Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1401709
7 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 15 AUGUST 2021 OPINION The PN in transition: how to manage change HOW can the Nationalist Party emerge from what seems to be an eight-year period of transitioning out of its former self, as the one- time party of government, into a party that can be trusted to as- sume the reins of power? It seems like this period of transition is taking longer than expected for a party that has since 2013 seen three leaders, internecine battles, and even an ideological rift on certain issues of political debates and social is- sues. A very quick scan of Maltese newspaper headlines in the past decade reveals a constant refer- ence to PN's efforts to change. However, these changes are be- ing concretised on more than one level. Still... the PN may be the first political party in Malta to fully embrace "continual lim- inality". Liminality, a "state of transi- tion", was advanced as a concept by the ethnographer Arnold van Gennep, who in his book Les Rites de Passage argued that the energy of any system eventually dissipates, and must be renewed at crucial intervals. Socially, this renewal can be seen in various rites of passage such as baptisms, graduations, or weddings. In these rites of passage we have three stages: separation from the old role, a liminal pe- riod between roles, and then the assumption of the new role. And every process needs its liturgy: their rituals are activities that signal an important threshold, and they should not be underes- timated. For the PN, this dissipation of energy culminated in the 2013- 2017 elections. From then on- wards it has been an ongoing liminal phase for the party. One could argue that the PN may embrace this liminality, incor- porating it in its organisational philosophy. But permanent lim- inality could unexpectedly erupt in crisis as well (Johnsen and So- rensen). Researchers have employed liminality as a way of address- ing "collective-level process- es" (Söderlund and Borg) such as processes of organisational change, or the creation of a new organisation, and the way or- ganisational members forge a collective identity during such formative processes. Consider the idea of the creation of the PN's Team Start and the new QattAktar group, but also the idea put forward by Dr Bernard Grech to have a female deputy leader when the leader is male and vice-versa. The new roles of Research President and So- cial Dialogue President are also an examples of organisational change. Indeed, the PN should go digital and coordinate its ef- forts on all social and media plat- forms before the next election. Also, a proper think-tank should be set up dealing with ideology, not with other issues as well, cli- maxing the ongoing work of the clusters and eventually the work of a broader dialogue exercise (regular but not ongoing) such as 'Convention PN'. When transitioning from a sta- ble phase through to an obscure liminal phase and then finally, consolidating into a more stable phase, the temporal factor here is crucial. Because the liminal phase provides the persons in- volved, with an understanding of who they were, why they be- haved like they did as a collec- tive, and in what direction they are currently moving. So where can we find liminal- ity? Usually, we can see it in or- ganisations facing quandaries when internal groups are trying to reconcile their diverse, and even conflicting norms and val- ues. In others words: ideology. And here again, ritualisation is important: research shows that this liminal process often de- pends on the role of the 'masters of ceremonies'. So consultants are often employed to help or- ganisations pass through their liminal state (Czarniawska and Mazza) by offering rigorous rites of passage that must be accept- ed, before the new phase starts. Consultants operate as these very masters of ceremonies to organise "the rites of passage" with their external expertise. And it is more pragmatic that the more external these agents are, the better. They help col- lectives rethink their history and make sense of what is emerging, for example during away-day ac- tivities. This has to be a continu- ing and followed-up process. Conceptually, this was the idea behind 'Convention PN' – an organisation like the PN can en- courage a collective, liminal ex- perience by allowing members to take part in "undefined pro- jects" that induce them to ques- tion the party structures and identities they take for granted. This should require them to en- vision new structures, collective identities and alternative reali- ties. Not one, but many: the plu- ral is intentional. At the end of the day, liminal thinking is the skill of creating change by understanding, shap- ing, and reframing beliefs. It is the ability to exploit that thin membrane between phases, shifting from one paradigm to another. So the question that arises is indeed: would the PN still be PN if most of its structures and identities were changed? One can invoke Plutarch's ship of Theseus as a thought experi- ment. It raises the question of whether an object is still funda- mentally the same object when it has had all of its components replaced. Thomas Hobbes added another dimension to this para- dox: what if the discarded parts of the original ship were collect- ed by someone and used to cre- ate a second ship – that is a split in the PN? (I have already argued that starting from scratch and returning as a political force af- ter five years is another illusory assumption, given that the PN has been struggling with inter- personal, ideological and finan- cial issues at least since 2008. Splitting the opposition would result in bigger issues of coordi- nation, duplication of tasks and expenditure, contradictions to the benefit of Labour, and dilu- tion of talent.) In reality, it is not realistic to have all parts of the PN replaced, but there are addressable cor- responding issues. The PN has had distinct, temporal parts throughout its existence. Since its inception it has changed, but its phases are also connected through time, the same way we are connected to our past ver- sions of ourselves. So the PN does have perpetu- al continuity as an organisation: it is not simply 'a thing', nor a collection of objectively existing parts. Just as in Noam Chom- sky's idea, that as long as there is a space-time continuity between this set of relationships, then there is still "the PN". So yes, change is inevitable in- deed for the PN. The challenge is how the party will informally assimilate this liminality and be- come 'antifragile', or else, how to ritualise the phases of change and move forward. Choose saga- ciously! Dr Alan Xuereb is a lawyer-linguist at the European Court of Justice, and author of Riflessjonijiet dwar il-Gid Komuni Alan Xuereb