A characterization of the Bogota decentralization model: Apropos 25 Years of the Bogotá Organic Statute (EOB). Three Viewpoints about the Decentralization Model in Bogotá as a Hybrid Model

Abstract

The Bogotá Organic Statute —EOB, after the Spanish acronym— set outs the relationships between the city central administration and its 20 local districts and provides the guidelines for a district-based decentralization in Bogotá. This paper gathers three viewpoints emerging from a recent research conducted by the inter-faculty research group at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, the “Urban Policy Group” that addressed the theme of the EOB. The main idea from these refñections is how the decentralization in Bogotá has been characterized based on the EOB, in relation to elements from different models allowing defining it as the result from a hybrid process. After a review of the EOB historic background in order to understand its origin, and, having explored the debates in the Constitutional Assembly in order to explain the different trends that inspired and brought it into existence as well as the political context back then, this paper provides a design of the decentralization in Bogotá and its particularities. This way, the characterization of the decentralization model in Bogotá is described as a hybrid process between the decentralization, deconcentration and delegation that sometimes favors the decentralization economic model and, sometimes, the political model. The final reflections lead to think that instead of “becoming blurred and/or modified” due to the effect of the planning and management devices that appeared later, it is the particularities of the “decentralization model adopted in the EOB” —i.e., its largely hybrid nature— that allow understanding what happens when going from the guidelines produced by the city central administration to the formulation and implementation of the projects. This fact requires encouraging a more fluent dialogue between the central administration and the local districts to strengthen the spaces where the citizen’s voice is present as a valid speaker.