Paddy power

And amongst of the BBC’s mini-treasure chest of documentary pods is Winning the Peace, the series on nation-building and international intervention presented by former Lib Dem leader and UN High Representative to Bosnia, Lord Ashdown. The series, which coincides with the release of Ashdown’s book on the same subject includes episodes on the Allied post-war occupation of Germany, el Salvador, Bosnia (which frustratingly, won’t download but can be streamed) and Iraq. There’s a slightly know-all, even sanctimonious edge to Ashdown, but he’s articulate, to the point and clearly a high calibre politician who knows what he’s talking about. Best Foreign or Defence Secretary we never had. His conclusions - plan ahead and for the long-term; compromise with technocrats sullied by the old regime; establish rule and law and market first, do democratic elections later - seem pragmatic and sensible. Such nation-building scenarios with their multiple tracks, resource and time limitations and unpredictable outcomes strike me as ideal topic for some kind of coumpter-based political sim - a thought that has occurred to others - but alas there doesn’t seem to be any…

Serbie....douze points

So Serbia has won the Eurovision song contest and crowds take to the streets of Belgrade - and, yes I did watch it, although not all, you understand just least the half an hour or so, when the button on the remote control got stuck, soI just couldn’t quite switch over to watch that documentary on the Edwardian middle classes.

As Britain’s aserbic (Irish) TV host Terry Wogan was quick to point out even before the final votes were in, neighbours with close cultural and historical ties usually tend to back each other’s songs and – in an interesting hint of post-conflict reconcilation - viewers in the former Yugoslav republics did exactly that, propelling a rather saccarine love ballad to victory.

The role of the Eurovision song contest as an agent of Europeanization has been understudied academically, but as examples of earlier winners Estonia and Ukraine suggests, countries which are small and lacking in international profile or medium sized and lacking in reform, tend to take winning rather seriously. President Yukashenko even made a stage appearance post-Orange Revolution when Kiev hosted it, but mercifully wasn’t tempted to sing – outgoing Slovak PM Vladimír Mečiar’s rendition of folk song as part of his televised farewell broadcast is perhaps the closest East European politics can come to this.

Somehow West Europeans don’t take Eurovision quite so seriously. Post-Iraq, of course, we Brits never win – and, sad to say, the context has become a focus for euroscepticism (today’s edition of London’s free commuter newspaper Metro has several letters demanding that we ‘withdraw’ from Eurovisiob and spend the 'wasted millions' on schools and hospitals at home etc etc) – but I don’t think the streets of Hesinki were exactly heaving last year when the Finns briefly got a look in.

Democratic consolidation is when you can win the Eurovision song contest and just don’t care...

Reintegrating the Balkans - trains, planes and automobiles

A guest lecture at SSEES by Erhardt Busek, Co-ordinator of the EU's Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe discussing the region's shift From Stabilization to Integration. 'Integration' in this context means states in the region working with each other to take over the programmes and structures created and administered top-down by the EU , rather than actually joining the EU - Macedonia's candidate status means little as there are no negotiations, Croatia is better placed and might make into the Union by 2010 despite Slovene objections over various unresolved issues between the two coutries. Regional integration, Busek makes clear, in this context is about practical everyday infrastuctural links - waste water, air links, bridges, river management and rail links (something the World Bank also has an interest in) - which now loom larger than security, despite the unstable situation in Kosovo/a . I couldn't help wondering if this basically technocratic, economistic view of what drives integration would really cut it with the realities of nationalism and identity, despite the dying away of violent interethnic conflict.

Dr Busek speaks in calm, understated way - more as if briefing a group of seven than addressing to an audience of seventy - doesn't waffle and finishes his presentation on time in about 40 minutes. I like his style. Questions immediately raise the issue of Kosovan final status and it is suggested that the EU really should take education into the acquis so it can intervene to put South Eastern Europe's dilapidated higher education system into order, which has been bled dry by the departure of talented young for the West or better paid work elsewhere.

Through a haze of fatigue, my mind wanders and I can't help thinking of him as a kind of latter reincarnation of Austro-Hungarian adminsitrator patiently sorting the woes of the Balkans. Dr Busek is a Christian Democrat, but I then began to think of Hayek’s(or was it von Mises’s?) vision of a Europe run from Vienna by a multinational bureaucracy of neutral West Europeans dissolving the failed Ruritanian nation states into a new market- liberal order. The EU is, of course, has democratic as well as bureaucratic structure and is more of a social-liberal compromise (Busek is Christian Democrat). Still Dr Busek gets my vote - except that he doesn't need it, of course.