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The Colombian internal conflict case provides useful scenarios, realities and dynamics for nourishing the debate between those who treat internal and interstate conflicts as disconnected or totally independent phenomena and those who argue the frequent links between them. This policy paper is situated in the latter school of thought, and from that angle I shall argue the usefulness of perceiving the nexus between intrastate and interstate conflicts, and its applicability to the Colombian internal conflict. The paper highlights the importance of taking into account the strong nexus in order to prevent international disputes that put regional security at risk; it also suggests that the current Colombian peace process represents an historic opportunity for Colombia -and a great challenge for the Colombian society-while at the same time being an opportunity for thinking about a shared future in the South America region, which challenges the Colombian state and its performance at the international level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2015, local governments of 30 Mexican states have joined the National Open Government Partnership to enhance openness through mechanisms of transparency, accountability and citizen participation. The objective of this paper is to analyze the frameworks promoted by the State Government of Michoacán on public participation since the adoption of an open government policy. To achieve the objective, press releases from the Michoacán State Government's page were collected and subsequently examined through a framing analysis. Findings indicate that this subnational government has framed public participation in two ways: as a democratic advance and as a transfer of responsibilities to citizens. At the same time, there is a recognition of new public and private actors sharing public decisions with the government. Despite the progress found in this subnational context, the authors warn of serious risks due to the absence of clear rules for the implementation of mechanisms for public participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to determine whether the use of Private Military and Security Companies strengthens military institutions and the provision of security or, on the contrary, questions the monopoly of the legitimate use of force and generates new challenges to the current role of the military. It analyzes three main realms within the military sphere where the presence of PMSCS may have a direct impact: the exercise of the monopoly of the use of violence, the professionalization of the military, and the process of enrollment of new recruits. The paper highlights that the presence of PMSCS does not affect the continuity of the state's monopoly of the legitimate use of force. It also argues that although PMSCS perform certain activities that enhance the provision of security in a state, the military should always be prepared to overtake those activities delegated to PMSCS and should avoid becoming excessively dependent on private companies to execute them. Likewise, the paper sustains that the privatization of security distorts the conception of professionalism put up front by CMR theorists. Finally, the paper states that the presence of PMSCS obliges today's military to strengthen its recruitment strategies and consolidate a sound enrollment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an instrument of the Colombian market-led land reform, the Comprehensive Land Subsidy (SIT) provides for land entitlement to poor peasants and smallholders tied to the development of rural production projects, through a communal property regime in certain cases. Through the case study of Sandrana y Samaría, this paper seeks to analyze the extent to which this land reform instrument and its implementation conditions create the necessary framework for productive and community development based on the acquisition of a land title. To that end, the study focuses on the logic of the main aspects of this policy instrument in the context of the Colombian land reform policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water is a natural resource fundamental for quality of human life. Nevertheless, there are more than one billion people in the world without access to safe drinking water. The water crisis is mainly a crisis of governance, and corruption is one of the principal underlying factors. Due to the characteristics of water supply, the sector must be regulated. However, there are informational asymmetries in regulation, which are a cause of regulatory failures and make the sector more prone to corruption. In Colombia, water supply regulation has a legal structure that aims at stimulating participation, transparency, accountability and integrity. But, there is a significant gap between legal provisions and practice. This paper reviews the Colombian regulatory framework with the aim to identify such gaps and propose ways to strengthen the framework in order to safeguard the delivery of an efficient service to the users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political reform of 2003, has been the most important in electoral matters made after the 1991 Constitution. The phenomena of "microempresas electorales", "operación avispa" and personalization, brought about a need to reform and reorganize the system and political parties with two fundamental changes: the electoral formula and the electoral barrier. Since the adoption of the reform there have been four elections in Colombia, two regional (Assembly and Council in 2003 and 2007) and two national (Senate and House of Representatives in 2006 and 2010), which have had mechanical effects on the party system at both the national and sub-national levels, and have "reorganized" the political forces in each legislature. The overall objective of this paper is to observe the effects of the reforms on the national party system in both the first (2006) and second (2010) wave of elections, specifically about the representativeness of the system, taking into account their context and political situation. We conclude that the change in the electoral formula and the imposition of the electoral barrier managed to reorganize the parties and therefore political competition without affecting system proportionality, as its detractors had claimed. Although this aspect had no significant variation, factors such as electoral density lead to other questions over the Colombian electoral system such as the necessity (or not) to think about a new reform that points to a change in the electoral districts and therefore in the levels of representation of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows the results of the research during my master that focused on analyzing the structure of patronage networks in implementing the "Families in Action program" as spaces for the accumulation of symbolic and political capital for benefit of internal and external stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the determinants of legislative action; furthermore it is a study of the Colombian Senate from 2006-2010 where the goal is to discuss the factors that influence the initiation of national bills. In Colombia, the political reforms of 1991, 2003 and 2009 have sought to overcome the particularistic legislation and transform in some way, political representation. In this sense, we estimate the propensity of legislators to initiate national bills as a function of the party structure, the party genesis including the existence of closed lists and seniority. The analysis suggests that the regional anchor of the traditional parties, departmental chiefs and the election system have discouraged national proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new institutionalism has become a dynamic field of work in political science. This paper shows how the new institutionalism, in its heterodox version, has taken up the research program of old institutionalism, while orthodoxy has incorporated the methodological developments of behaviorism and rational choice. The result is an approach that provides a framework for analyzing the multiple problems of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]