Abstract
In contrast to formally federal systems, in Colombia the absence of procedural safeguards for territorial units has facilitated a high degree of institutional instability as the country has experienced multiple overlapping processes of territorial design and redesign. In the 1980s and 1990s, reformers at the national level in Colombia embraced federal principles in the course of processes that were designed to build democracy, peace, and even the state itself. Subsequently, however, the displacement of these reformers from power at the national level led to the enactment of several de-federalizing processes over the past two decades as the pendulum has swung sharply back toward the center. Although the existence of procedural safeguards by no means guarantees that they will be used, in their absence Colombia has oscillated dramatically between reforms that empowered and then disempowered its territorial units due to contradictory processes of institutional (re)design that enjoyed little input from the representatives of these units themselves. In this way, Colombia illustrates the merits of the processual approach to the study of emerging federal systems that is adopted in this volume.
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Notes
- 1.
For a contrary view, see Wibbels’ claim that the introduction of direct elections for governors in 1991 “pushes the nation from a fairly decentralized unitary system to a fairly centralized federal system” (2005, p. 91).
- 2.
For a copy of the final 2016 Accord see Acuerdo Final para la Terminación del Conflicto y la Construcción de una Paz Estable y Duradera at http://www.altocomisionadoparalapaz.gov.co/procesos-y-conversaciones/Documentos%20compartidos/24-11-2016NuevoAcuerdoFinal.pdf.
- 3.
Roundtable on the PDETs sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center, “Peace in Colombia: Challenges and Opportunities in the Post-Accord Era,” October 7, 2019.
- 4.
More recently, however, the Court also ruled that subnational governments must coordinate their actions with the national government. See “Claves del fallo sobre consultas para frenar actividades extractivas,” El Tiempo, October 12, 2018.
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Eaton, K. (2022). Institutional Instability and (De)federalizing Processes in Colombia. In: Keil, S., Kropp, S. (eds) Emerging Federal Structures in the Post-Cold War Era. Federalism and Internal Conflicts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93669-3_12
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