Search

PurposeThis paper argues that decentralization reforms in Colombia, implemented since the 1980s, have led to the decentralization of political clientelism rather than its demise. Clientelism is a system of political and economic institutions that turns every local democracy into an extractive political institution. The authors theoretically demonstrate that an increase in public resources will increase corruption.Design/methodology/approachThe authors develop and test a subnational public choice model, where clientelism in elections and corruption in public administration constitute a stable long-term institutional equilibrium. The model comprises two linked subgames: electoral tournament and corruption in public policy. The model makes two predictions that currently oppose predominant approaches: (1) increasing the severity of jail sentences to electoral crimes increases their price and the predominance of machine politics, instead of improving the quality of electoral tournaments and (2) increasing local governments' public finance increases clientelism in elections and corruption in public administration.FindingsThe authors find evidence in favor of the theoretical model of curse of public resources, using difference-in-differences estimation with a database 2016–17 of Colombia's 1,034 municipalities. This country is well-suited for our analysis because it has a long-term commitment to formal democratic processes (since 1958), while plagued by endemic corruption and clientelism problems.Originality/value(1) The theoretical approach is innovative and disruptive of current models on the problem, (2) the model builds upon the Colombian situation, a country with prominent corruption and political violence problems regardless of its relatively long-term commitment with free elections (since 1958) and (3) the theoretical discussion is tested using a comprehensive set of difference-in-differences estimations.

En el contexto de la teoría de equipos laborales, este artículo muestra que todo empleado comunicará, independientemente de su dotación de habilidades, tener una dotación de altas habilidades. Lo anterior permite demostrar que la conformación de equipos laborales puede dar lugar a agrupaciones cuya productividad es menor a la que deberían exhibir en términos de las habilidades que comunicaron antes de la conformación del equipo. La conformación de equipos con agentes cuyas habilidades y destrezas no corresponden con la información que han comunicado en sus mensajes, da lugar a problemas de coordinación que inciden sobre el desempeño del equipo debido la heterogeneidad de los principales que conforman un equipo. Un ejemplo de esto es la conformación de equipos académicos en las universidades In the context of the team ¿s theory, this article shows that employees will be communicated, independent of their skill endowment, have a high skill endowment. In this way, the formation teams can lead to groups whose productivity is lower than that exhibited in terms of the skills they communicated before the formation of the team. The formation of teams with agents and skills does not correspond to the information they have communicated in their messages, it leads to coordination problems that affect the performance of the team due the heterogeneity of the principal ¿s in the team. An example of this is the formation of academic teams in universities. Universidad Pablo de Olavide

El objetivo de este artículo es examinar el impacto del programa de transferencias condicionadas denominado Asignación Universal por Hijo (AUH), implementado en la Argentina desde 2009, en la deserción escolar adolescente. Además se analiza si su efecto en esta variable responde a su impacto en la tasa de ocupación juvenil y en el ingreso familiar per cápita, utilizando una base de datos novedosa: la Encuesta Nacional de Gasto de los Hogares del 2012/2013. Para ello se implementa el método propensity score matching. Los resultados sugieren que la AUH redujo la tasa de deserción escolar entre los adolescentes beneficiarios. The aim of this article is to examine the impact of the conditional cash transfer program called Universal Allocation per Child (UAC), implemented in Argentina in 2009, on school dropout rates among adolescents. In addition, we analyze whether its effect on this variable responds to its impact on the youth employment rate and household income per capita, using a new data base: the National Survey of Household Spending 2012/2013. To do this this, the propensity score matching method is implemented. The results suggest that the UAC reduced the dropout rate among adolescent beneficiaries. Cet article examine l’impact du programme de transferts sous conditions nommé Assignation Universelle par Enfant (AUH, sigle en espagnol), mis en place en Argentine depuis 2009, sur la désertion scolaire adolescente. En outre, on analyse si son effet dans cette variable répond à son impact sur le taux d’occupation des jeunes et sur le revenu familial per capita, en utilisant une base de données novatrice : l’Enquête Nationale de Dépenses dans les Foyers de 2012-2013. Pour cela on utilise la méthode propensity score matching. Les résultats montrent que l’AUH a réduit le taux de désertion scolaire chez les adolescents bénéficiaires. O objetivo deste artigo é examinar o impacto do programa de transferências condicionadas denominado Provisão Universal por Filho (AUH), implementado na Argentina desde 2009, na deserção escolar adolescente. Além disso, é analisado se o seu efeito nesta variável responde a seu impacto na taxa de ocupação juvenil e na renda familiar per capita, utilizando uma base de dados inédita: A pesquisa nacional de despesa dos lares entre 2012 e 2013. Para isso, é aplicado o método propensity score matching. Os resultados sugerem que a AUH reduziu a taxa de deserção escolar entre os adolescentes beneficiários. Fil: Jiménez, Maribel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Salta. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Jurídicas y Sociales. Instituto de Estudios Laborales y del Desarrollo Económico; Argentina Fil: Jiménez, Mónica. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Salta. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Jurídicas y Sociales. Instituto de Estudios Laborales y del Desarrollo Económico; Argentina

In this chapter, we present a critical reflection on the territorial implications, the impact on democracy, power games, the reconstruction of the concept of nation, and the transformations that civil society will have to assume, in connection with the peace process that took place between the Juan Manuel Santos government and the FARC guerrillas in Havana-Cuba. The reader will find a position couched in the academic debate and with perspective of the conjunctural events that have reaffirmed the need to undertake research that delves into the history of what actually happened and yet has been rendered virtually invisible for many years in the regions. The post-agreement scenario inherited from the peace negotiations, advanced between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC guerrilla, poses a future full of challenges for the Colombian political regime. Once the internal war has been redefined as the main structural problem of Colombian society, a whole series of threats emerged that were silent under a constant of more than sixty years of armed conflict. The debate about these old-new conflicts that afflict the Colombian democracy is the main object of study of this chapter.

This chapter introduces a model of public choice with the purpose of explaining the existing relationship between clientelism, corruption, public expenditure, and the quality of public policy, at the municipal level. The model has as reference, the municipal political system that is configured at a later time to the political, administrative, and fiscal decentralization of 1991 in Colombia. In consequence, based on this narrative about the evolution of the Colombian Pacific political regime and the qualitative evidence it provides, we would like to build a theoretical model in the context of game theory. If the equilibrium strategies of the players coincide with their strategies detected in the pattern of institutional behavior, it will be affirmed that the theoretical model explains the behavior patterns detected in the narrative. Our main contribution is to demonstrate the following result: The faction that wins the elections for the mayor’s office is the one for which the average expenditure of obtaining one vote is the lowest, due to its capacity to hire the grass-roots politicians with the greatest social capital, and to whom the highest salaries are paid. Once this political faction obtains control of the mayor’s office, it seeks to assign public contracts to members of its organization in a corrupt manner. This has the purpose of misappropriating, for private consumption, a certain amount of those public resources from such public contracts. The aforementioned contributes to a reduction in the quality of public policy, in such a way that this reduction will be greater whenever the assessment that the faction has for the provision of public goods diminishes, or the average expenditure incurred by the faction increases, in obtaining a vote in the elections. As a corollary to the above, it is possible to affirm that the greater the number of mayorships under the control of political factions, the greater the deterioration in the quality of public policy at the local level.

The analysis offered in this book throws a number of critical and suggestive conclusions about the reality of the Colombian sociopolitical scenario, all this from the specific study of a very interesting regional context: The Colombian Pacific. However, although the crux of this book has pointed to an analysis whose spatial delimitation is expressed, there is no doubt that its results are a point of reference to extend the analysis to other regions in order to understand the regional geopolitics in Colombia and its institutional equilibriums. In this regard, the book Analytical Narrative on Democracies in Colombia. Clientelism, government and public policy in the Pacific region, suggests, through different methodological exercises, that any approach to the study of the Colombian political and social context inevitably places us in a scenario plagued by multiple and varied contradictions. Although it is true that one of the most outstanding characteristics of the Colombian historical evolution has been the structural presence of intense dynamics and circles of violence, the coexistence of this nefarious scenario with one of the democratic traditions, at least formally, is especially suggestive and (unifying and non-conflicting) representative of the whole of Latin America. There is no doubt that the analytical intention of the team of researchers has been the construction of a theoretical sustenance that is consistent with the narrative and the empirical evidence. The conceptual management that accompanies the argumentative strategy serves as the basis for the development of a coherent work. Unquestionably, this is an initial/a primary contribution of scientific-interdisciplinary order to the study of the structural causes of the degradation of the state model in the Pacific and, of course, in a general way in Colombia. It only remains to continue advancing in the next installment of the investigative process in which, very pertinently, an excellent and recognized group of academics has embarked.

This chapter offers a contribution in the analysis of subnational democratic regimes in Colombia. It is recognized as a starting point that the democratization reforms that have been advanced in Colombia from the national level, as is the case of the Political Reform of 2003, do not necessarily guarantee that the democratic regime is homogeneous within the country, there being particularities specific to certain regions and territories. An empirical study of the behavior of local democracies in the Colombian Pacific region during the 2004–2014 decade as a means of characterizing and determining certain patterns which the evolution of their local political regimes has followed is proposed. In the Colombian Pacific, democratic practices and institutions have followed a trajectory in which the subnational political regime has become one in which the parties of third forces or third parties have taken control of the mayoralties and municipal councils from the traditional political parties. It is possible to observe that the competition among the third parties has been atomized. Besides that, they have designed and executed predatory public policy agendas, causing the sustained deterioration of the quality of the public policy provided by the city halls. Based on the documentary work offered by Cendales et al. (2019a), it can be established, as historical initial conditions in the analysis, that third parties are political organizations considered to have a low valuation for the public provision of goods and a high rate of fiscal voracity. Given the initial conditions that can be established from the narrative, and based on the model of public choice with clientelism and corruption proposed by Cendales et al. (2019b), the theoretical proposal that is to be tested is as follows: If the political power of the third parties over the mayoralties and municipal councils increases, then the quality of the public policy will decrease. The transmission mechanism is offered by Cendales et al. (2019b).

Analiza el papel de la comunidad y la cooperación internacional en los procesos de construcción de paz en Colombia. El texto busca enriquecer la discusión y alimentar el estado actual del debate con el fin de facilitar la identificación de capacidades y potencialidades de actores e instituciones internacionales, a pesar de sus condicionantes políticos, económicos y sociales. Asimismo, los autores intentan establecer las dinámicas que la comunidad internacional adquiere en este conflicto y ahora tensa etapa del posacuerdo; una guerra que se concibió como interna pero que, de forma indefectible, posicionó sus consecuencias con un preocupante alcance internacional.

In this chapter of the work, an introductory approach to the problem that involves the phenomenon of clientelism in the process of construction of democratic regimes is presented. The analysis is limited to the subnational contexts of the Colombian state, more precisely the Pacific region, where the paradox between the material and formal value of democracy is more than evident.

This chapter offers a historical reconstruction of the process that the political regime of the Colombian Pacific has undergone during the period in which the National Front was dismantled (1975–1991) and the period after the 1991 National Constituent Assembly. Based on the narrative offered here, a certain behavioral logic of the subnational political regime of the Colombian Pacific is identified in the two periods indicated, in such a way that an approach is proposed from an understanding of networks and the instrumental rationality of political organizations. We say that the mechanisms of clientelistic intermediation have an effect on how political organizations and their behavior rationality are configured, whether they are political parties, political fractions, or political factions. More precisely, what we want to establish here is that it is the mechanism of clientelistic intermediation that defines the nature, scope, and limitations of the instrumental rationality with which each political organization operates, whatever it may be. Each mechanism of clientelistic intermediation is defined by the topology of a clientelistic network, in the sense of network theory, and by the clientelistic game that operates in it, a game in the sense of game theory. The central argument offered here suggests that each type of clientelism is defined by one and only one mechanism of clientelistic intermediation, since it is not every type of clientelism exchanging the same resources, nor that given a certain type of clientelism, all the members of the same clientelistic network exchange the same type of resources.

Este artículo analiza el desajuste educativo en la ciudad de Cali, Colombia, a partir de la evolución de los requerimientos de diplomas reportados en los avisos clasificados publicados en El País, principal periódico de la ciudad. Para ello, se construye una serie de tiempo diferenciando entre aquellos avisos clasificados que exigen el diploma para acceder a un empleo y aquellos que no. Las pruebas muestran que esta serie tiene una raíz unitaria, por lo que se realiza una descomposición que permite estimar su componente permanente y transitorio. Nuestros resultados indican que el mercado laboral caleño es bastante credencialista, ya que se exige de forma regular el diploma para acceder a un puesto de trabajo. Esta situación incide sobre el emparejamiento en el mercado laboral y ahonda los desajustes educativos debido a que las empresas prefieren las credenciales de los trabajadores caleños This article analyzes the educational mismatch in the city of Cali, Colombia, using the evolution of diploma requirements reported in the classified advertisements published in El País, the city’s main newspaper, as basis. We built a time series differentiating between those classified ads requiring a diploma to get the job and those that do not. The tests show that the series has a unit root, so a decomposition analysis to estimate its permanent and transitory component is performed. Our results suggest that the labor market in Cali is quite credentialist, as diplomas are required regularly for access to a vacancy. This situation affects the labor market match and delves into educational mismatches because firms prefer the credentials of Cali workers Cet article analyse le choixéducatif dans la ville de Cali, Colombie, á partir des diplômes parus dans les offres d’emploi publiées dans les petites annonces du journal El País, le principal journal de la ville. Á cette fin, nous avons construit une série de temps quiétablit une différence entre les petites annonces qui cherchent un diplômé et ceux qui ne le cherchent pas. Les différents tests montrent que cette série a une racine unitaire, raison pour laquelle nous décomposons la série afin de distinguer la composante permanente et la composante transitoire. Nos résultats montrent que le marché du travail dans la ville est tout á fait « credentialist » car les diplômes sont réguliérement demandés á l’embouche. Cette situation affecte aussi bien le match sur le marché du travail que le choixéducatif, car les entreprises préférent les travailleurs diplômés

Con base en un modelo probit ordenado generalizado se ofrece evidencia estadística en favor de la tesis de economía política. Esta tesis sostiene que los partidos de gobierno en democracias precarizadas por grupos de poder, en las cuales el narcotráfico y el clientelismo hacen alianza y buscan cooptar el gobierno a nivel local, deterioran sistemáticamente la calidad de la política pública. Se ha escogido el sector de agua potable en la región del Pacífico colombiano porque las democracias locales en esta región, asediadas por estructuras clientelares vinculadas al narcotráfico, han mostrado una lógica de comportamiento electoral y de gobierno consistente con la teoría. Using a generalized ordered probit model, we offer statistical evidence in favor of the political economy thesis. This thesis states that government parties in power group-led precarious democracies, in which drug trafficking and clientelism are allies and seek to co-opt government at the local level, systematically undermine the quality of public policy. We choose the potable water sector in the Colombian Pacific because local democracies in this region, besieged by clientelistic structures linked to drug trafficking, have shown a logic of electoral and government behavior consistent with theory. Cet article propose un modèle économétrique du type probit ordonné et généralisé, lequel est utile pour montrer qu'il existe des preuves statistique qui appuient l'hypothèse suivante : dans les démocraties faibles, les partis politiques au pouvoir sont facilement infiltrés par le trafic des drogues et par le clientélisme, ce qui explique la mauvaise qualité des politiques publiques. Afin de vérifier cette hypothèse, nous avons choisi la politique publique d'approvisionnement d'eau dans la région du Pacifique colombien. Dans cette région, la démocratie locale est infiltrée par des structures clientélistes liés au trafic de drogues, où le comportement des électeurs et du gouvernement local est conforme aux prévisions de la théorie économique.

This article introduces a political economy model for studying the relationship between the vote-buying strategy of a party that has won the mayoralty of a municipality in the last election and its preferences as the governing party on the municipal political space, given its desire to maintain its position. The main result is that the governing party prefers to promote, given its clientelistic structure, the political agendas with which it selectively impoverishes worse-of f (WO) individuals; this will allow that equilibrium prices in vote markets will be reduced in a next election, and therefore, it will help enable the governing party to achieve its objective of maintaining governmental power through its vote-buying strategy in the exchange network.

This paper demonstrates that a precarious democracy is harmful to the poor rather than benefiting them as long as the governing party, being a highly informal organization, includes a cartel of political patrons and business people. The mayor is unable to govern freely due to controls or vetoes exercised by those collective actors to which he/she belongs. Not having been elected democratically, the objective of these groups is to co-opt the state at the subnational level by violating civil rights and liberties on election days and committing crimes against the public administration during the term of government.