The matrix of reform

Jordanians have been overwhelmed with many strategic documents that have appeared over the last few years: Jordan 2020, REACH 2025 and, most recently, the 1,590-page report by the Economic and Social Council.

The council's report about the status of the country failed, qualitatively, to break with previous practice. Simply regurgitating the facts and some justifications for the current impasse does not equate to providing clear strategic choices. For all the hundreds of pages, there are no innovative strategic options, and no new socioeconomic dynamics proposed. 

Strategic thinking is not about compiling information, it is about analysis, and providing options out of this analysis. Strategic thinking, as a concept, serves to absorb all of this information and make effective conclusions and recommendations. With this in mind, the council’s status report does have its uses, namely, in understanding and reconstructing the national matrix of reform and development. The provided information in the report, assumingly authentic and reliable, could be an objective starting-point to conceptualise the national debate over necessary options and new strategies in different sectors. 

The function of the matrix of reform is to enable decision makers to identify what they should, and should not, do. As we all agree, the reform process is sophisticated; it has global, national, communal and individual dimensions, not to mention the underlying processes: economic, cultural, security and legal. These moving dimensions and frames of references cannot be simplified.

When used, a matrix of reform identifies what should be done by the leadership of states, as well as the outcomes of those recommended actions. Crucially, the matrix of reform should help Jordanian leadership to differentiate between economic factors and economic indicators, the latter of which the state should not, and cannot, directly influence. The rate of employment is an indicator for the success of the fiscal and monetary policies, the trade rules and land regulations. The wealth distribution in Jordan is also an indicator to evaluate the regulations that structurally influence the economic activities and market dynamics. However, allowing monopolies or oligopolies in markets is a controllable factor. The most useful of all knowledge, in this case, is to differentiate between independent, but controllable, factors on the one hand, and dependent indicators, on the other.

Dealing with the absence of the universal frames of reference does not necessarily mean inability to obtain universal knowledge. Albert Einstein, the physicist, used matrices to harness the elusiveness of multi-dimensional phenomenon, conquer the challenges of universality and locality and grasp the trend of moving dimensions and frames of references. Most relevant to Jordan is the key approach Einstein took when he worked with matrixes and tensors, that the importance lies in identifying what is constant, and what is going to change. Clearly, beyond their mathematical starting point, matrices and tensors can be tools used to understand the changing dynamics of any local system through universal laws. 

Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik revolution, once said: “Revolution does not change everything at once”. Revolution is about bringing down barriers and altering some factors to unleash changing dynamics. The challenge of controllability is solvable, but only through the integration of global and local dimensions of changes.

Leadership might err in identifying and choosing decisive factors. However, it is a sign of a lack of leadership if there is nothing done to improve the situation. Intellectuals, research centres and academics have a major part to play: They must provide decision makers with new options, and not merely justifications of old ones. These new, proposed options might be controversial. They may also be objectively wrong. However, the very absence of new options in and of itself is an early warning sign of a failing state.

The techniques to transform data into information and knowledge are available. However, applying these techniques requires a new intellectual approach, one that has, at the very least, a minimum level of moral commitment, intellectual integrity and seriousness. Providing compiled data, as the council’s report did, could be useful as a starting point, but it is a sign of bankruptcy if that alone is the entire intellectual exercise.

The writer is a political analyst. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times