The downside of decentralization: Armed clientelism in Colombia

Security Studies

Volumn 15, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 533-562

  Eaton, Kent ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34547494224     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: 15561852     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636410601188463     Document Type: Article

References (138)

1. I borrow this phrase from the title of former Interior Minister Jaime Castro's book in defense of decentralization, Descentralizar para pacificar (Bogotá: Editorial Ariel, 1998).
2. Alfredo Rangel, "El poder local: Objetivo de la guerrilla," in Descentralizacíon y orden público, ed. Fundación Friedrich Ebert (Bogotá: Centro de Pensamiento Político Milenio, 1997), 56.
3. Fernando Cubides, "Los paramilitares y su estrategia," in Reconocer la guerra para construir la paz, ed. Malcolm Deas and María Victoria Llorente (Bogotá: Editorial Norma, 1999), 162.
4. While armed groups on the left and right have benefited from decentralization, views differ starkly within Colombia on which is the greatest threat to the state - the guerrillas or the paramilitaries. Rather than enter into this debate, I purport to show that, by facilitating the armed clientelism of both sets of actors, decentralization has challenged the interests of the state that it was designed and adopted to benefit.
5. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 41.
6. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 618.
7. Alfred Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 315;
8. Nancy Bermeo, "The Import of Institutions," Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 108.
9. Caroline Hartzell, Matthew Hoddie, and Donald Rothchild, "Stabilizing the Peace After Civil War: An Investigation of Some Key Variables," International Organization 55, no. 1 (2001): 199.
10. Ibid., 192.
11. Barbara Walter, "Designing Transitions from Civil War: Demobilization, Democratization and Commitments to Peace," International Security 24, no. 1 (1999): 142.
12. David Lake and Donald Rothchild, "Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict," International Security 21, no. 2 (1996): 61.
13. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 31;
14. Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 36-37, 327.
15. Valerie Bunce, "Federalism, Nationalism and Secession: The Communist and Postcommunist Experience," in Federalism and Territorial Cleavages, ed. Ugo Amoretti and Nancy Bermeo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 422. Thus, while the introduction of federal institutions by democratic means may not facilitate separatist movements, as Bermeo argues, Bunce finds that the non-democratic imposition of these institutions may indeed have such an effect. Will Kymlicka also argues that federalism gives groups at the subnational level the resources they need to push for secessionism.
16. See Will Kymlicka, "Is Federalism a Viable Alternative to Secessionism?" in Theories of Secessionism, ed. Percy Lehning (New York: Routledge, 1998).
17. Dawn Brancati, "Decentralization: Fueling the Fire or Dampening the Flames of Ethnic Conflict and Secessionism," International Organization 60, no. 3 (July 2006): 651-85.
18. Lake and Rothchild, "Containing Fear," 62. Yugoslavia under Milosevic and Sudan under Nimeiry are two instances in which backtracking on earlier guarantees of regional autonomy led to the worsening of political violence.
19. Donna Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past: The Politics of Diversity in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 43-44.
20. Furthermore, ethnicity became much more politicized in recent years with the prolonged struggle to incorporate into the constitution specific rights for indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. Ibid., 83-88.
21. Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies, 33;
22. Jonathan Hartlyn, The Politics of Coalition Rule in Colombia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
23. Rodrigo Rivera, Hacia un nuevo federalismo para Colombia (Bogotá: Editorial Oveja Negra, 2001),
24. See, for example, Ana María Bejarano, "Estrategias de Paz y Apertura Democrática," in Al Filo del Caos, ed. Francisco Leal and León Zamosc (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1990);
25. Francisco Leal, Estado y Política en Colombia (Bogotá: Siglo Veintiuno, 1984);
26. Rivera, Hacia un nuevo federalismo.
27. For a review of arguments that dispute the causal role of National Front institutions in Colombia's armed conflict, see Marc Chernick, "Negotiating Peace amid Multiple Forms of Violence: The Protracted Search for a Settlement to the Armed Conflicts in Colombia," in Comparative Peace Processes in Latin America, ed. Cynthia Arnson (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1999).
28. Alberto Abello, "Reflexiones y evidencias a los diez años de la descentralizaciõn en Colombia," Revista Deslinde, no. 17 (1995): 99.
29. Castro, Descentralizar para pacificar, 29.
30. Darío Restrepo and Ernesto Cárdenas, "Descentralización, desarrollo e integración: Crisis del centralismo y nuevos retos para las entidades territoriales," in Ordenamiento Territorial, ed. Alejandro Becker, Carolina Chica, and Miguel Eduardo Cárdenas (Bogotá: FESCOL, 2003), 87.
31. Darío Restrepo, "El mito de sísifo o veinte años de descentralización en Colombia," Reforma y Democracia, no. 17 (June 2000): 77-126.
32. The dominance of the security rationale distinguishes Colombia's experience with decentralization from other countries in the region where other motives dominated, including the attempt to bolster liberal economic models (Argentina and Chile) and the attempt by authoritarian governments to control the transition to democracy (Brazil and Mexico). See Kent Eaton, Politics beyond the Capital: The Design of Subnational Institutions in South America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
33. Castro, Descentralizar para pacificar, 47. The role subnational appointments played in equilibrating executive-legislative relations is reflected in the fact that appointed mayors served on average only three months in their posts and in the fact that mayors were often not from the municipality they happened to govern.
34. See Pilar Gaitán and Carlos Moreno, Poder local: Realidad y utopía de la descentralización en Colombia (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores, 1991), 18.
35. John Dugas, Angelica Ocampo, Luis Javier Orjuela, and Germán Ruiz, Los caminos de la descentralización (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, 1992), 60.
36. For the argument that Conservative Party legislators eventually agreed to decentralize in the expectation they would lose the presidency in 1986, see Kathleen O'Neill, "Decentralization as an Electoral Strategy," Comparative Political Studies 36, no. 9 (2003): 1068-91.
37. For a more general discussion of legislators' support for decentralization, see Maria Escobar-Lemmon, "Political Support for Decentralization: An Analysis of the Colombian and Venezuelan Legislatures," American Journal of Political Science 47, no. 4 (2003): 683-97.
38. Gaitán and Moreno, Poder local, 115.
39. Ibid., 89.
40. Darío Restrepo, "El futuro de la descentralización en Colombia," in El futuro de la descentralización, ed. Darío Restrepo and Jean-Pierre Gontard (Bogotá: Fundación para la Participación Comunitaria, 2003), 34.
41. For a discussion of the successful mayoral performance of Antonio Navarro, former head of the April 19 movement, see Alan Angell, Pamela Lowden, and Rosemary Thorp, Decentralizing Development: The Political Economy of Institutional Change in Colombia and Chile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 65-66.
42. Steven Dudley, Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia (New York: Routledge, 2006).
43. Gaitán and Moreno, Poder local, 132.
44. Like the earlier decision to introduce mayoral elections, the decision to reform the constitution responded to the same belief that Colombian institutions were exceedingly centralized and exclusionary and, therefore, partly to blame for political violence.
45. Ronald Archer and Matthew Shugart, "The Unrealized Potential of Presidential Dominance in Colombia," in Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Scott Mainwaring, and Matthew Shugart (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 147.
46. In addition to the unusual composition of this constituent body, one can trace the generosity of fiscal decentralization to the fact that the Constitution was re-written in a particularly buoyant economic period for Colombia. Juan Gonzalo Zapata, analyst for Fedesarrollo, interview with author, 2 February 2005, Bogotá.
47. See Luis Jorge Garay, Descentralización, bonanza petrolera y estabilización: La economía colombiana en los años 90 (Bogotá: Editorial Presencia, 1994), 83-86.
48. Regionalists proposed assigning the Value-Added Tax to the departments, but this proposal was rebuffed by Finance Minister Rudolf Hommes. Carlos Rodado, governor of the Department of Atlántico, interview with author, 7 February 2005, Barranquilla.
49. In addition, the new constitution obliges the central government to share a set percentage of all "current revenues" rather than the "ordinary revenues" that can more easily be manipulated by the Finance Ministry in the attempt to reduce the size of transfers. See Castro, Descentralizar para pacificar, 84.
50. Restrepo and Cárdenas, "Descentralización, desarrollo e integración," 61. Congress passed several fiscal stabilization laws between 1997 and 2002 that revised aspects of the relationship between the national and subnational governments. While these changes on balance favor the national government, they have not reversed the positive effect that the constitution has on the fiscal importance of subnational governments.
51. Gilberto Toro, executive director of the Colombian Federation of Municipalities, interview with author, 4 February 2005, Bogotá. See also Carlos Cabrera and Rodrigo Naranjo, "Las leyes de saneamiento fiscal y su efecto sobre la descentralización," in Ordenamiento Territorial, ed. Alejandro Becker, Carolina Chica, and Miguel Eduardo Cardenas (Bogota: FESCOL, 2003), 27-41.
52. Dugas et al., Los caminos de la descentralización, 54.
53. Alberto Abello, "Mas cargas para los gobiernos territoriales y la población," Revista Deslinde, no. 19 (1996): 39.
54. Francisco Leal, professor at Universidad Nacional, interview with author, 3 February 2005, Bogotá.
55. Rodrigo Lara, "La Necesidad de un reordenamiento del control al gasto de las entidades territoriales," in Ordenamiento Territorial, 198-200.
56. See, for example, Jaime Castro, speech in Gaceta Constitucional, no. 42 (10 April 1992): 18-19. According to Mauricio Romero, landowners throughout the department of Córdoba worried that the guerrillas, in alliance with leftist electoral groups, would easily win direct elections for mayor and displace the traditional parties from municipal governments.
57. See Mauricio Romero, "Identidades políticas y conflicto armado en Colombia: El caso del departamento de Córdoba," in Conflictos regionales: Atlántico y Pacífico, ed. Fundación Friedrich Ebert (Bogotá: Giro Editores, 1998), 81.
58. Castro, Descentralizar para Pacificar, 31.
59. Parmenio Cuéllar, "La descentralización en Colombia: Una vision desde el nivel local," in El futuro de la descentralización, 198.
60. Jairo Libreros, "Descentralización y orden público: Divide y vencerás?," in Desarrollo de las regiones y autonomía territorial, ed. Alejandro Becker, Sandra Castro, and Miguel Eduardo Cárdenas (Bogotá: FESCOL, 2004), 140.
61. Restrepo and Cárdenas, "Descentralización, desarrollo e integración," 66. According to Eduardo Pizarro, the 1991 constituent assembly opted not to introduce security reforms due to military lobbying and the unwillingness of many assembly members who had formerly been guerrillas to push this sensitive issue.
62. See Eduardo Pizarro, "La reforma militar en un contexto de democratización política," in En busca de la estabilidad perdida, ed. Francisco Leal (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1995).
63. Tentative attempts in 1991 to deconcentrate responsibility for public order by creating departmentlevel security councils were effectively abandoned in the second half of the Gaviria administration (1990-1994) with the worsening of the armed conflict. See Gaitán and Moreno, Poder local, 77-78.
64. Marco Palacios, "Algunos aspectos de la 'regionalización del conflict colombiano," in El futuro de la descentralización, 119.
65. Rangel, "El poder local," 58.
66. I emphasize the failure of the police rather than the military because, while the weakness of Colombia's military would be central to any explanation of how the guerrillas have avoided defeat on the battlefield, the police were responsible for preventing illegal uses of decentralized resources in subnational governments and investigating those cases of abuses that did occur. The inability of the police to monitor how illicit armed groups were abusing decentralization has a number of causes, including the U.S.-funded war on drugs which re-oriented police work in the 1990s to focus overwhelmingly on narco-trafficking. See Russell Crandall, Driven by Drugs: U.S. Policy Toward Colombia (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002).
67. David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), 173-74.
68. Gonzalo Sánchez, "El eje cafetero: Crisis social y desafíos a la democracia," in Conflictos regionales: La crisis del eje cafetero ed. Fundación Friedrich Ebert (Bogotá: Giro Editores, 1999), 13.
69. On the experience with these negotiations in Antioquia, see Humberto Restrepo, "Conflicto y descentralización en el oriente antioqueño," in El futuro de la descentralización, 221-27.
70. On the experience in Urabá, see Clara Inés García, "Urabá: cruce o articulación de conflictos," in Conflictos regionales: Atlántico y Pacífico, 111.
71. On the political violence, see, for example, Rodolfo Escobedo, "Magdalena Medio y departamento del Cesar: 1980-1998," in Conflictos regionales: Atlántico y Pacífico.
72. On economic motivations, see Daniel Pécaut, Violencia y política en Colombia: Elementos de reflexión (Bogotá: Hombre Nuevo Editores, 2003), 82-84.
73. On the ideological commitment, see, for example, Dudley, Walking Ghosts.
74. On socio-economic reforms, see Camilo Echandía, "Expansión territorial de las guerrillas colombianas: Geografía, economía y violencia," in Reconocer la guerra para construer la paz (Bogotá: Editorial Norma, 1999).
75. Only in a handful of localities have municipal elections not been held due to the armed conflict. See Walter Aldana, "Una expedición por el Macizo y los conflictos regionales del Cauca," in Conflictos regionales: Atlántico y Pacífico, 150. In a few other cases, military mayors have been imposed on a temporary basis.
76. See "Alcaldes en la mira," Cambio, 10 June 2002.
77. Andrés Villamizar, Fuerzas militares para la guerra: La agenda pendiente de la reforma militar (Bogotá: Fundación Seguridad y Democracia, 2003), 17.
78. Rangel, "El poder local," 54-55.
79. Miguel Borja, "El papel del ordenamiento territorial en la búsqueda de la paz y en la consolidaci de la sociedad posbélica," in El futuro de la descentralización, 121.
80. In 2005, the success of Uribe's "democratic security" policy in returning a modicum of stability to urban centers bolstered support for the removal of Colombia's constitutional ban on presidential reelection.
81. Alfredo Rangel, Guerreros y políticos: Diálogo y conflicto en Colombia, 1998-2002 (Bogotá: Intermedio, 2003), 128.
82. In several cases, guerrillas have used regional dialogues in ways that are likely to reduce the options available to the national government. See Jesus Antonio Bejarano, Una agenda para la paz: Aproximaciones desde la teoría de resolución de conflictos (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1995). After initially advocating these dialogues, the Colombian Federation of Municipalities ultimately withdrew its support after several such overtures ended in violence by guerrilla groups against its municipal interlocutors. Toro, interview.
83. Rangel, "El poder local," 59.
84. Successful crackdowns on common criminals by the FARC loom large in the analysis of those who have sought to explain support for the FARC in certain municipalities. On the department of Antioquia, see Manuel Lacopez, "Implicaciones del conflicto armado en el model de la economía cafetera," in Conflictos regionales: La crisis del eje cafetero, 184.
85. On Nariño, see Alfonso Pardo, "Nariño: Un departamento en conflicto," in Conflictos regionales: Atlántico y Pacífico, 166.
86. On the department of Cesar, see Escobedo, "Magdalena Medio," 58.
87. María Victoria Llorente, "Perfil de la policía colombiana," in Reconocer la guerra para construer la paz (Bogotá: Editorial Norma, 1999), 458.
88. Echandía, "Expansión territorial de las guerrillas," 123.
89. Gaitán and Moreno, Poder local, 67.
90. Rangel, "El poder local," 57.
91. "Hundreds of Local Officials Resign in Fear of FARC," Latin American Weekly Report, 2 July 2002. Between 1987 and 1995, twenty-nine mayors and sixty-five municipal councilors were murdered in Colombia, and 102 mayors and fifty-eight municipal councilors were kidnapped.
92. Rangel, "El poder local," 57.
93. FARC attempts to use public resources did not begin with fiscal and administrative decentralization in the mid-1980s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the FARC issued death threats against locally based officials of the national Agrarian Reform Institute (Instituto de la Reforma Agraria or INCORA) in the attempt to influence where the institute spent its funds. See Andrés Peñate, "El sendero estratégico del ELN: Del idealismo guevarista al clientelismo armado," in Reconocer la guerra para construer la paz, ed. Malcolm Deas and María Victoria Llorente (Bogotá: Editorial Norma, 1999), 86. Decentralization, however, has significantly expanded the amount of public resources that are effectively subject to this type of FARC pressure.
94. Rangel, "El poder local," 56.
95. Echandía, "Expansión territorial de las guerrillas colombianas," 148.
96. "Acusan a alcalde de desviar fondos de salud pública hacia los paras," Miami Herald, 5 September 2004.
97. Orlando Hoyos, "Descentralización, orden público y municipios pobres," in El futuro de la descentralización, 218.
98. Rangel, "El poder local," 57.
99. For an analysis of Pastrana's approach, see Fernán González, Ingrid Bolívar and Teófilo Vázquez, Violencia Política en Colombia (Bogotá: CINEP, 2003), 75-82.
100. This section draws on Peñate's analysis of the ELN's origins. See Peñate, "El sendero estratégico del ELN."
101. Marta Harnecker, Unidad que multiplicara (Quito: Ediciones Quimera, 1988), 40.
102. Peñate, "El sendero estratégico del ELN," 77-79.
103. Garay, Descentralización, bonanza petrolera y estabilización, 83-86.
104. Rangel, "El poder local," 55. Only in 2002, with the election of Alvaro Uribe as president, has the central government moved to withhold transfers of oil revenues to subnational governments under the control of armed groups.
105. Peñate, "El sendero estratégico del ELN," 79.
106. Ibid., 85. Even as the ELN focused on penetrating Arauca's local governing structures, it continued to sponsor acts of violence elsewhere in Colombia, including the 1999 hijacking of a commercial jet en route to Bogotá and the taking of 162 hostages in a church in Cali.
107. See González et al., Violencia Política, 84.
108. Peñate, "El sendero estratégico del ELN," 88.
109. Ibid., 97.
110. For example, see the special investigative report, "La paramilitarización de Colombia," El Tiempo," 26 September 2004.
111. Colombia's internal war has displaced an estimated 2 million people. For more on the agrarian counterreform and its effects, see Darío Farjardo, Para sembrar la paz, hay que aflorar la tierra (Bogotá: IDEA, 2002), 48.
112. Cubides, "Los paramilitares y su estrategia," 176.
113. Thanks to the leniency that characterized President Uribe's negotiations with paramilitary forces beginning in 2002, demobilized paramilitaries will likely continue to benefit from the networks they built at the subnational level following decentralization.
114. Miguel Eduardo Cárdenas, research analyst for Friedrich Ebert Foundation, interview with author, 2 February 2005, Bogotá.
115. "Las ocho preguntas," Semana, 29 November 2004.
116. "Raponazo de los 'paras' al erario público," El Espectador, 26 September-2 October 2004.
117. Investigative journalists have also documented cases of violence between rival paramilitary groups that are vying for the same mayoral and gubernatorial offices. "La guerra de oriente," Semana, 20 September 2004.
118. "Episodios vuelven a destapar estrecha relación de paramilitarismo con clase política del Magdalena," El Tiempo, 11 March 2005.
119. "Se enciende el debate sobre la creciente presencia paramilitar en Colombia," El Tiempo, 27 September 2004.
120. "Una alianza poco perseguida," El Espectador, 26 September-2 October 2004.
121. "La paramilitarización de Colombia," El Tiempo, 26 September 2004.
122. "Se enciende el debate," El Tiempo, 27 September 2004.
123. Cubides, "Los paramilitares y su estrategia," 188-94.
124. Alberto Abello, executive director of Observatorio del Caribe Colombiano, interview with author, 9 February 2005, Cartagena.
125. "Una alianza poco perseguida," El Espectador, 26 September-2 October 2004.
126. "Raponazo de los para," El Espectador, 26 September-2 October 2004.
127. Adolfo Atehortúa, "Conflictos y violencias en el Valle del Cauca," in Conflictos regionales: Atlántico y Pacífico, 136.
128. See, for example, "Virus peligroso," Semana, 26 July 2004;
129. "Olla podrida en la salud," Cambio, 6 September 2004;
130. "Capturas por infiltración en ARS" El Tiempo, 3 September 2004.
131. Dugas et al., Los caminos de la descentralización, 33.
132. "Para-Salud," Cambio, 6 September 2004.
133. "Raponazo de los para," El Espectador, 26 September-2 October 2004.
134. Restrepo and Cárdenas, "Descentralización, desarrollo e integración," 62.
135. For the argument that Colombia's conflict is fueled not by decentralization but rather the arbitrariness of subnational borders, see Orlando Fals Borda, "El dilemma territorial colombiano ante las nuevas coyunturas," in El futuro de la descentralización.
136. For a review of this literature, see Francisco Thoumi, Political Economy and Illegal Drugs in Colombia (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1985).
137. Andrés Villamizar, Fundación Seguridad y Democracia, interview with author, 3 February 2005, Bogotá.
138. For more on the sequential approach to decentralization, see Tulia Faletti, "A Sequential Theory of Decentralization: Latin American Cases in Comparative Perspective," American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (2005): 327-46.