[MUSIC] Legislative intervention are important as they have, among other things, a signaling function. They signal, in a very public and clear way, that certain practices should be discontinued. A government decree may easily work, however, for conventions, such as traffic rules, because it is in the best interest of everyone to coordinate with each other and therefore people can trust that everyone else will comply with a government injunction, because it is also in their best interest to do so. The law coordinates behavior via the creation of new expectations. Legislative change is much more problematic in the case of social norms. One would expect that an external legal in comprehension may facilitate behavioral change, by taking away the stigma associated with disobeying the norm. Passing a law that prohibits a practice such as female genital cutting, or child marriage through the introduction of new sanctions should meet with success, because it would alter the cost and benefits of the behavior as well as change social expectations and the perception of what it is approved. Public opposition to the norm would become less costly and so we should see the targeted behavior slowly disappear. Yet, plenty of prior experience, especially in developing countries, tells us that change initiated in a top down fashion, typically in the form of legislative intervention, seldom work. The idea that legal interventions will change the cost and benefits of a practice is to simply stick. It requires many conditions to be present in order to be effective. Whether laws bring about social change depends on factors such as legitimacy, procedural fairness and how the law originates and is enforced. If we view the law as legitimate we are more likely to comply with it. A legitimate law must come from a legitimate and recognized authority. And the procedures through which the authority makes decisions must also be perceived as fair and appropriate. The law should be consistently enforced, and enforcers must be perceived as honest. Anti-corruption campaigns are a telling example of ineffective legal intervention. These laws are typically enacted during politically sensitive periods, for example, in pre-electoral times, or when an incumbent government wants to strengthen its grip on power. A healthy skepticism would be a reasonable response to such self-serving interventions. A general trust in the legal system and the rule of law, are important pre-condition for effective laws. However, perhaps the most important determinant of successful enforcement is a sense that the legal arrangements are not so distant from existing social norms as to lose credibility. As a legal scholar has argued, if the law strays too far from the norms, the public will not respect the law, and hence will not stigmatize those who violate it. Loss of stigma means loss of the most important deterrent the criminal justice system has. If the law is to have any value at all, it needs to stick close to the norms. For the threat of enforcement to be credible, the law should approximate popular views. The little or to less many examples of laws that were successful precisely because they were sufficiently close to existing social norms. In Gabon in Senegal, instead of criminalizing polygamy in attempt to encourage monogamy, the law still allow the choice of monogamy or polygamy. In Bogotá, where high firearm mortality was common, Antanas Mockus, the new city mayor, decided to ban guns on holidays, and later, also weekends, sending a strong signal but also recognizing that a moderate legal injunction is easier to enforce and obey. If a new legal norm imposes harsh penalties against an accepted social norm, police will be less likely to enforce the legal norm, prosecutors would be less likely to charge, and juries to convict with effect of argumently reenforcing the social norm that was targeted for change. Minor penalties should be more effective and enforceable in that they gently orient individuals toward a condemnation and eventual abandonment of the harmful norm. The legal approach can be an effective tool to change social expectation, but, as we have seen, only if certain conditions are met. Moreover, individuals will be willing to abandon an established norm if they believe that others in the reference network are changing too. Laws, however good, do not indicate the collective behavior is changing. But they may see now that the old sanctions for not following the norm are losing value, and hopefully support. Heavy-handed law enforcement in areas where child marriage is a universal social norm is counter productive and will lead to a backlash. All to the practice being driven underground. This makes it even harder to reduce child marriage. Law enforcement will be more effective during the final stage, where child marriage is already a modular issue, practiced only by a minority of the population. Without considering that norm, as it were, without attempts to change the norm, we try to do a social engineering process by changing the law. And we are seeing the repercussions of that, that it's like, you know, how you have made a common practice illegal. So sex, like you know, between a girl, say 15, 16 years old, and her boyfriend takes place. It is a crime because under 16, with or without consent, sex is a crime. But because it's a common practice, you will see that there's a huge number of rape cases that are coming to the police, they are dribbling up to the their agency department. It's clogging the system. So a child who is abused or actually raped, we'll say bay gang rape by 40 or 50 old man or like many people, that case has to wait six years to come up in court, because there is a first come first like you know deciding approach. >> Legal systems I think are the bottom of the ladder, if this is a ladder, because we've seen in a number of countries where laws have been made against FGM. Take Ghana, take Burkina Faso, even in the UK, what happen? Children are smuggled out of those countries and then they go and they are cut in other countries. So, the legal system, yes has some value, but it shouldn't drive change because there are ways around it. People will always find ways around it.
