Malta: Selected Essays in Governance and Public Administration

Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies (MEDAC) Malta: Selected Essays in Governance and Public Administration Godfrey A. Pirotta Med Agenda MEDAC Publications in Mediterranean IR and Diplomacy Malta: Selected Essays in Governance and Public Administration Godfrey A. Pirotta Prof. Godfrey A. Pirotta Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies (MEDAC) Malta: Selected Essays in Governance and Public Administration Godfrey A. Pirotta Malta, January 2021 Med Agenda MEDAC Publications in Mediterranean IR and Diplomacy Table Of Contents 5 About the author 6 Preface 10 Acknowledgments Part 1 12 Bread, Language and Civil Service Employment 25 From Hymn to National Anthem 32 Building a New Parliament House 48 Maltese Political Parties and Political Modernization 62 The Malta Labor Party and the Church: Building the Democratic State: 1921-1976 86 Struggling for a Role: Women and Politics in Malta 106 Malta’s Foreign Policy After Mintoff 111 The Challenge of European Membership: A Study of Malta’s Parliament Approach to the Issue 1962-87 133 The Disciplines of Politics and Public Administration in Malta 150 Photo Inset Part 2 158 Future of the Public Service 166 Politics and Public Service Reform in Small States: Malta 178 The Organization of Public Administration and Civil Society: Comments and Remarks 186 L-Istat u t-Tmexxija tal-Istituzzjonijiet 196 Bringing Good Governance to Malta 202 A New Creation or an Image and Likeness? The Maltese Experience of Establishing Local Governance in a Centralized Micro-State 218 Public Administration Education and Training in Small States: The Case of Malta 1950-1995 242 A Farewell to Paternalism Through Public Enterprise? Privatisation in the Small Island State of Malta 258-270 The Politics of Public Expenditure in Malta Pirotta – Malta: Selected Essays in Governance and Public Administration About the author GODFREY A. PIROTTA is Professor of Government and Policy Studies at the University of Malta. He is also non-resident Ambassador to the Czech Republic. A graduate of the Universities of Oxford, Reading and Bath, he has been a member of the Department of Public Policy since its inception, and its former head. In 2017, he was appointed Chairperson of the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies (MEDAC). He is the author of a number of books exploring Malta’s governing institutions and official historian of Malta’s House of Representatives. He has taught at a number of overseas universities and his research papers have appeared in refereed journals across four continents. In addition, he has contributed several scholarly chapters to books on public administration, public policy and politics. He has been honoured by a number of Universities, the most recent being his appointment as Honorary Professor of Political Science and International Relations by the University of National and World Economics, Sofia, Bulgaria. During his career he helped launch a number of organisations both in Malta and abroad, among these Malta’s first consumer movement and the Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management. He sits on the advisory boards of several international organisations and in Malta has helped pioneer the study of small states, politics and public policy generally. In 2016 the President of the Republic of Malta appointed him a Member of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Malta. 5 Pirotta – Malta: Selected Essays in Governance and Public Administration Preface have, during my long academic career and active life, been given many titles. I have been invariably described as an economist, a historian, a political I scientist, a public policy expert and a public administration expert. There is some truth in all of these descriptors for my specialisation is rooted in the study of the social sciences. Indeed, political science, international relations, public administration, sociology and social policy, and economics have formed the principal content of my studies during my years at Oxford, the University of Reading and the University of Bath. In all of these areas a sound knowledge of history was essential but I have never considered myself a true historian. Nonetheless, within the confines of Maltese historical studies I have contributed to a branch of history which has been largely ignored, i.e. that pertaining to the study of the historical development of governing institutions. Malta’s public service had received scant, if any, attention before the appearance of my study The Maltese Public Service: The Administrative Politics of a Micro-state 1800-1940 in 1996. Nor had anyone explored the impact of Malta’s Parliament on Maltese political development before the publication of my book Malta’s Parliament: An Official History 1800-2004. A third study, Guardian of the Public Purse: A History of State Audit in Malta 1814-2014, conducted in collaboration with my colleague Professor Edward Warrington, traces the evolution of this crucial governing institution. This interest in institutional history can also be evidenced in a number of papers in this collection. These include Bread, Language and Civil service employment, A New Parliament House, and Malta’s Parliament and the European Dimension: the early years 1962-1987. The descriptors employed in my regard, with the exception of that of economist, may be said, therefore to be fairly applicable. This is not to say that I have not written or commented on economic issues. Indeed, early into my teaching career as a teacher at a newly established Junior Lyceum secondary school I taught economics up to O Level standard. I believe that economics as a subject had not as yet been taught at this level in state schools. Given the above, it ought not to be surprising that in 42 years as an educationist I have taught all of these subjects from economics to social policy, from political thought to government, from public policy to public administration, from history to constitutional studies. But, I did more than just teach these subjects: in several instances I was the one that introduced them as areas of studies in their own right both within the University of Malta or outside of it. In some instances it fell to me to consolidate, their at the time, fragile position as academic areas of studies. The former is very much true in the case of public policy and political studies. Until then public policy was virtually unheard of within the walls of the University of Malta while it was not until 1993 that the first course, at Diploma, level in political studies was introduced. In the case of public administration, 6 Pirotta – Malta: Selected Essays in Governance and Public Administration I joined the University of Malta in 1979, the time that the course was being launched at degree level. The task of relaunching the degree fell again on me, during my fifteen years as Director of the Institute of Public Administration and Management (IPAM). In 1990 public administration studies had been relegated to a Diploma level. Furthermore, I was there at the birth of the Small Islands Institute at the University of Malta and it is very likely that my study of the development of the Maltese public service, mentioned above, was the first study to appear in Malta that strongly highlighted the importance of smallness on public administration. I was also the first to introduce within the University of Malta the study of policy-making in micro-states as a study-unit at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. One of the descriptors which have never been applied to me is that of adult educator. However, I believe that this description would fit better with me than that of economist or historian. During my long career I had made it my duty to provide as many opportunities as possible for individuals often described as “mature students” to further their studies. I did this through several lay institutions, such as the Social Action Movement and the trade unions, but also at the University of Malta. One important vehicle through which this was achieved was IPAM, which provided hundreds of mature individuals, employees of the public service, with an opportunity to embark on studies from diploma level to Masters level and in exceptional circumstances even to doctorate level. Another important institution which contributed in a similar fashion, was the Workers’ Participation Development Centre which organized courses which attracted students from different working backgrounds, including the dockyards and the unions. Many of the papers appearing in this publication in some way or another reflect all of these elements. Some of them were published in internationally refereed journals, some as chapters in books while others were presentations delivered to mixed audiences. It was decided to try as much as possible to present them in a thematic rather than a chronological order. It is not my intention to discuss each paper individually but merely to highlight some story or give some background to some of them. The first paper, Bread, Language and Civil Service Employment was written to highlight a neglected aspect of the so-called “language question” which plagued Maltese politics, and to some extent still does, for nearly a century. It aims, based on a document going back to the time that this question was becoming a dominant issue, to show that this question was equally about bread and butter issues as well as linguistic. Most historians have ignored this document probably because it did not fit nicely with the dominant view: that the issue was merely a cultural one. However, this official document had been publicly available since the time that the issue of language had arisen and it cannot be possible that all those who wrote about this issue had missed its existence. The second paper, also of a historical nature, traces the process whereby a hymn written for schoolchildren eventually became our 7 Pirotta – Malta: Selected Essays in Governance and Public Administration national anthem.

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