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Learning from others: the spread ofcapital housing subsidiesAlan Gilbert aa University College London , 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP,UKPublished online: 14 Oct 2010.

To cite this article: Alan Gilbert (2004) Learning from others: the spread of capital housingsubsidies, International Planning Studies, 9:2-3, 197-216, DOI: 10.1080/1356347042000311776

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International Planning Studies, Vol. 9, Nos 2–3,197–216, May–August 2004

Learning from Others: The Spread of Capital HousingSubsidies

ALAN GILBERT

University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP, UK

ABSTRACT One of the benefits of globalization is that governments have the opportunity to learnfrom the experiences of others. The ability to learn from others’ discoveries and mistakes shouldimprove government performance. This is the basis for the World Bank’s partial transformationinto a knowledge bank. However, we know little about how governments draw lessons in practice.We know that sometimes they are forced to accept unwelcome lessons, as in IMF conditionalityagreements. But perhaps equally often the process of adoption is voluntary. The paper considershow Colombia developed its capital housing subsidy programme. A ready exemplar was availablein Chile and the major development banks were anxious to persuade other governments to acceptthe Chilean model. The paper considers whether Chilean experience was imitated in Colombia, therole that was played by the development banks, and how and why internal considerationsdetermined the final form of the programme.

How do governments learn from policy experience in other parts of the world?Although the practice has been occurring for centuries, it is almost certainlyincreasing in importance as improved transport and communications reducemany former barriers to learning (Nelson, 2004; Weyland, 2004). Unfortunately,we still know relatively little about the process and in many policy areas, likehousing, virtually nothing at all (Ward, 1999, p. 53; Harris & Giles, 2001).

Fortunately, interest in lesson learning seems to have increased suddenly. Theproject on which this paper is based forms part of a larger programme ofresearch on this topic, with 30 separate projects (ESRC, 2000). The GlobalDevelopment Network is running a research project on understanding reform(GDN, 2003). Similarly, the Woodrow Wilson International Center funded amajor seminar in 2001 on what Latin American policy makers had learned frominternational practice in the health and pension reforms that occurred during the1990s (Weyland, 2004). If the amount of funding going towards a subject is ameasure of its significance, then this is becoming an important subject.

The particular project on which this paper is based is concerned with one areaof government policy making—housing. Over the last two decades thinkingabout housing policy has changed considerably and one particular model ofhousing delivery, capital housing subsidies, has become popular. The adoptionof this model, first developed in Chile under a right-wing military government,is an interesting example of lesson drawing in so far as Chilean experience hasbeen incorporated into the thinking of governments in Colombia, Costa Rica andSouth Africa, various multinational finance organizations and several national

1356-3475 Print/1469-9265 Online/03/02-30197-20 2004 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1356347042000311776

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development agencies (World Bank, 1993; Held, 2000). The model owes much ofits appeal to its neo-liberal economic heritage. It offers transparent up-frontsubsidies targeted at the poor and it welcomes private-sector suppliers deliver-ing housing through the market. As such, it offers a counterpoint to the oldmodel of supplying mass-produced subsidized units through state or state-con-tracted companies. Since many development agencies have sought to spreadknowledge of the Chilean model and have encouraged other governments toadopt it, its diffusion provides a good example of the nature of the powerrelationship that links national governments and international developmentagencies.

Previous papers linked to this project have examined the evolution of capitalhousing subsidies in Chile and South Africa (Gilbert, 2002a, 2002b) and thispaper considers the third case, Colombia. The particular issues to be exploredthrough this case study are:

• What were the circumstances that led to a major shift in Colombian housingpolicy in 1990?

• Who was responsible for formulating the new policy within Colombia?• To what extent did housing policy in Colombia replicate the Chilean model?• Was this policy in any sense forced on the government by international

agencies?• What other foreign sources of information did the government use in the

development of its policy?

Before turning to the details of the Colombian experience, the methodologyunderpinning the study will be explained and, in the following section, somekey points from the recent literature will be considered.

Method

Data for this paper were gathered through a series of interviews with peopleclosely concerned with the development, transfer and/or operation of capitalhousing subsidies, an extensive review of published and unpublished sources,and extensive use of the Internet to examine recent policy shifts.

Thirty interviews were conducted in Bogota in August 2000 with officials ofpast and present governments, housing consultants, academics and members ofNGOs. I relied both on my own knowledge of Colombia, a country that I havebeen visiting for over 30 years, and on local experts in each country to identifythe key players. The latter included those who claim to have invented Colom-bia’s housing policy, those who helped to develop and modify that policy, thosewho have managed it and some who strongly dislike the whole subsidyapproach. Included in the list are academics and independent consultants, pastand present representatives of the Ministries of Development and Finance, theNational Housing Institute (INURBE), the National Planning Department (DNP),various agencies of the government of Bogota, top private-sector housinginstitutions, including Camacol, Fedelonjas and Colmena, and NGOs, like Fede-vivienda. Some of the people interviewed have played several roles in theevolution of housing policy, which is not wholly surprising given that the periodbeing described is now nearly 14 years long. In four subsequent visits toColombia (September 2001, February and April 2002 and April 2003) I havetalked to some of these people again and held conversations with many otherpeople about Colombian policy.

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An additional 15 interviews were held in Washington, DC, towards the end of2000. I talked with people at the Inter-American Development Bank, USAID andthe World Bank as well as with a number of housing consultants during athree-month period when I was attached to the Inter-American DevelopmentBank. These interviews were rarely limited to Colombian experience but mostdiscussed housing experience in that country for part of the time.

Virtually all the meetings in Colombia were conducted in Spanish while mostof those in Washington were conducted in English. All the interviews weretaped—something that I now believe to be vital in picking up the subtleties ofwhat the interviewees said—and later painstakingly transcribed. Occasionally,an interviewee requested that the tape recorder be turned off, but only on acouple of occasions did I feel that the tape recorder intruded into the conver-sation. In the vast majority of cases, the interviews were conducted in anexcellent spirit of mutual enquiry.

My informants remain anonymous but where it is essential I have describedthe kind of person who made a particular observation. I promised my infor-mants total discretion and I hope that in this way I can keep that promise. Myfailure to cite my sources had been criticized by one of the anonymous refereesof an earlier paper for not allowing proper verification of the assertions made.I have pondered how to get round this difficulty and have concluded that thereis no satisfactory way. The only way I could attribute the ideas to specificinterviewees is to give each person either a false name or a number and to insertthose names or numbers into the text next to their contribution. However, thisdoes not actually tell the reader what they want to know which is “who on earthtold me that”! As such, I have decided that readers will just have to trust me. Ican only assure them that the argument is backed up by genuine, painstakingresearch including many hours of interviews and a vast amount of backgroundreading.

Current Thinking about Lesson Drawing

The phrase ‘lesson drawing’ is used in this paper in preference to ‘policytransfer’. The former is preferred because it embraces the many cases when“lessons are drawn from other places or times which do not result in policy orinstitutional change. So, for example, in some cases a negative lesson may bedrawn about how not to proceed” (Dolowitz & Marsh, 1996, p. 344).

How Common is Lesson Drawing from Other Countries?

The idea of copying best practice from elsewhere and of seeking to communicateways of improving government performance is hardly new. In the past, it waslinked to invasion and colonialism and policy change was dictated more byimposition than by lesson drawing (Stone, 1999a). As more countries becameindependent, governments gained more autonomy over their policy choices.Nonetheless, ‘forced learning’ is still common and in the form of IMF ‘condition-ality’ has been the subject of a particularly bitter discourse (see below).

In the new millennium ‘developmental Washington’ has seemingly mellowedand is now changing the intellectual terms of trade. Rather than telling otherpeople and governments what to do, the major development banks haverecognized that advice is more likely to be taken by those who consider

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themselves to be partners in the learning process (Fidler, 2001). Stiglitz’s (1999,p. 8) injunction that in future the World Bank should help institutions in poorercountries to “scan globally and reinvent locally” is symptomatic of that ten-dency.

The diffusion of knowledge is becoming ever more important to developmentagencies generally because the world community is so eager to learn. Becauseglobalization is encouraging competition between countries, both governmentsand the private sector need to learn how to compete. Citizens understand thatwhat they lack at home is available to people in certain other places. Willingnessto learn, of course, has been stimulated by the fact that it is so much easier tocommunicate. With the use of the Internet expanding so rapidly and with theamount of air travel increasing constantly, communication between countrieshas never been simpler.

In sum, the opportunities for international lesson drawing are probablygreater than they have ever been. As Nelson (2004) puts it:

the sources, scope, and intensity of external policy advice, support andpressure have increased at an ever-accelerating pace in recent decades.A great many forces drive expanded policy borrowing and influence,including the information technology revolution, exponentially increas-ing travel and study abroad, democratization and its pressures, greatlyexpanded international trade and capital flows, and the ever-thickeningweb of formal international organizations and less formal transnationalnetworks and associations.

“One Can Take a Horse to Water But Not Make it Drink”

Many governments are reluctant to learn lessons from abroad and there areoften very good reasons why. They may not trust the message because it isideologically slanted (Escobar, 1995; Blaikie, 2000). They may not trust themessenger, as was the case in South Africa when the World Bank offered adviceon housing in the early 1990s (Gilbert, 2002b). The pressure of time—govern-ments are always in a hurry—often precludes careful consideration of relevantlessons from abroad, and, perhaps most importantly, the nationalistic feelingthat ‘our country is different’ is a critical barrier to accepting foreign advice.

These barriers to adoption are much weaker at times of crisis. What consti-tutes a crisis is not easy to define and it may take a variety of forms, i.e.economic, social, political, institutional, but by its very nature a crisis tends toencourage radical action. A precursor to such action is often to look for helpfrom other places or to accept help from overseas that was previously unwel-come.

Crises often raise doubts about the basic premises of what went before.“Established policy approaches appear as ineffective, insufficient, and ever lesssuccessful; problems have accumulated that are difficult—if not impossible—toresolve inside the confines of the old ideas, principles, and rules” (Weyland,2004). Under such circumstances, policy makers go off in search of new ap-proaches, lessons and models—there is, in short, a paradigm shift.

Examples of how crisis can stimulate learning from abroad are provided bythe two other case studies that formed part of this research project. In Chile, thefall of the socialist regime of Salvador Allende with the military coup in 1973 led

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to a wholesale shift in development strategy. That shift was heavily influencedby the ideas of neo-liberal economic thinkers based at the University of Chicagowho were busy preparing a new strategy as the socialist regime increasinglyfloundered (Barber, 1995; Valdes, 1995). Similarly, with the fall of apartheid inSouth Africa and the urgent need to devise new and innovative ways ofremoving the stain of social and racial inequality, one respondent told me that“South Africa was learning from everywhere” (Gilbert, 2002b).

Often a crisis is much more limited and confined to a single sector orgeographical location. Nevertheless, the impact within that specific area canawaken interest in foreign experience. In the UK, a crime wave, rising unem-ployment or long hospital waiting lists have all stimulated efforts to learn fromabroad, with the USA and Sweden constituting the most common sources ofexperience (ESRC, 2000).

Availability, Familiarity, Similarity and Status

Today it is easier to draw lessons from abroad because so much informationabout overseas experience is available. Foreign governments, consultants andaid agencies are all eager to ‘sell’ their expertise in particular areas. Increasingly,the problem is not availability but noise. There is so much experience on offerthat it is difficult to select from what is available. The task of selection is eased,of course, by the fact that particular models or experiences become establishedas part of international or regional ‘received wisdom’. The Grameen Bank, theprivatization experience of the UK and the Truth and Conciliation experiences ofChile and Argentina might be included in this category. Similar examples,within Latin America, would include Chile’s health and pension fund pro-grammes (Barrientos, 1996; Weyland, 2004), Bolivia’s social emergency fund(Graham, 1992) and the urban planning and transport experiences of Curitiba,Brazil.

Although some of these models have emerged from rather unexpected places,like Bangladesh in the case of the Grameen Bank, experience is most acceptablewhen it comes from countries that are deemed to be most relevant to thesituation at home. Rose (1993) calls this “psychological proximity”, greaterfamiliarity with another country increases the chances of learning. As Weyland(2004) argues:

a bold reform that occurs in a neighbouring country is much moreimmediately available than an equally momentous change that takesplace halfway around the globe. Given cultural similarities and histori-cal connections, a policy change next door attracts particularattention … the similarities that matter the most are cultural and his-torical factors that create close channels of communication acrosscountries and thus make innovations uniquely available.

Thus the UK frequently looks across the Atlantic to the USA. Language is aparticularly important factor in the learning process so that former French-speaking colonies are more likely to look to France and English-speakingcolonies to Britain or the USA. In Latin America, a lot of experience is passedbetween Spanish-speaking countries, although Brazil is much more reluctant tolearn from its Hispanic neighbours.

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Weyland (2004) also argues that governments are much more willing to lookat experience in what they perceive to be ‘higher status’ countries. Large,developed countries tend to be the focus of much learning for this reason. Thispattern is particularly clear in South Africa, which tends to gain most of itsexperience from the UK, the USA and the Benelux. Common language andcultural background are part of the explanation but there is undoubtedly apreference to look at the world’s most sophisticated and developed urbancentres, even when a study of ‘marginal’ societies is arguably more relevant(Parnell, 1997; Gilbert, 2000; Huchzermeyer, 2002). Perhaps for this reason, whenit came to developing their capital housing subsidy policy, South African policymakers were apparently unaware of Chilean experience (Rust & Rubenstein,1996; Gilbert, 2002b). Of course, ‘high-status’ countries have other advantagesand push their experience much harder. Their sales pitch is helped by theirability to pay the airfares of overseas experts to see how the model works inpractice and, in any case, their universities have trained many policy makers indeveloping countries.

Chile has become increasingly important as a source of lessons for the rest ofSpanish America as its status has grown. The country’s economic ‘miracle’, itsperceived success with privatization, health and pension reform, and its success-ful transition from military to democratic government have made it a primesource of learning in a number of fields. In Spanish America, Chile has highstatus, shares a common language and is psychologically proximate. It is aperfect exemplar.

The Role of Technocrats and Consultants

Local experts form the main channel through which foreign lessons reachnational consciousness. Such people come from diverse backgrounds and maybe employed by government, be waiting to take over the reins of power,represent firms in the private sector or come from the increasingly importantworld of the NGOs. But they nearly always share one important characteristic,they belong to transnational ‘epistemic communities’ (Adler & Haas, 1992; Haas,1992; Rose, 1993; Stone, 1999b). “These experts are open to new ideas due totheir professional training, especially if part of it took place in a foreign country.As members of ‘epistemic communities’ they are in constant contact withspecialists in other nations and particularly attuned to new policy trends”(Weyland, 2004).

In many countries, experts perform an influential role through ‘think tanks’.Such institutions can help

to diffuse ideas by acting as (1) a clearing house for information; (2)their involvement in the advocacy of ideas; (3) their well developednetworks, domestically into the political parties, bureaucracy, mediaand academe, and internationally with other think tanks, NGOs andinternational organisations; and (4) their intellectual and scholarly baseproviding expertise on specialised policy issues. (Stone, 1999b, p. 4)

In South Africa, the Urban Foundation and Planact have played significant rolesin influencing government policy at particular times (Rust & Rubenstein, 1996;Bond, 2000).

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If experts are crucial in helping to bring international experience to localattention, they are often also in a position to implement new models or topersuade those with power to do so. As Nelson (2004) explains:

External models provide crucial inputs to the process of designing andgaining adequate consensus on directions for change. But internalcircumstances, judgment, and politics largely determine how thosemodels are used. Ideas and experience from other countries interactwith and complement, rather than substituting for local experience andobjectives. More borrowing does not necessarily, or even probablymean less local control and input.

Local experts are among the key actors exercising local control; sometimes theyare keen to introduce particular reforms, sometimes to block them. In both Chileand South Africa, local technocrats constituted a powerful opposition to theWorld Bank when it attempted to insert unwelcome approaches into housingpolicy (Gilbert, 2002a, 2002b).

Autonomy versus Compulsion

Sometimes governments have had little choice about learning from abroad. InLatin America, few countries have been entirely free from external pressure. USforeign policy over the years has certainly led to major shifts in Latin Americandomestic policy in fields as diverse as drugs, land reform, democratization andtrade and, on occasions, the US administration has even removed foreigngovernments for not obeying ‘the rules’ (e.g. in Panama and Grenada).

In economic matters, it has been the Bretton Woods institutions, often at therequest of the US government, that have forced economic lessons on sovereigngovernments (Wilkes & Lefrancois, 2002, pp. 18–19). Few now doubt that thefirst generation of adjustment programmes was forced on local governments andthat even now the IMF is likely to ignore local sensibilities (Bond, 2000;Chambers, 2001; Moseley, 2001). Even the previous chief economist at the WorldBank has famously admitted that “conditionality—while ostensibly based onfreely negotiated terms of agreement—went far beyond what could be justifiedby fiduciary responsibility and democratic accountability on the part of thedeveloped countries and the international financial institutions” (Stiglitz, 1999,p. 3). In his opinion, Washington officials were often arrogant: “legitimated intheir expertise, prestige, and privileges by the ‘universality’ of their messages”and therefore “disinclined to recognize limitations or subtleties in the localapplicability of their technical expertise” (ibid., p. 11).

Of course, the degree to which conditionality has been forced on Third Worldgovernments has often been exaggerated (Taher, 2001). For, even when countrieshave accepted seemingly harsh conditional terms, it is not entirely clear whethertheir governments were put under duress or whether they would have intro-duced the measures themselves (Stern & Ferreira, 1997). Many governments,particularly in larger countries, have avoided taking the prescribed medicine bynever applying the conditions that they have accepted under a loan agreement.Large countries have considerable autonomy with respect to the IMF and theWorld Bank because those agencies need them at least as much as they needhelp from Washington.

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If Washington has not always been successful in forcing change in theeconomic field it seems to have been even less effective in the social arena,mainly because approval has to be sought from more actors and particularlyfrom parliaments (Nelson, 1996). This is one reason why social security reformshave been so diverse in Latin America (Mesa-Lago, 1996; Weyland, 2004).

A further source of autonomy for all Third World governments is thatdevelopment agencies have different remits and are often competing with oneanother for influence (Klak, 1992, p. 91). The main institutions differ in terms ofwhat they are permitted to do and at times in their basic philosophy. Forexample, the World Bank typically lends only to central government whereasUSAID and the Inter-American Development Bank have been able to deal withlocal governments or with private institutions.1 In addition, the Inter-AmericanDevelopment Bank has placed more emphasis on the issue of inequality over thelast decade than the World Bank, which has always been reluctant to addressthis problem (Culpeper, 1995; Tussie, 1995; IADB, 1999; World Bank, 2000).

Persuasion not Force

Increasingly, most national and international development agencies seek topersuade rather than to force local governments to adopt appropriate policies.As Weyland (2004) puts it:

The World Bank, IDB, and IMF organize and finance many inter-national meetings and training programs, which expose participants toa wealth of systematic information about policy programs enacted inother countries. They often arrange and bankroll international consult-ing engagements. And they produce a stream of thorough,sophisticated research that is particularly important in casting a system-atic comparative perspective on crucial policy issues.

In terms of publications, those of the World Bank are particularly influential, thepreferred reading of most technocrats (Wilkes & Lefrancois, 2002, p. 21).

World Bank publications, of course, always push a preferred line. Nelson(2004) argues that the World Bank’s “influential volume, Averting the Old AgeCrisis … and the Bank’s subsequent conferences and seminars on the topichelped to spread the ideas embedded in the Chilean [pensions] model through-out the world as the leading alternative to pay-as-you-go”. Similarly, the Bank’shousing-sector paper produced in 1993 generated a vigorous debate in theliterature and convinced many national experts of the appropriateness of amarket-based enabling approach (World Bank, 1993; Pugh, 1994a, 1994b; Ward& Jones, 1997). The same was true of the sector papers on transport and urbanservices (World Bank, 1995, 1996) and is still true, to a lesser extent, of the annualWorld Bank Development Report (Chambers, 2001; Mawdsley and Rigg, 2002,2003).

The Capital Housing Subsidy Programme in Colombia

Before 1991, national administrations in Colombia had followed a similar ap-proach to many other Latin American governments in relation to social housing.The private sector built homes for the better off, a public agency constructedhouses for a small number of poorer families, and those with little money or fewcontacts provided their own homes through self-help construction (Gilbert &

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Ward, 1985; Molina, 1990; Gilbert, 2001). With the exception of the period1970–74, when housing construction constituted one of the four basic planks ofthe national development plan (DNP, 1972), and during 1982–86, when a majorinitiative was taken to increase housing construction for the poor (DNP, 1983),low-income housing rarely received much in the way of government spending(Jaramillo, 1982; Gilbert & Ward, 1985; Robledo, 1985; Molina, 1990; Hommes etal., 1994, p. 162). The almost inevitable consequence of such minimal spendingwas that self-help housing expanded throughout the country; invasions andpirate urbanizations provided the plots on which most of the population builttheir own homes.

As in most other Latin American countries, the principal state housing agency,the Institute for Territorial Credit (ICT), was widely criticized for its limitedproduction, the low quality of its housing solutions, its high administrativecosts, the political criteria underpinning the distribution of its housing units, thelarge financial losses it made and the fact that it usually ignored local planningregulations (Robledo, 1985; Castro, 1989; Gutierrez Cuevas, 1989; Pacheco, 1989;Ortiz, 1995). When the institute started to accumulate huge debts between 1982and 1986, the time for radical change was nigh (Pacheco, 1989).2

In 1990, the overall approach to housing provision was modified substantially.The government of Cesar Gaviria (1990–94) abolished the ICT, replacing it withthe slimmed down INURBE, introduced a policy of giving direct subsidies to thepoor, channelled those subsidies towards privately supplied housing options,and encouraged the private sector to supply more so-called ‘social-interesthousing’ (DNP, 1991, 1993). The state would no longer directly issue contracts tobuild housing and INURBE was to act principally as a housing facilitator. Itsmain functions would be to administer the subsidy programme and to adviselocal authorities on various aspects of housing policy.

The new housing policy attempted both to reduce the housing deficit and togenerate employment. The state would boost effective demand by offeringsubsidies to poorer households. Private construction companies would producea variety of housing solutions for subsidized groups, competing to producebetter kinds of shelter. Annual production of social-interest housing wasplanned to increase from an average of 35 000 units in the 1980s to 95 000 in theearly 1990s.

Colombia had clearly moved towards accepting the kind of housing policyrecommended by the World Bank (World Bank, 1993; Gilbert, 1997). The privatesector would not only produce ‘social-interest housing’ under competitiveconditions but would also help to finance home purchase by lending to the poor(Giraldo, 1993, p. 45). And, while total government spending would be higherthan that of its immediate predecessor, it would be only two-fifths of what it hadbeen in the mid-1980s (Velez, 1994, p. 101).

The Sources of Change

The Role of Crisis

I argued above that crisis is a powerful motive for change. Crisis makes itobvious that current policies have failed and, depending on the depth and extentof the crisis, is likely to lead to a paradigm shift. The shift in Colombian housingpolicy was certainly hastened by two major crises; one threatening the state’s

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very ability to govern, the other an institutional crisis confined to the housingsector.

The general political and economic crisis. Colombia suffered much less from thedebt crisis of the 1980s than most other Latin American countries, although it didexperience two years of economic decline. However, the country’s problemswere sufficient to convince the incoming government in 1986 to embrace anAsian-type export-based model, even if increasing violence generated by thedrug barons and by the guerrilla movement impeded its implementation. Thesecond incentive for change came in 1989 when three presidential candidateswere assassinated during the election campaign. When the prospective winner,Luis Galan was murdered by the Medellın drug cartel, the new Liberal candi-date, Cesar Gaviria, took over the campaign with relatively few promises orfavours to repay. His independence gave him the opportunity to rid the countryof the ‘clientelism’ that so many thought was responsible for its problems. Thegovernment supported a representative assembly which was responsible forproducing a new Constitution and which was successfully approved in 1991.The new Constitution established political and administrative decentralization,the election of mayors and a means for individuals to claim their constitutionalrights in the courts (Bejarano, 2001).

The new government was also committed to implementing much of what isknown as the Washington consensus (Williamson, 1993). A series of reforms wasintroduced which modified Colombia’s trade, foreign investment, tax, andfinancial and foreign exchange regulations. During 1991 and 1992, customsduties and import surcharges were slashed. Colombian labour laws were alsosimplified to improve the functioning of the labour market, substantially reduc-ing the cost of dismissing a worker, and introducing new restrictions on theability to strike (Hommes et al., 1994, p. 49). Reforms also transformed pensionarrangements and organization of the health sector (Uribe, 2000). Gaviria’s‘Peaceful Revolution’ also concurred with World Bank thinking in so far as ithad a clear social component. It aimed to lift at least four million Colombians outof the ranks of the estimated 13 million poor, and raised social spending.

The crisis in the ICT. The economic and political crisis affecting the country asa whole prompted a change in the development model but, arguably, changeswere made in the housing sector only because of the profound crisis that wasalso affecting the major housing institution. By 1989, the ICT was facing a severefinancial crisis and was technically bankrupt. Although much of the agency’sfinance was highly subsidized, relatively few of the housing beneficiaries wererepaying their loans. In 1990, an official study showed that for every peso ofcredit only 17 cents were being recouped and that did not allow for theadministrative cost of collecting those 17 cents! As in Chile, ordinary Colom-bians did not consider that the loans on their homes were something that hadto be paid back (Nieto, 2000; Gilbert, 2002a). They were encouraged to think ofthe homes as a gift because of the way that homes had been allocated in themid-1980s. Under the administration of Belisario Betancur, the homes without adeposit were allocated through a raffle. “When families were selected theybelieved that they had won; the home was a gift from Maria Eugenia (the headof ICT) and Don Belisario.” Although many families were unable to pay backtheir loans because they were very poor, many were not poor. The loan issue

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became highly politicized when the beneficiaries formed themselves into protestgroups. As it was impossible to remove the people or to get them to pay, thedecision was taken to turn part of each loan into a subsidy.

The financial crisis had a terrible effect within the ICT and no one wasprepared to answer for anything. An official study found that administrativelythe institution was a ‘disaster’. More and more evidence came to light ofcorruption, poor management and clientelism. The problem of the ICT was aperpetual headache throughout the Barco administration (1986–90).

The extent of the crisis in the ICT was such that few were prepared to defendit. Many municipal governments were protesting about the agency’s disregardfor their planning regulations and more and more complaints were coming fromthe customers. Even the building companies that monopolized most of thecontracts were unhappy because they were being paid in bonds rather than incash. Several of my respondents were categorical in their denunciations of theICT, at least in the form that it existed in 1989: “it was a bureaucracy that wecould do without”; “it was heavily politicised”; “that was where they stole themoney”. Another said that: “The country, and particularly the private sector,was convinced that the ICT model was finished”. There was no opposition to achange in the housing model because no one liked the old one!

Who Invented the New Policy?

If there was total agreement that a new housing policy was required, was therereal agreement over the form that the new policy should take? Did the govern-ment look at other countries’ experiences and choose the best, did they have amodel thrust upon them by outside actors like the World Bank or did theystumble upon an alternative? In a sense, the last is the most plausible expla-nation of what happened but it is one that omits a highly significantpoint—adoption of the new development model limited the range of optionsfrom which the housing technocrats could choose. One respondent thought that“we basically took the idea for housing from the plans for restructuring thehealth sector”. As in Chile (Gilbert, 2002a), the nature of the new housing modelwas constrained by the parameters laid down by the government’s overalleconomic strategy (Arellano, 1982; Haramoto, 1983, Almarza, 1997). In Chile, thedifferent ministries received a blueprint from the national planning agency andwere asked to come up with subsidy solutions that were compatible with thatbasic strategy. Officials in the housing ministry set to work to prepare a housingpolicy that met the monetarist guidelines but which would also improve onearlier forms of housing policy. These officials were not Chicago Boys, not eveneconomists, and one of them had actually served under the socialist government(Gilbert, 2002a).

In Colombia, the paradigmatic change represented by the development modellimited the government to a particular set of housing policies. Given acceptanceof the neo-liberal approach and the crisis in the ICT, anything that relied on apublic housing agency building homes either for rent or sale would be unaccept-able. Subsidizing the interest rate—one of Washington’s betes noires—would alsobe ruled out of court. The policy had to embrace greater reliance on privateinitiative and the rules of the market. In so far as subsidies would be given, theyhad to target poor people much more accurately than in the past.

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The policy that met this general formula was designed by a group oftechnocrats linked to the Gaviria campaign team. According to one, the basicdesign was drawn from “the pages of the economics textbooks that we read atuniversity” and was certainly no copy of housing policy in other countries.However, the Chilean experience did play some role because a team of govern-ment officials went to Chile in May 1990 and spent a week talking with MINVUofficials and collecting a lot of documents. Discussions with the housing expertsof the prospective government continued on their return. The clearest sign ofcollaboration is that the outlines of the new strategy were spelt out in an outlineplan produced by the National Planning Department as early as April 1990, fourmonths before the new government took over (DNP, 1990).

Collaboration between the two administrations was possible because both theoutgoing and the incoming president were from the same party. More importantstill was that Gaviria had the total backing of the party because of the assassin-ation of Galan. In addition, the head of the National Planning Office under theexisting government was a close associate of the incoming Minister of Finance.Some members of the existing administration would also go on to hold officialpositions under Gaviria. For example, the head of urban development in theNational Planning Department under Virgilio Barco became a key housingadviser to the new Minister of Development (the ministry in charge of housing).This person was effectively in charge of getting agreement about the housingpolicy between the Ministry of Finance, the National Planning Department andthe Ministry of Development.

Understandably, there was some tension over the details of the housingpolicy. The incoming Minister of Development was much less convinced by thevirtues of the neo-liberal strategy than many of his colleagues. According to oneinterviewee he went along with the plan only because he saw the politicaladvantage of handing out subsidies and because he was offered the post oncondition that he would implement the model. When he became president fouryears later he immediately introduced several substantial changes to the housingprogramme (DNP, 1995; Gilbert, 1997)

Approval by Congress was not a problem because the idea of offeringup-front subsidies was clearly going to be popular and the recent experiencewith the ICT meant that few were unhappy with the idea of letting the publicuse their subsidy to choose the house they wanted.

Outside Advice

There can be little doubt that Chile was influential in the design of theprogramme and has continued to influence Colombian housing policy subse-quently. Over the years, several Chileans have come to Bogota to discuss theChilean programme and several Colombians have been to Santiago. Chileanexperience has also been a significant factor in the adoption of other housing-re-lated policies in Colombia: the SISBEN system of targeting poor families (analmost direct copy of the Ficha-Cas in Chile), mortgage bonds and, mostrecently, the introduction of leasing (Zuleta, 1996; El Tiempo, 2003). One intervie-wee went so far as to claim that Colombia has been ‘obsessed’ with the exampleof Chile.

Some respondents had known about the Chilean housing programme foryears. In 1978, one had been contracted by the government to report on the new

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Chilean system. Although he talked extensively with one of the architects of theChilean programme and was generally impressed, he doubted that the modelwould work in Colombia because it needed a military government to implementit. Nevertheless, the private sector began to show interest in the Chilean modeland, in 1982, he returned to Chile with the head of the Central Mortgage Bankas an adviser to the Betancur government. This time the recommendation wasthat the government should make a serious study of the Chilean experience.Nothing came of the advice because the head of the ICT wanted nothing to dowith the programme; Marıa Eugenia Rojas “just wanted to construct more andmore houses”.

Other respondents knew about the Chilean experience through attending theconferences of the FICC (the Inter-American Federation of Chambers of Con-struction). Two interviewees, who were both to become key players in housingpolicy in Colombia, were very impressed by the Chilean experience and thepositive views given by the local private sector when they attended a meetingin Santiago in 1988. They were sufficiently impressed to read a lot more aboutthe experience in the next couple of years, and articles on the Chilean experiencewere also being published by Camacol (Chile, MINVU, 1989; Echegaray, 1992).

Perhaps the most critical input was the visit of four government officials toSantiago in May 1990 (see above). The outlines of the new housing law werewritten immediately after that visit. However, if the language of that law isrecognizably Chilean, no Chileans formed part of the group that initiallyprepared it and no Chileans actually came to Colombia until after PresidentGaviria’s inauguration.3

If the Colombian programme had a distinctive Chilean birthmark, the Chileanhousing model was strongly ‘Colombianized’, as one interviewee put it.

We knew about the problems that the Chileans had had with non-re-payment of the loans. We offered lower subsidies than the Chileansbecause we had a stronger financial sector than they did, because wehad many more people and because the Colombian government wasnot prepared to devote as much in the way of resources. Chile investedUS$300 million in housing in 1990 and the best we managed, in 1993,was US$190 million.

The Colombians also opted for a fixed subsidy, which encouraged the poor to gofor cheaper housing options. “If they bought a house worth US$3,600 thesubsidy was worth one-third of the value. If it was US$24,000 it was only 5 percent.” Prior savings were a victim of the modifications because the incomingminister did not think poor Colombians could afford them and would beexcluded from the subsidy programme as a result. After a policy void of severalmonths, prior savings were retained only as one of the criteria for selection.

Because of the adaptations made in the Chilean model, Colombia did notsuffer the fate of some of the countries learning from Chile about health andpensions. As Weyland (2004) argues, the

availability of the Chilean model and its apparent success inducedseveral Latin American countries to rush into a drastic reform thatended up producing disappointing results. While none of these nationsimported a carbon copy of the Chilean system, anchoring induced themto stay too close to the original and to introduce insufficient adapta-tions.

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He believes that it is important that governments choose only the usefulelements in an overseas model. However, few Chilean housing experts wouldshare that opinion. One Chilean respondent who helped to found his country’shousing model feels simply that the Colombians copied the plan badly. OtherChilean interviewees have despaired of exporting the Chilean model success-fully because it will work only if a whole series of changes are made in the fabricof the importing society (Gilbert, 2002a).

Chilean influence has not been confined to housing and was clearly influentialin the Colombian health and pension reforms. Jose Pinera, the main architect ofChile’s pension reforms, visited Colombia shortly before Gaviria became presi-dent—a visit that was very important given the significance of pensions in thewider labour reforms essential to the success of the neo-liberal project. Chileanexperience also had a major influence on the health reforms. For althoughWeyland (2004) claims that the reform was “inspired by a wide range ofdifferent country experiences, including Chile’s partial health-care privatization,reforms of Britain’s National Health Service, the ‘managed competition’ underly-ing the Clinton health plan, and the universalization of coverage achieved inCosta Rica”, a key actor in the health reform admits that “undoubtedly, the mostimportant external influence” was the Chilean reform of the 1980s (Uribe, 2000).

The Role of Technocrats

The Colombian housing programme, like the neo-liberal reform in general,relied heavily on technical experts. Indeed, some respondents have commentedthat: “The new Gaviria government was led by technocrats”. This was possiblebecause Gaviria was more independent from political pressures than mostColombian presidents; the form of his nomination and the trauma of Galan’sassassination having freed him from some of the political compromises thatmost presidents carry into office. Technical experts were soon active in trying toinfluence housing policy, a task that was eased by the fact that several wouldmove from office in one administration to the other. But capital housingsubsidies were a post-electoral discovery. Prior to the election, the technicianswere concerned mainly with convincing the candidates to ditch the ICT. Afterthe election, they were busy trying to formulate a housing programme thatwould fit the neo-liberal agenda.

Similar kinds of technical advice were also forthcoming from the privatesector, and some of the people involved in the construction industry laterbecame major actors in formulating the government’s housing policy. Camacolwas an important source of technical advice and criticism. Admittedly, this wasa much less direct role than that played by the Chilean Chamber of Construc-tion, whose influence is sufficient to have allowed them to effectively nameseveral ministers of housing. In Colombia, only one vice-minister of housing hascome directly from Camacol, even though it undoubtedly influenced the choiceof others.

The International Institutions

So far nothing has been said about the influence of Washington. The reason issimple: none of the usual suspects, namely the World Bank, the Inter-AmericanDevelopment Bank and USAID, had any real influence on housing policy inColombia at the time. At first sight this is surprising, in so far as the World Bank

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was trying as early as 1991 to encourage South Africa to take up a policy verylike the Chilean subsidy model (Gilbert, 2002b). Similarly, both the Inter-Amer-ican Development Bank and USAID were hiring consultants to sell Chileanexperience in other Latin American countries. USAID was also financing manymeetings on housing and, according to one USAID official, ensuring that theChilean housing subsidy programme was on prominent display at those meet-ings.

The problem for Washington was that none of these institutions were lendingmuch money to Colombia. The World Bank had much less influence over policythan in most other parts of Latin America because Colombia suffered much lessthan most from the debt crisis. Various interviewees were insistent that theWorld Bank had played no role in formulating housing policy. One Bankemployee was mentioned as having been asked for advice, but another, whospent several weeks in the National Planning Department and had been deeplyinvolved in the Bank’s negotiations with MINVU in Chile, was not mentioned.The lack of Bank influence is not all that surprising in the light of Nelson’s (2004)conclusion that “the World Bank’s role was minimal” in the pension reforms ofArgentina, Colombia, and Peru in l993–94 and even the IMF played only aninitial role in Argentina. Both the Bank and the IMF were much more influentialin purely economic issues, particularly in the areas of stabilization and restruc-turing.

Nor did the Inter-American Development Bank exercise any influence on theadoption of capital housing subsidies. Again, this was mainly because it was notasked to lend money for the programme. The Inter-American Development Bankwas involved in two upgrading programmes in the 1980s and has played somerole in the housing subsidy programme since 1995 through the finance it hasprovided for the National Solidarity Network. More recently, the bank financeda study of the operation of the housing subsidy programme carried out by ateam of Chilean consultants (Budinich et al., 2002). But its first loan for housingsubsidies began only in 2004.

USAID, too, has had little influence on Colombian housing policy. The agencydid not have a mission there for years and became involved again only in the1990s. One USAID respondent was sure that USAID had nothing to do directlywith the transfer of housing subsidy policy from Chile to Colombia. This issurprising given that the agency has spent considerable effort in stimulatingvarious countries in the region to adopt elements of Chilean policy (Kimm, 1993;Crespo et al., 2000).

Other aid agencies have offered help to Colombia in the broader housingarena but nothing for the subsidy programme. Under the Gaviria government,for example, INURBE received help from the European Community and theGerman aid agency DTZ, helped with a demarginalization programme inMedellın until 1998.

Other Routes to Learning

Today, it is probably easier than ever before to obtain advice from othercountries. Recently, the head of the housing division of the Ministry of Develop-ment said that it was constantly looking at foreign experience, particularly atChile, and in terms of housing finance, Mexico. Housing officials are exchangingexperiences with several Central American countries but also with Argentina,

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Ecuador and Peru. The regular meetings of housing ministers are important, asare meetings arranged by UN-HABITAT. Several other respondents, in bothColombia and Chile, concurred with that view and also identified UNIAPRAVIas an important meeting point at which to exchange housing experience.

Today, countries are increasingly selling their skills, including their advice onhousing. Chile has been doing this for years, although much less actively inhousing than in, say, pension reform, and has an organization—AGCI—whichmarkets Chilean expertise abroad. While Colombia does not have an equivalent,PROEXPO is exporting the country’s construction experience.

Conclusion

Ward (1999, p. 58) suggests that there are six types of “diffusional episode” thatcharacterize power relationships between ‘importing’ and ‘exporting’ nations:(1) authoritarian imposition; (2) contested imposition; (3) negotiated imposition;(4) undiluted borrowing; (5) selective borrowing; and (6) synthetic innovation.The case of the adoption of capital housing subsidies in Colombia most clearlyconforms to ‘selective borrowing’. There can be little doubt that Chile was astrong influence on Colombian policy but equally that many aspects of thepolicy were modified to fit the local situation.

There is no suggestion of imposition because the major development banksand aid agencies were not operating very actively in Colombia at the time. Thatthey approved of the transfer is not in doubt, because it was compatible withwhat they were doing elsewhere, but they played no role in the transfer. UnlikeChile and South Africa where they tried very hard to modify local policy, theymade no such effort in Colombia. Their lack of influence is linked to their lackof power in circumstances in which they are not lending money.

If Washington played no direct role in establishing the new housing policy,one point must be remembered. The basic tenets of the new housing policy werequintessentially neo-liberal. President Gaviria’s (1990–94) national programme of‘opening’ was based firmly on the Washington consensus. The programmeopened up the economy to imports, encouraged exports, attracted foreigninvestment, began the process of privatization, reformed the banking, labourand social welfare legislation and cut government spending. Housing policy wasa mere detail in the grand design and one given very little in the way ofresources.

In that light, Colombia’s acceptance of capital housing subsidies is ratherdifferent. Local housing experts considered outside experience but looked onlyat appropriate experience. Anything that would not fit the outlines of theneo-liberal model was ignored; all kinds of ‘alternative’ housing experience wereconsidered unsuitable. This prompts the thought that it is important to considerhierarchies of policy and diffusion. For example, low-level policies might beinvented locally, middle-level policies copied partially from abroad and high-level policy imposed by the IMF. This was definitely not the case in Colombia,because the decisions about accepting the neo-liberal agenda were more or lesstaken freely, imposed only in the sense of there being an ideological hegemonyof economic thinking. But the point is that all decisions are made in context. IfColombian housing policy was determined locally, it is equally clear that it wasdecided within the confines of an ideological corset. To understand the nature of

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diffusion properly, therefore, we need to understand the wider dynamics ofdecision making in a globalizing world.

Acronyms

Camacol: Colombian Chamber of CommerceDNP: National Planning DepartmentFedelonjas: Federation of Real Estate AgenciesFICC: Inter-American Federation of Chambers of ConstructionICT: Institute for Territorial CreditINURBE: National Institute for Social Interest Housing and Urban ReformMINVU: Ministry of Housing and UrbanismUNIAPRAVI: Inter-American Union of Housing

Notes

1. Tussie (1995, p. 49). Unlike the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank’s Articles of

Agreement do not require government guarantees on loans. Hence it accepts guarantees by

private banks or direct foreign investors.

2. Under Belisario Betancur, a major effort was made to make lower-income housing units

available to the poor. The key plank in this effort was to remove the barrier of the housing

deposit. The Housing and Savings Corporations were expected to lend a proportion of their

savings for social-interest housing.

3. Some Chileans also visited Colombia to advise the government, although most of these visits

came in 1993 and 1994, after the programme was in place. Much later, in 1999, a team of Chilean

consultants conducted an evaluation of the Colombian subsidy programme in preparation for

an Inter-American Development Bank loan to support the programme (Budinich et al., 2002).

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