Colombian Politics Research Articles

Violence, Conflict and Politics in Colombia

Violence, Conflict and Politics in Colombia

Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia.

Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia.

Red Against Blue: The Liberal Party in Colombian Politics, 1863–1899

Red Against Blue: The Liberal Party in Colombian Politics, 1863–1899

Red against Blue: The Liberal Party in Colombian Politics, 1863-1899.

Red against Blue: The Liberal Party in Colombian Politics, 1863-1899.

Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia

Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia

Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia.Paul Oquist

<i>Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia.</i>Paul Oquist

Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia

Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia

Belief Systems of Colombian Political Party Activists

The relationship between ideas and political action represents a continuing, albeit frustrating, point of contention among political analysts. Referring to the literature on ideology, Robert Putnam reflects this sentiment by noting, “Few concepts in social analysis have inspired such a mass of commentary yet few have stimulated the production of so little cumulative knowledge about society and politics. The lack of cumulation is due, above all, to recurrent confusion of empirical with definitional issues and of both with normative concerns” (Putnam, 1971: 651). The proliferation of definitions, measurement techniques, and frameworks for analyzing the concept should not be surprising because “for the political scientist the term ideology points to a cluster concept, i.e., belongs to the concepts that bracket a variety of complex phenomena about which one tries to generalize” (Sartori, 1969: 398).

Soldiers, Guerrillas and Politics in Colombia. By Richard Maullin. (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1973. Pp. 192. $10.00.)

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Perspectives for the Historical Study of Rural Politics and the Colombian Case: An Overview

In the study of agrarian politics in general and the history of rural Colombia in particular, four broad, interrelated perspectives are relevant to the understanding of rural politics: peasants and rebellion, the interaction of local and national politics, patron-client relations, and regionalism. Principal issues and trends within each of these areas are explored here, and an effort is made to generate specific questions for historical investigation. The present state of research on rural history and politics in Colombia is also surveyed, and observations are advanced on how new research orientations originating in these perspectives may contribute to our understanding of social and political developments in Colombia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Military Rule in Latin America: Function, Consequences and Perspectives, Sinners and Heretics: The Politics of Military Intervention in Latin America and Soldiers, Guerrillas, and Politics in Colombia

Military Rule in Latin America: Function, Consequences and Perspectives, Sinners and Heretics: The Politics of Military Intervention in Latin America and Soldiers, Guerrillas, and Politics in Colombia

Rural Violence in Colombia: 1948-1963

Bw ETWEEN the years 1948 and 1963 rural Colombia was lashed by political conflict so intense that it has become known by its generic name, la Violencia. The dimensions of this orgy of guerrilla warfare, assassination, extortion, torture, and mass murder have prompted one observer to state: No other country in Latin America and few nations of the world have in mid-twentieth century experienced internal violence and guerrilla warfare as has Colombia.' The impact of la Violencia upon Colombian society and the Colombian political

La Violencia Revisited: the Clientelist Bases of Political Violence in Colombia

Lying at the heart of the problem in analyzing Colombian violence is the relative poverty of conceptual frameworks not only for dealing with violence but with the institutions and processes and traditions which form the social environment of the society. In the following pages I shall argue that a dialectic between violence and patron-client relations offers a useful analytical framework. The first part will deal with the historical dynamics of Colombian politics. In part two, patron-client politics will be looked at in a small town setting.

Inter-Party Competition in Colombia: A Return to La Violencia?

This investigation entailed testing a modified version of Downs' spatial model using preference-order data gathered from interviews with political party leaders in the Bogota metropolitan area. Respondents in the sample were drawn from four political groups and from -three levels within their respective organizational hierarchies. A multidimensional scaling model was utilized to derive perceptual spaces regarding dimensions of conflict in the Colombian party system. The following arguments are developed: (1) inter-party competition continues to be an extremely significant force in Colombian politics; (2) two salient dimensions of conflict characterize the party system, a government-opposition pole and an ideological pole; (3) the level politicians occupy in their respective party hierarchies, reflecting closely their class positions, offers a better explanation of their perceptions of conflict than their party affiliation; and, (4) conflict centering around control of the government traditionally has been more forceful than ideological conflict, but this is changing, with prospects for increased political instability.

Political and Legal Challenges to Foreign Direct Private Investment in Colombia

The Colombian political system has been characterized by a duality. On the one hand, there are recurrent fears-and these perceptions are held even by outsiders—that the political system is on the verge of total collapse and disruption. On the other hand, when measured in terms of the continuity and survival of the traditional civilian elite and the actual challenge posed by counter-elites, the Colombia system has been relatively stable. In effect, since the turn of the century, Colombia's ruling group has been renovated by the cooptation of new elements by the ruling elite. The bulk of these new members has been young individuals fairly well integrated within the values and norms of the establishment. Although some social change has occurred and there has been some upward mobility (for the best general treatment of Colombian twentieth-century politics, see Dix, 1967), the resilience of the Colombian upper class can be illustrated with two cases.

Aspects of Liberal Factionalism in Colombia, 1875-1885

A LL STUDENTS OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY of Colombia in the second half of the nineteenth century must grapple with the dissension that occurred among leaders of the Liberal party of that country in the 1870s. As a result of the intra-party discord, the Liberals finally lost control of the federal government, which they had dominated since i86i, and the regime known as the came into existence in 1885-1886. Although the members of the two wings into which the party was divided are usually designated correctly as and all too often the issues that set them apart are imprecisely described. The Radicals are usually depicted as overzealous reformers who sought to convert Colombia into a utopian republic overnight and were, in particular, committed to policies of extreme anti-clericalism, federalism, and laissez-faire. The Independents, on the other hand, are described as moderates who realized that the Radical program was inappropriate for a country like Colombia and served only to retard its political and economic progress. According to the standard account, the Radicals, their quixotic projects having failed, were driven from power by the Independent Liberals under the leadership of Rafael Nunez, who first occupied the presidency in 188o. Subsequently Nuifiez formed a coalition of Independents and Conservatives which became the nucleus of a new National party that governed the republic during the Regeneration under the centralist and authoritarian constitution promulgated in i886. While this depiction of nineteenth-century Colombian politics is partially accurate, it fails to indicate shadows and nuances that significantly alter the final portrait. This essay represents an attempt to clarify the origins and nature of the differences among Colombian Liberals in the decade 1875-1885. * The author, Assistant Professor of History at Florida State University, Canal Zone, wrote this article while Assistant Professor of History at Indiana State University. Research for this article was made possible by grants from the Doherty Foundation and Indiana State University.