”. My generation believed that political activity could improve things – that belief is now dead and that cynicism threatens civilisation
• I read a lot – and wanted to pass on the results of this to those who have neither the time or inclination to read as much as I do – as well as my love of painting
• A final motive for the blog is more complicated – and has to do with life and family. Why are we here? What have we done with our life? What is important to us? Not just professional knowledge – but what used to be known, rather sexistically, as “wine, women and song” – for me now in the autumn of my life as wine, books and art…

And I’ve seen no reason to change that set of objectives……Indeed in the past year  a lot of my blogging has been about a project I have been working on for years – how I should use the time and resources I now have at my disposal to make a positive difference. What started as a 20 page paper has grown in more than a decade to a 200 page E-book which now bears the title “Dispatches to the post-capitalist Generation”. I can see more than a glimmer there of the Protestant need to justify that a life has been a “well lived” one and has given something back – an almost spiritual “giving of account”!!

I appreciate that the world is full of bloggers – and that indeed one of our problems is that there just far too many individuals narcissistically asserting their opinions in an undisciplined way. But I find that writing my thoughts down helps me to clarify what I actually think. Making this public on a blog adds an important discipline to the process. EM Foster once wrote “How do I know what I think until I see what I say” and management guru Charles Handy famously said that he had learned to put his thoughts in 450 words as a result of the “Thought for the Day” BBC programme.

You yourself are a bridge of friendship between Romania and Bulgaria. If you could build a positive theory about the Romanian-Bulgarian relations how would it sound? 

Now that’s what I call a really challenging question – to which it’s difficult to give a clear answer…..But two important ingredients I feel are commitment/passion and networks.

Let me give you two stories or examples.

My father was a Protestant Minister who, immediately after the War, went to Germany on a mission of reconciliation with the Lutheran church there – leading to strong personal bonds until his death.  Although I’m not religious myself, I am convinced of the priority we need to give to the process of reconciliation between those in states of actual or potential hostility

My second example is that of a dear friend who died in 2010. He was a graduate in philosophy whom I met in the Prime Minister’s Office – which he soon left to set up an NGO dedicated to the idea of youth parliaments – leading him to develop an inspiring European network to which I made a very minor commitment.

In both of these cases, it was the moral imperative which was dominant – and which I feel is needed if cross-border projects are to have any chance of success against the linguistic and cultural obstacles they face. Private-Public Partnerships got a very bad name in some countries because of the neo-liberal model which put private finance into the driver’s seat and dragged excessive state funding behind.

But the concept of Partnership needs to be rescued from that experience – to allow municipalities, NGO, trade unions, local companies and even religious bodies to come together in cross-border activity….

 

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Key References

Ronald Young blogs at www.nomadron.blogspot.com

His articles and books include –

Cross-Border Relationships between Bulgaria and Romania – scope for improvement? A resource (2016 38pp)

“In Transit – notes on good governance” – http://media.wix.com/ugd/e475c8_b6136b5f358642f493c5a3c63cf25844.pdf

The book he produced in 1999 for those who young central Europeans who wanted more effective state institutions..

“The Long Game – not the logframe”; his major critique of the institution-building funded by the EC in ex-communist countries http://www.mappingthecommonground.com/the-long-game

 “Mapping Romania – notes on an unfinished journey” (2014) – his E-book about cultural aspects of Romania

http://media.wix.com/ugd/e475c8_8d58dd560612415ca1f1ddbbf513a6b4.pdf

“Bulgarian Realists – getting to know Bulgaria through its Art” (May 2017) – his book about Bulgaria

“From Multiple Deprivation to Social Exclusion” – http://www.freewebs.com/publicadminreform/key%20papers/Lessons%20from%20SRC%20experience.pdf – the key paper he wrote in the middle of the 90s analyzing the elements of this distinctive strategy and its lessons

“Annotated Bibliography for change agents” – http://www.mappingthecommonground.com/annotated-bibliography-for-change-agents

“Dispatches to the post-capitalist Generation” – http://media.wix.com/ugd/e475c8_6955b6e7ca9141cc9c839b3d16e0589c.pdf – a book which has been in progress for the past decade! Current draft can be viewed on his blog

Ron Young’s website – where he stores his papers and those books and articles he considers seminal for those who want to understand and change the world – is http://www.mappingthecommonground.com

Ronald Young (photo: Ronald Young)

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