Some of my international friends asked me about the Macedonian elections and their outcomes. Certainly not a blockbuster news in the international media(some coverage in the Economist) , this deserved little attention ( luckily no one get killed and the election day went smoothly – kudos to the State Election Commission and the Government for that day). With help of Neda ( with whom we wrote the pre-election text on the European Voice) here is summary of results and some random thoughts on the past elections:
Macedonia – post elections
10/06/2011 — Goran Buldioski on Random musings
Not a routine election – commentary for the European Voice
05/06/2011 — Goran Buldioski on Random musings
Together with Neda Korunovska Avramovska from Reactor – Research in Action, a think tank from Skopje, I penned a short commentary aimed for EU audience published by European Voice, Brussels media outlet of the Economist Group.
Macedonia is bracing itself for elections tomorrow (5 June) - the third parliamentary elections in the past five years and the second extraordinary elections in the space of three years.
The contest falls between the great news of the Ratko Mladic arrest and the parliamentary election in Turkey on 12 June, so Balkan-watchers in Brussels have plenty to digest. Although the incumbent government in Skopje is making a habit of heading to the polls every time its ratings are down, this is not a routine election. Macedonia’s problems today run much deeper than the integration of the Albanian minority and the name dispute with Greece – the two issues that up to now have aroused the greatest interest from the international community. If the European Union wants to finish its business in the Balkans, it should take a note of Macedonia’s difficulties.
Think tanks cooperating with NGOs – two positive examples
26/05/2011 — Goran Buldioski on Research & Resources, Think Tanks
Cooperation between think tanks and NGOs (here I refer mainly to service provision and accountability watchdogs NGOs) as well as other partners is always a big talk in the research community in South East Europe. Regrettably, many people from both sides pay a lip service to the subject instead of engaging in meaningful and regular cooperation. Indeed, there are some structural reasons for this lack of cooperation in this region (to list just a few):
- TTs and NGOs, while operating in the same political and societal sphere, discern significantly in their organizational cultures and often educational background. Ever too often think tanks see themselves as part of the elites, closer to high politics and with exclusive (and often jealously guarded) access to the decision makers. Moreover, many think tanks consider the way how NGOs approach to problems overly simplistic. In turn, NGOs find the researchers too snobbish, distanced from the reality and obsessed with theoretical concepts, someone that talks only to peers with MA and PhD degrees or people in power and condescends the rest.
- TTs and NGOs often compete for funds from the same donors ( and most of the donors are not specialized in policy research, but rather generalist). This immediately sets them apart as competitors for scarce funds (unfortunately the same happens with cooperation between TTs, but let’s say that this is a consequence of the market).
- Given that the market for ideas and analysis is underdeveloped and decision makers are yet to fully use analytical products let alone distinguish between the ordinary and better ones, NGOs could compete for research projects and win them (How many times, we have seen flawed research designs and simplistic conclusions telling us nothing more we knew before the project in question started – TTs occassionally fall in this trap too). Think tanks often are better in research design, but with insufficient capacity, will or both to disseminate their research results and design advocacy beyond the group of usual suspects and peer experts)
…… and there are many more reasons fort his unfortunate divide.
I want to share positive examples instead of bragging about these negative trends and let you know where you could find funds to perhaps join the list 
Collection of links and resources on data use for advocacy
29/03/2011 — Goran Buldioski on Research & Resources, Think Tanks
In his second guest blog-post Andrej provides a loooong and extremely useful list of resources that complements my post from last month.
In God we trust, all others bring Data!
28/03/2011 — Goran Buldioski on Research & Resources, Think Tanks
It is my pleasure to add the first guest post on this blog.
Andrej Nosko, my colleague and Senior Program Officer at the Think Tank Fund reflects and provides excellent videos, presentations and other resource material from the event the Think Tank Fund organized last week in Budapest.
Evaluation Questionnaire Wordle
During the evaluation tweeting of an event we at Think Tank Fund organized with colleagues from IP program one of the participants tweeted “in God we trust, all others bring DATA” I googled this later to check originality, and found an interesting post adding an important question to it “Do we think, or do we know?” These two blurps are perhaps the most eloquent way of representing the idea behind what we call “evidence-based policy.” Think tanks are in the business of policy research and have intimate relationship with their data. Nonetheless, this intimacy is exclusive and the data is rarely accessible to others beyond the in-house researchers or those that have the necessary ability to comprehend technical reports.
R&pR – Revolutions and policy Research
07/03/2011 — Goran Buldioski on Research & Resources
R&R – Revolutions and Research
Revolutions, similar to big crisis, often invoke reflections among researchers and policymakers alike. I am sure you have read at least one of the following questions in the last two months:
Has anyone (we, in particular) predicted these events?
What did we know about the upraising and popular revolt?
What do we know about the population in these countries? How much do we understand Egypt and Tunisia in order to help them?
Since the upheaval in Tunisia , conventional and social media, and policy journals are simply overwhelmed with all sorts of open editorials, letters, columns, blogs, short and longer studies, either recently rushed through to capitalize on the momentum or being dag from some forgotten folder stored on a rusting hard drives. As you will rightly guess, my intention here is not to join all those who compete with each other in predicting / advising / theoretising the emerging changes and their consequences, but rather to share some insights I learned by reading some of this abundant material (some really lucid insights on how much most of the policy researchers and decision makers, in particular Europeans – West and East and USA are guided by biased perceptions).
Let’s start with the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies) science…
Building democracy in the Western Balkans: top-down and bottom-up approaches
27/02/2011 — Goran Buldioski on CEE policy processes
European Policy Center (EPC) and Open Society Institute Brussels Office invited me to attend the following workshop ‘Building democracy in the Western Balkans: top-down and bottom-up approaches on Tuesday, 1 March 2011.
Given that I will chair the following panel ” Parliamentary democracy and the accession process: a mutually beneficial relationship?” I use this opportunity to invite you to suggest questions that you would like me to ask to the top EC officials, members of the European Parliament and some notable thinkers from the region that will be presenting at this panel. Respecting that EPC organizes this event under Chatham House Rule and does not disclose the list of speakers, I will also stop short of disclosing their names.
With deadlocked parliaments in Albania and Macedonia, hardships in creating the Federation government in Bosnia and Herzegovina, recent re-shuffle of the government in Serbia and aftermath of Kosovo’s elections, this panel is worth of your questions . Everything I get before 9 pm tomorrow evening (Feb 28) in the comments or by e-mail will be used to shape the discussion.
Thanks in advance. In return, I will report the key points of the discussion on this blog (again in line with Chatham House Rule .
Advocacy Manual: a little help from Open Society Foundations
11/02/2011 — Goran Buldioski on Think Tanks
OSF has recently published a useful guide on advocacy:
Evidence, Messages, Change! is designed to support the advocacy efforts of Open Society Foundations grantees and partners. It offers basic tools and lessons learned for those considering conducting advocacy.
The guide outlines important steps to ensure that advocacy is as effective as possible. It draws on learning within the Open Society Foundations, especially the experiences of advocacy staff, as well as resources from other organizations.
The manual defines advocacy as an organized attempt to change policy, practice, and/or attitudes by resenting evidence and arguments for how and why change should happen.
Hope you’ll find it useful.
Information, data visualization, and think tanks
10/02/2011 — Goran Buldioski on Think Tanks
High quality policy research requires collection, processing and structuring of reliable information. This information, when collected properly and competently analyzed, is a prerequisite for making any evidence-based arguments and impacting concrete policies. Policy researchers collect and process vast amounts of data, however their outputs often remain in form of technical language of lengthy policy papers consisting of textual and static visual knowledge products (texts and charts), accessible to only a handful of experts.
While rigorous technical analysis provides necessary basis for informed expert discussions, and sometimes it directly influences policy makers, such approach is no longer sufficient to reach wider audiences and mobilize coalitions of stakeholders. Technical formulation of policy research products both limits the audience of these products to the experts, as well as often preventing collaboration and reuse of the publicly available data and analysis which was once already processed, for same or other policy goals. In transitional and emerging democracies the information and corresponding policy analysis not only remains scarce and/or underutilized, it often remains siloed with important context and connections being lost. As such it misses opportunities to create essential knowledge in the society and to add the necessary depth and evidence backup to policy discourse.
The recent advancement of new media has further exacerbated the challenges think tanks face. Today think tanks are forced to compete with their knowledge products on the same market of ideas with blogs, news outlets, magazines and electronic media in general. For example the way how people receive and consume information has changed since the
times of books, printed newsletters and offline information sharing in general. We have noticed that many think tanks in Central and Eastern Europe, while aware of these trends, have yet to master the art of using the new media and interactive information technology both to communicate their results, as well as to bring their work to their existing audiences and promote it among new, wider audiences by utilizing user-friendly formats and thus increase the impact of their ideas. Not only would think tanks benefit from higher visibility and impact of their ideas, but also their products could be of more value for their societies.
Based in CEE and interested to attend an event on this subject organized by the Think Tank Fund, check it out here.
Still puzzled what is this about, check out some cool visualizations and presentations of data online:
2. Perhaps the best of the NGOs/ advocacy organizations: Sunlight Foundations.
Check the wealth of their different projects.
My favorite: Dashboard on US national data catalog with almost 4,000 data sets at the tip of your fingers
3. Highlight from CEE:
Datanest Project of the Fair Play Alliance. Simply impressive!
4. Example of great civic activism from Great Britain: Fix My Street
5. Gapminder: Another pioneer of data visualization:
5.a VIDI: Data visualization tool developed by the Jefferson Institute:
6. The iconic Truth-o-Meter at Polity Fact
7. ProPublica explaining the Wall Stet Money Machine, or who bought
“collateralized debt obligations” from whom — those financial instruments that got the world into the financial mess
Interested? Check the upcoming event of the Think Tank Fund
Mirror, mirror on the wall… tell me who is the best think tank in the world?
23/01/2011 — Goran Buldioski on Think Tanks
THE THINK TANKS AND CIVIL SOCIETIES PROGRAM
Here we go again…
THE GLOBAL “GO-TO THINK TANKS”2010 edition is out!
Nobody promotes better the think tank sector among ‘non-think tank’ audience than Jim McGann! Kudos for his ability to spread the study and his results! The coverage is ubiquitous: from my friends in international organizations, to local NGOs, to some governmental officials, everyone has received the announcement for the launch of the study. And this is the good part… people who are not acquainted with the think tanks and those who have little contact with this type of organizations get to know about them – if nothing else as a checklist of ‘Who Won the Oscars in this world this year?’.
The value of this promotional effort notwithstanding, I cannot stay indifferent to the mistakes and persistent blind sports of these rankings. So, I am probably foolish to fall in the last year’s trap and comment on this year’s ranking . Anyway, here is what needs to get out of my chest .
I pick up the outdated definition of think tanks, the number of identified think tanks and a myriad of factual mistakes and inconsistencies in the rankings this year.