Building "citizenship culture" in Bogota.

Mockus, Antanas

When the citizens of Bogota, Colombia elected Antanas Mockus as mayor in 1995 at the height of violence and bedlam, they expected change, but not the kind Mockus provided. The newly elected leader dressed up in a Superman outfit in an effort to lift morale, dispatched mimes to shame drivers who disrespected pedestrians and showered on television to encourage people to conserve water by turning off the tap while lathering up. Mockus, the former president of the National University of Colombia in Bogota, adapted decades of teaching experience into his unusual governance style and aimed to tackle corruption, violence and social disorder by changing people's mindsets. The city made dramatic improvements during his two terms in office. By 2003, water usage had decreased by 40 percent, the homicide rate fell from eighty-eight to twenty-two per one hundred thousand inhabitants and traffic fatalities dropped from 1,300 to about six hundred per year. In the following essay, Mockus explains the source of his inspiration for transforming Bogota. (1)

The National University of Colombia taught me that everything that can be expressed in legal language is subject to reform. It was difficult to reform the university's laws, but it was accomplished. It was difficult to reform ninety-four undergraduate programs, but that was also accomplished. The same can be said for reforming student regulations, the rules of teacher management and countless other matters. In short, the reformable was reformed.

But what about changing the culture? Take, for example, the habit of more than half of the students to request readmission to a program after failing out three times, even though they would probably fail again because of academic deficiencies or because they needed to work to support their families.

When I agreed to be mayor of the city, I was able to lean on the recently issued Organic Statute, which banned members of the city council from managing contracts, a situation that had led to patronage and graft. As mayor I felt that I assumed a fascinating pedagogical task: learning and teaching in a community of seven million people. I decided to confront the culture of the city, its languages, perceptions, customs, cliches and especially people's excuses--for example, when a student is late to school "because of a traffic jam," even though thousands of others made it to school on time.

During my first administration I governed alongside many academics. Their strength was their ethics, their resistance to outside pressures and their doggedness in rational discussions. Their weakness was their indecisiveness, their need to air one last opinion and, occasionally, their difficulty assuming risks and making decisions with incomplete information. We governed with a combination of imagination and freedom, with classical administrative rationalism: planning, specifying objectives, providing timely responses, consulting affected parties and then budgeting and monitoring the execution of our policies. It was just how they teach it in schools of management. We governed with diligence and probity; we showed results with facts, not publicity, which was unfamiliar.

In November 1995, on the tenth anniversary of the Armero tragedy caused by the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, there was a memorial commemoration in the Plaza de Bolivar. (2) During the service, I handed out thousands of whistles, but only one per person. I advised the crowd that if someone took two whistles I would suspend the distribution. And it worked. The purpose of the exercise was twofold: to use the whistles as a symbol of preventative action and to illustrate the discipline that is required in a postemergency situation. A few days later I did something similar before a Carlos Vives concert at Campin Stadium. This time we distributed small carrots and, again, only one per person. The use of carrots was to promote the newly enacted ley zanahoria, or the so-called "carrot law," which required bars and other nightlife venues to close at 1:00 a.m. People said, "Why did he take away the party? Why will alcohol only be served until 1:00 a.m.?" My response: "To save lives. One at a time, please, one at a time."

We were beginning to discover how to transform the cultural regulation of interactions among citizens and between citizens and government officials, and how to adjust these interactions and bring them closer to the law. Bogota is a city of great moral and cultural diversity, but we were learning to operate por las buenas, using positive incentives and a baseline of shared norms. We were changing what I call the "citizenship culture."

The term "citizenship culture" reflects our efforts to strengthen and harmonize the three regulatory systems of human behavior: law, morality and culture. This means reducing moral and cultural justifications for illegal behavior and increasing moral and cultural support for the law. These systems derive their power largely from the emotions they provoke or threaten to provoke: fear of legal sanctions, fear of guilt and fear of shame, but also admiration for the law and satisfaction with adhering to personal principles and achieving social recognition. Within these three systems, we are subject to norms, but we value them for holding others accountable, thereby enforcing our expectations and our rights. The more we submit to norms in a voluntary and conscious manner, the more valuable they will prove to be.

For example, we distributed "citizenship cards" to drivers. These cards had a thumbs-up on one side and a thumbs-down on the other, and citizens could use them to express approval or disapproval for each other's behavior. This was an example of how mutual cultural regulation could change behavior and increase compliance with the law. We also had mimes replace transit police officers to mock those who flouted traffic laws. We placed cross-shaped black stars on the road where accidents had occurred to encourage safer driving. This demonstrated that people could be educated without fines. In the future, governing will be, more than anything else, an activity in which we educate ourselves and each other.

The four objectives of citizenship culture were: (1) to increase compliance with norms of mutual interaction, (2) to increase the number of citizens encouraging compliance with norms of mutual interaction, (3) to increase the number of disputes resolved peacefully based on a shared vision of the city and (4) to increase the ability of citizens to communicate through art, culture, recreation and sport.

I firmly believe that this model can be applied in other developing cities, and even highly developed cities. The cities that can benefit the most from this type of government are those that genuinely wish to improve the rule of law and to assist their citizens. Governing with a philosophy that can be summed up as "yes to rights, no to favors," we gave credence to one of our principle initiatives, Gestion Publica Admirable or "Admirable Public Management," where we vowed to enhance public services and improve accountability.

However, in Bogota today, adherence to this type of governance is spotty. Originality has its costs and is difficult to sustain. In order for this model of governance to work, a society needs to demonstrate deep ownership of its principles and there must be detailed empirical assessments of progress. As with any model of governance, leaders must have the ability to experiment, take risks and try something new within the existing legal framework. But when it comes to government policy, the Latin American leader tends to have the same fear as the macho machote male: that of having to inadvertently raise someone else's child!

When I was mayor we built a new approach to law enforcement and governance. We did not subscribe to the determinism of the left (i.e., "that poverty leads to crime") or to the determinism of the right (i.e., "that lax punishments and underfunding the police lead to more crime"). Reforming the citizenship culture allowed us to change the ideas and the behavior of the people--who proved able to embrace our novel projects and policies--in more ways than we expected.

NOTES

(1) This essay has been translated from Spanish and edited with the help of Ania Calderon. The Journal extends a special thanks to Carolina Salazar Pardo, Javier Guillot and Mariana Marulanda for making this essay by Antanas Mockus possible. Themes in this essay are referenced in Mockus's previous works, including Antanas Mockus, "Cultura ciudadana, programa contra la violencia en Santa Fe de Bogota, Colombia, 1995-1997" [Citizenship culture, program against violence in Santa Fe, Bogota, Colombia, 1995-1997], Inter-American Development Bank, July 2001, http://www.bvsde.paho.org/bvsacd/cd47/cultura.pdf.

(2) Armero was a town that suffered dearly after the 1985 eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, which caused mudflows killing twenty-three thousand people. "1985: Volcano kills thousands in Colombia," BBC News, On This Day, 13 November 1985, http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/ 13/newsid_2539000/253973.stm.

Antanas Mockus was the mayor of Bogota, Colombia from 1995 to 1997 and from 2001 to 2003 and is a former Colombian presidential candidate.