New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani talked about his efforts to increase civic virtue in New York, which used to be notorious for its crime rate, to about 500 people Saturday in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union.

Giuliani’s speech was the closing address for the Iowa Conference of Political Scientists.

He said Americans have come to believe the subject of civility is a “frivolous” idea.

“What civility is all about is a combination of rights and duties that leads up to freedom,” Giuliani said. “If you have a society that only has rights but no duties, you have a society that is out of control. If you have a society that has only duties and no rights, then you have oppression.”

Giuliani also said he has a strong belief that successful government does not mean big government.

“A good government is the least government,” Giuliani said. “But the least government has to be effective.”

Giuliani used several charts throughout his speech to illustrate his progress.

“I love charts,” Giuliani said. “Charts are a way of keeping government accountable. If you don’t keep government accountable, then it does very little, and people become dispirited about it.”

Two of the charts illustrated New York City’s recent accomplishments in reducing both crime and the number of people on welfare.

Giuliani credits these accomplishments to the adoption of two new policies: New York City Way and Broken Windows Theory.

“The NYC Way program makes being on welfare accountable,” Giuliani said. “If you’re on welfare, you have to be eligible for it — you can’t just keep getting it.”

NYC Way has reduced the number of welfare recipients by 424,000, creating a 30-year low.

Broken Windows Theory describes the new attitude taken by the city toward crime.

“The analogy is that if you have a building with a lot of windows, and somebody comes along and breaks a window, and you do nothing about it, you invite other people to break more windows,” Giuliani said. “Because of your failure to do something about the first window, because you thought it was too small, all the windows get broken and the building falls down.”

Giuliani went on to show that the result of this policy has been an overall decline in crime, including a 70 percent reduction in the number of murders per year.

At the end of his speech, audience members were invited to ask questions. Several people inquired whether Giuliani would be running for president in 2000.

“What I do is not rule out options,” Giuliani said. “The running part is down the road.”

The final question asked at a press conference after his speech was whether Iowans could anticipate any more visits in the future.

“Yeah,” Giuliani said, “you’ll see more of me.”