FOREWORD Citizens & Markets: Wakening the Ally

FEDERiCO REyEs HEROlEs, ChAIr oF The BoArD of Transparencia Mexicana

he degree of transparency and opacity in a society is not predetermined. Unlike what some development theorists thought during the sixties and the seventies, the socio-economical and educational levels are factors but not factotum. These are great news: countries with poor development are not doomed to wait for the arrival of higher stages to become more transparent. Transparency is not the last station of the train. The other side of the story is the existence of developed or rich countries where corruption is comfortably installed without any threat in the horizon. The social cost these societies pay is huge, even though they are developed. Among the many achievements of Transparency International is the transformation of the predominant paradigm in the corruption debate: countries are not transparent because they are developed, they are developed because they are transparent. The question of how much the acts of corruption cost to the development of a country may cause obsession. In any case, we know that the cost is high. For example in Mexico, my country, some estimations show that the multiple impacts of corruption could sum 5% of the annual Gross Domestic Product. This percentage is the equivalent of the total expenditure in education. The final projections are terrifying. Now, if transparency accelerates welfare and development the question should be: what can we do to stop opacity and corruption? The answers to this question are divided as commonly happens in any social science, especially when it deals with such a novel area. There is a trend with an institutional approach, which promotes reforms to both institutions and laws as a key element. The reasoning behind this trend is simple. In the relationship between citizens and institutions we can find good incentives and perverse ones.

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This vision enriched the debate and brought multiple benefits to it. on the other hand there is another trend with a cultural approach that promotes the change of attitudes and values. I give you an example. When our national chapter - Transparencia Mexicana - began its work, two out of three Mexicans did not consider corruption to be a major problem. Nowadays this proportion has changed and the differences of opinion between the states are clearly identifiable. everywhere people speak of transparency, at home, in school, in the media.

Countries are not transparent because they are developed, they are developed because they are transparent
We know that no trend has a definite solution and that the set of solutions, in plural, are, as always, the result of the sum of efforts and perspectives. Nonetheless, one thing that we have learned in the process is that the biggest ally in the fight against corruption is the citizen. A citizen that measures the importance of the problem and that acts in accordance with his own possibilities may change the course of a nation. This citizenship, participant and in some way intolerant towards corruption has a central role fighting back the problem. This could mean a major shift of perspective. Today thanks to social media and information technologies we have the possibility of convening the citizenship for very specific demands without having the need of size, complexity and finances from behalf of the organizers, they could be national chapters of Transparency International or other institutions. A couple of years ago, in an international meeting of philanthropy in Argentina, I heard the expression that best captures this change:

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we can have organization without organizations. I give some examples that apply for Mexico. In the health area we manage to organize 10 thousand parents that systematically watch the conditions of the nurseries their children attend to. We want to bring this experience also to the clinics of social security. In the educational area, the principals of multiple high schools in the Mexico Citys metropolitan zone give a report once a year of the use they made of the public and family resources they were assigned. They give this report in front of teachers, students and their parents. This is an exercise with multiple learning experiences regarding accountability. Around a million people have participated in this exercise. In coordination with the federal government, Transparencia Mexicana launched a contest for citizens so that they proposed solutions to the most obnoxious and useless procedures. We received nearly 20 thousand solutions. The Mexican President gave out the awards. The potential for strategy is enormous. To promote that citizenship keeps an organized surveillance of public procurement and markets could mean a shift in the potential for control that every society has. We know that public procurement is the place where private interests become corruption acts in detriment of public interests. We have long talked about regulation in this matter but little about citizen surveillance. The same happens when citizens pressure the manufacturers and private producers in a direct way. The power of acquisition and the punishment of the consumer become highly efficient and powerful tools. This publication aims to provoke a discussion regarding a potential, which is, in some cases, still dormant. exposing the successful experiences could surely lead us to reect on ecient and effective courses of action. on behalf of Transparencia Mexicana, I would like to thank the participation of the collaborators of this book. The reader will find valuable material in these pages that will help our mission. Lets hope it will be useful.