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Colombia has one of the highest levels of inequality in landholding in the world. This inequality has persisted in spite of numerous state-led land reform efforts, which leads to the question: why has it been so difficult to reverse unequal land distribution in Colombia? To answer this question, the chapter examines the role of the state, non-state armed groups, land inequality, land reform efforts, and a history of violence to reveal the relationship between land, inequality and violence in Colombia. This chapter explores the nature of this relationship to understand Colombia’s enduring inequality and to inform theoretical approaches to statehood and power. Rather than reducing state capacity to common Weberian binary constructions of state and statelessness, I explore how state capacity takes on different forms in different regions of Colombia – analyzing how various actors shape land inequality and violence across the territory. Using a comprehensive longitudinal panel data set of displaced persons, I use a negative binomial regression model to demonstrate how land reform, land inequality, and a history of violence have directly affected current displacement of citizens. I argue that several constellations of powerful social actors have at various points converged to control land, through non-state armed groups, to exert a local form of logistical control outside the scope of the federal state, deeply affecting the dynamics violence across different territories. These groups have subsequently engaged in a land grabbing process that has resulted in a reverse form of land reform – leading to persisting inequality in Colombia.

This study examines the cost-effectiveness of reintegrating ex-combatants from armed groups in Colombia. After an ethnographic exploration of the challenges of reintegration that ex-combatants face, I evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the reintegration program operated by the Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization (Agencia para la Reincorporación y la Normalización, ARN), the government agency that handles the reintegration of ex-combatants from all armed groups in Colombia. I analyze the agency's approaches (past, current, and proposed) toward reintegrating ex-combatants from various armed groups, comparing the financial costs against outcomes. The ARN has been successful at achieving two of its primary goals: minimizing recidivism and maximizing employment of ex-combatants. Only 10% of ARN program participants rejoin criminal groups and 93% find employment across both the formal and informal sectors (informal employment is widespread in Colombia and Latin America). The ARN has been unsuccessful at providing adequate security for ex-combatants. Approximately 6% of ex-combatants enrolled in the ARN program have been murdered since 2001: approximately 3,000 program participants have been assassinated. Next, I evaluate the cost-effectiveness of both the ARN's overall program and its outcome across different regions and demographics of the participant population. Finally, I suggest ways that other countries facing the challenge of reintegrating populations of ex-combatants can learn from the Colombian experience, as well as ways that Colombia can improve its own reintegration cost-effectiveness.

This chapter reviews Colombia's unique environmental and social features and Colombia's realities in the third decade of the twenty-first century. It is crucial to understand the country's recent past and to take its structural and historic struggles into account when building sustainable futures.

This chapter also reports the findings of a primary data research study using futures scenario methodologies. The study participants represent different stakeholders' visions of four alternative futures regarding the climate crisis and massive biodiversity loss and social and economic crises.

This chapter's empirical study identifies Colombia's constraints to building a future that is just, inclusive and centred on nature. In addition, we describe in detail the structural changes needed for Colombia to achieve the best possible future scenario (socioeconomic prosperity and resilience to climate change). Finally, this chapter offers conclusions and recommendations.

This chapter presents an overview of social entrepreneurship and social innovation in Colombia and explores its implications in the Pacific Alliance. It is organized into five sections that provide an overview of the fields of social entrepreneurship and social innovation with the aim of sharing experiences that have occurred in the country with the international academic community. It offers a description of the social and economic context of Colombia and then presents the situations that currently serve as the basis of social entrepreneurship and social innovation. It also discusses the main actors that are active in this context. In particular, the chapter emphasizes the experience of the city of Medellín, which is thought to provide an auspicious scenario for the establishment of a business ecosystem based on social entrepreneurship and social innovation. The learnings of Colombia can serve as a relevant example for the countries of the Pacific Alliance that are currently building their social business ecosystems.

For Colombia, cocaine is a product that is sold for profit in the United States. Mainstream political economy, let alone the other social sciences, has little to say about the process of extraction of surplus value in the production and distribution of cocaine, in other words, how cocaine is exploited for profit. The paper argues that the conventional framework, which locates profits generated from the cocaine trade in an economic model of crime shields a much deeper reality than simply ‘money laundering’ as a ‘legal problem.’ The central argument is that the cocaine trade in general, and the cocaine economy in particular, are a vital aspect of U.S. imperialism in the Colombian economic system. The paper tackles a critical problem: the place of cocaine in the re-colonization of Colombia – defined as ‘narcocolonialism’ – and the implications of the cocaine trade generally for U.S. imperialism in this context. The paper evaluates selected literature on the Colombian cocaine trade and offers an alternative framework underpinned by a political economy analysis drawn from Marx and Lenin showing that cocaine functions as an ‘imperial commodity’ – a commodity for which there exists a lucrative market and profit-making opportunity. It is also a means of capital accumulation by what could be termed, Colombia's comprador ‘narcobourgeoisie;’ dependent on U.S. imperialism. It is hoped that by analyzing cocaine with a Marxist interpretation and political economy approach, then future developments in understanding drugs in Colombia's complex political economy may be anticipated.

Uncertainty is one of the principal features of public administration in Colombia. Therefore, presenting a clear and consistent analysis is difficult. This uncertainty exists alongside interesting efforts to modernize institutions. Among the challenges faced by public administration in Colombia, we find corruption, illegal bands of drug traffickers, and the lack of trust between critical actors involved in governance. The aim of this chapter is to share an analysis that illustrates the difficulties and contradictions faced by those working in the public sector.

“Colombia is a legal social state organized in the form of a unitary republic, decentralized, with the autonomy of its territorial units, democratic, participatory, and pluralistic, based on respect of human dignity, on the work and solidarity of the individuals who belong to it, and the predominance of the general interest” (National Constitution, 1^st Article).

“Colombia is a legal social state organized in the form of a unitary republic, decentralized, with the autonomy of its territorial units, democratic, participatory, and pluralistic, based on respect of human dignity, on the work and solidarity of the individuals who belong to it, and the predominance of the general interest” (National Constitution, 1^st Article).

Tourism is sensitive to many factors related to security, such as terrorism and armed conflict. This scenario can be considered for Colombia and its National Natural Parks. The signing of the peace agreement with the revolutionary armed forces (FARC-EP) of Colombia that would end the armed conflict in 2016 offers economic possibilities for the country where tourism represents an important option, especially in natural areas where the government has regained control. This has had an impact on the sustained growth of tourism demand. The objective of this study is to determine the sensitivity of the tourism market in Colombia and natural parks and its relationship with the evolutionary dynamics of tourism, in a context of armed conflict. Variables related to visitors and the armed conflict were associated by autoregressive vectors, Pearson correlation test and Granger causality. A correlation of −0.5474 was found for the accumulated period from 1995 to 2018. It was also determined that the number of victims of the armed conflict is the Granger cause of the number of visitors to natural parks. The study concludes that the sensitivity of tourism in natural parks in Colombia is a consequence of State policy for the partial termination of the internal armed conflict.

This chapter is a case study on Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Colombia. The choice is justified by the significant progress of the country in this field and its ambitious plans to provide infrastructure and services through PPPs in the coming years. The infrastructure deficit and the evolution and current status of PPPs in Latin America frame the theme of the chapter. The case study itself explains the adoption of the PPP model in Colombia, describes the new legal and institutional framework and presents the most relevant PPP programmes and projects. The review carried out allows us to conclude that, despite the developments in recent years, PPP schemes continue to be very concentrated in the transport sector. For the effective development of the PPP model in the country, Colombia should extend such schemes to other fields, including the provision of social infrastructure and services. It should also improve some institutional aspects and project attractiveness to investors in order to increase the private capital required to finance PPP projects that currently are in the government portfolio. This chapter offers a general perspective on Colombian PPP, gathering and analyzing information for a better understanding of the current situation and the prospects for the future.

I historically compare changes in institutional frameworks creating academic positions linked to temporary employment by analyzing university employment statistics in Chile, Colombia, Germany, and the USA. I find that temporary academic positions were institutionalized through the creation of previously inexistent academic categories called a contrata in Chile, de cátedra in Colombia, “junior professor” without tenure in Germany and “postdoc” in the USA; used in higher education and employment laws since 1989, 1992, 2002, and 1974, respectively. Under institutional frameworks demanding the maximization of students and research, universities have increasingly contracted academics through temporary contracts under rationales that differ between regions. In Colombia and Chile, public university leaders and owners of private universities contract such teaching positions to expand student numbers through lowering costs. In Germany and the USA, employment insecurity is mostly driven by temporary scientific positions under a main rationale of scientific expansion. The share of temporary positions has increased exponentially in Colombia and Germany in recent decades, whereas in the USA there has only been an increase since 2012. Moreover, in Chile, the share of permanent positions has decreased since 2012. The common trend is one of isomorphism of vertical academic structures sharing a pyramidal form, with a wide base of academics working under conditions of contractual insecurity. Such trends follow a rationale for maximization of student numbers as well as administration, and scientific production that is in tension with prioritizing wellbeing and improvement of academics’ working conditions. Yet, in these environments, the institution of tenure in the USA and recent Chilean regulations on accreditation represent mechanisms counteracting precarious employment.