Researchers interested in Colombia are challenged by the extraordinary complexity of social phenomena and by the difficulties of drawing up a fair balance between the specifics of such phenomena and the commonalities with other countries located -as Colombia is- in the semiperiphery of the world system. The social contract in Colombia has had a weak existence. In Hobbesian terms, the pactus subiectionis - the subjection of the citizens to the central power - has never been efficacious (Hobbes; 1958: 132). This weakness includes not only the inability of the State to impose its own power in the economic field - that which Hobbes called the dominium - but also the inability of the State to practice coercion against deviant behavior - or imperium, in the terminology used by Hobbes.

I argue that in Colombia, during this period - and during other violent periods of it history as well - the dichotomy anarchy/state seems more useful than the dichotomy oppression/emancipation (1). This paper focus on the social contract from the perspective of social pacification - the achievement of the imperium- understood as a contractual pre-condition. This is not to say that it neglect the importance of social domination or that we consider that the Colombian State has merits for being outside of the long history of oppression and inequity which characterizes Latin American countries, but rather that between 1984 and 1999 the crisis of the social contract in Colombia has had a very complex set of variables, among which those related with peace and the very existence of the State stand out (2).

After the war of independence Colombia emerged from Spanish Colonialism as part of the Republic of New Granada which included Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama. Venezuela and Ecuador separated in 1830; Panama in 1903. By the middle of the century traditional parties started several civil wars fighting over, the structure of the state. A very Liberal constitution was promulgated in 1863. In reaction to this Constitution, conservatives -after a civil war- promulgated a new chart in 1886 which, with many amendments, last until 1991.

The period between 1886 and 1939 is known as the Conservative Hegemony or also the Regeneration. Several important events occurred at that time: the industry of coffee was began, the One thousands days civil war -the greatest of Latin America nineteenth-century civil wars, with a 100.000 estimated deaths in a total population of 4 millions- the separation of Panama assured by USA intervention, the constitutional reform of 1910, the rapid economic growth due to the USA indemnification for its role in Panama and to the coffee expansion, and popular manifestation of workers followed by state repression - massacre in the banana zone- .

The Liberal party won the elections in 1930. Tension between the traditional parties grew as a consequence of the labor legislation, which introduced fundamental organization rights and began process of incorporating labor into the state. The Liberal dissident Jorge Eliecer Gaitan formed a third party named Union Nacional Izquierdista Revolucionaria (UNIR) and began to champion the cause of urban and rural workers. The reformist government of Alfonso Lopez Pumarjo through a constitutional amendment open the possibilities for an agrarian reform and created a liberal labor code. However Conservative party led by Lauriano Gomez, denounce the reforms as partisans, anti-Catholic and communist.

The tension between traditional parties derives in a new civil war called la Violencia. The starting point of the war was the assassination of the popular leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in 1948. Liberal insurrection then spread to provincial capitals and countryside. Liberals withdrew from government and abstained for presidential elections of 1950 which brought into power the fundamentalist leader Laureano Gomez. The terror spread all over the country. Government fell from power in military coup in 1953. After pacification of the country and a relative economical prosperity, traditional parties sang an agreement, withdraw support to militaries, took over political power and created the Frente Nacional.

During the National Front (1958-1974), Liberals and Conservatives alternate presidency and share power and government posts at all levels. Political violence between traditional parties ended up but clientelism grew and political participation decrease considerably due the lack of competition among political parties and several guerrilla movements were created.

Political repression, abuse of constitutional emergency powers and the inefficacy of several attempts to introduce social reforms characterize the period between 74 and 82. President Belisario Betancourt (1982-1986) focused on peace negotiation and cease-fire with the guerrilla. The M-19 takeover of the Palace of Justice in 1985 doomed the peace process.

By the middle of 80 narcotraffickers have acquire great economic power and wanted to participate in the political arena. President Barco (1986-1990) initiated a bloody war against the drug mafias. In 1990, during presidential campaign three candidates were assassinated. Barco succesfully negotiated peace with the M-19.

In 1991 a new constitution was promulgated with great hope of pacification and political transformation. Nevertheless, the growth of guerrilla, mafias and paramilitary groups undercut the possibilities of change brought with the new constitution

The social disembeddedness of the political parties was especially accentuated during the period of the National Front (1959-1978) whereby the traditional parties - consevadores and liberales - shared a temporary distribution of political power (3). Since the agreement eliminated electoral competition between the two parties - each one being certain of his turn - partisan passions almost disappeared and political participation was reduced to its bureaucratic and clientelist expressions (4). (Leal Buitrago, 1984: 134). Clientelism has been a legendary practice in the political history of Colombia (5) bound to the elitist character of the political system (6). Its current manifestation is rooted in the old feudal relationships imposed from colonial times, some of which are still valid in certain rural areas of the country.

According to Francisco Gutiérrez, by deinstitutionalizing the political parties and excluding other political forces, the Frente Nacional transferred the weight of political competition to the interior of the same parties. In these circumstances, there was created "a sort of bias in favor of the inferior layer of the partisan apparatus," permitting the lay political actors to negotiate better agreements with different clientelist managers (Gutiérrez, 1996: 35-52).

The creation, in the second half of the present century, of a modern bureaucracy - at least in some spheres of the State (7) - produced an adaptation of this practice which has been called "corporate clientelism" (8). This new version is based on the capacity of the State to distribute resources (9) - for instance through parliamentary aids - especially in small towns, under the mediation of the caciques, who are bound to the members of the national Congress. Some State entities and some political leaders with their local movements, play an important role in this new clientelism to the detriment of both of the political parties’ organization. Consequently, the regional leaders displaced their national bosses, and political activity was degraded in a series of practices of negotiation and compromise more and more specific, ephemeral and dependent on the satisfaction of small groups of voters (10).

The desembeddedness of political activity and the peak of clientelism has been accentuated, also, by violence. The absence - or the inefficiency- of the State and the presence of armed groups, created a situation of permanent distrust between social actors. Collective practices decreased to their minimum expression; each person implemented his own strategy. In this circumstance, the political leader act in the middle of the danger derived, among other sources, from his need to compromise with the armed groups (11). Fear of violence worked to diminish public participation of the leader and increased face-to-face control of agreements (Gambetta 1996) and clientelist practices (12). Only those who have been educated in the old clientelist practices get the skills and the lack of scruples they need to negotiate with everybody in this hazardous political game (13).

In Colombia, social conflict is not well translated into the political arena. The social and the political maintain a notable divorce. The lack of isomorphism between the space of production, the space of community and the space of citizenship (Santos, 1996,...) gives rise to a remote relationship between political conflict and social interests. In Bourdieu’s terminology, the political field has an unusual autonomy vis-à-vis the economic field (14). Social interest has to be reformulated in political terms, by the political party, in order to obtain visibility in the institutional sphere; conflicts are mediated by the dynamic of the political game; outside the space of citizenship the social interests get lost, silence. These circumstances explain, in part, the fact that the increases of political conflicts do not entails a risk of rupture of the regime (Touraine, 1988:308). The centrality of the politic-uprooted, the politic-pure - according to Daniel Pécaut’s expression - has two main effects: 1) it reflects the great volatility of political language: the original sense of social interests remains forgotten in the intricate tangle of discursive divergences, 2) it yields a type of politics which might be characterized by its lack of hegemony.

The fact that the political parties and, in general, the political discourse, is not a vehicle - it has never been (15) - of expression of class interests, does not necessarily lead to the idea that class dominance doesn't exist and that there is a mere traditional dominance (Max Weber 1978:215) through political clientels. An analysis of the way clientelism operates shows, however, its narrow linking with class dominance imposed from above. The acceptance of material favors on the part of local clients, who usually are very poor, leads to the obstruction of horizontal alliances or class-alliances. In their strategic reading, the client prefers the material benefits that have been offered instead of a social confrontation that only promises more marginality and very often many risks in terms of personal safety. The so-called political machinery of the party not only attenuates the social claims for welfare, but also gains certain legitimacy through the distribution of material resources (16).

Colombia has one of the highest homicide rates in the world for a country that is not involved in an open war (Pécaut, 1997: 3) (17). During the last two decades the homicide rate multiplied by four. (Rubio, 1997:8). In 1995 the rate of homicides for 100,000 inhabitants was 72 (18) and the total penal infractions grew to 172,952 (19). According to the Comision Colombiana de Juristas between 1970 and 1998 432.349 people were killed in violent circumstances (20); only 9% of this number is due to political violence. The kidnapping rate is the highest in the world (21). Political violence is also at high levels by world standars: 156 union workers were killed in Colombia, a figure that represents 46% of such killings world-wide (22).

However, violence isn’t a new phenomenon in Colombia. From its independence in 1810, the country experienced countless civil wars - most of them undertaken on behalf of God or on behalf of the autonomy of a region - which bled the nation, stopped the development and sowed fear and hate among the peasants (Deas, 1986; Sanchez, 1985; Tirado Mejia, 1976). In the twentieth century things haven’t gone better. After a relative truce between 1910 and 1945, ideological fundamentalism appeared again, this time under the forms, on the one hand, of traditional conservatism - agrarian and Catholic - and, on the other hand, of anticlerical and urban liberalism. The fervor of these ideological passions left more than 300,000 dead in the civil war known as La Violencia (1948-1953). (23)

During the sixties, the country had not yet been pacified, when three guerrilla movements rose up against the State: the National Liberation Army (ELN) ideologically linked with the Cuban revolution; the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), characterized by a sort of agrarian communism, and the Popular Army of Liberation (EPL), made up of peasants. Since 1984, the guerrilla movement has had an unexpected growth, mainly in those inhabited regions where economically important resources exist: either the cultivation of coca, or the extraction of petroleum (Rangel, 1998, Pizarro, 1992). According to some scholars, in Colombia about 10,000 to 12,000 guerrilleros operate, most of them belonging to the FARC (7,000) and to the ELN (2,000) (24). The fact that one guerrillero in combat costs approximately 400 dollars monthly helps to understand not only the importance of the economic dimension of the guerrillas and of their criminal operations: taxing drug traffic, kidnapping and extortion (25) but also the general economic impact of the war (26).

Guerrillas, paramilitaries, and militias operate - and obtain their power- in border-line situations between the absence of a legitimate power and the need for security and peace, a borderline where power and justice are ephemeral and subjected to the sways of war, explaining the fact that in zones of armed conflict, one armed group may displace its opponent without the resistance of the peasants located in that zone.

Most recently, Colombia was affected by the emergence of narcotraffic. During the last two decades, its influence has been determinant for a variety of aspects of contemporary political life in the country: in the growth and invigoration of the guerrilla movement through the collection of taxes (Rangel, 1989:125), in the creation and operation of paramilitary groups in zones of guerrilla influence, in the configuration of an extreme right group (27), headed to kill popular leaders, in the growth of corruption at all institutional and social levels, in the devaluation of the rule of law and, especially in the worthlessness of the judiciary system (Thoumi, 1995; 1997). Rubio (1977) has shown how narcotraffic has made criminal activities in general more profitable and low-risk and consequently how a perverse social capital has been created that stimulates rent-seeking activities and criminal behavior (28). With narcotraffick, in Colombia death has been robbed from its materiality.

These facts reveal an unprecedented State crisis. The hegemonic weakness of the government is aggravated by the institutional threat coming from armed groups. The worsening of the imperium accentuates a crisis of legitimacy which, for many years, was managed with efficacy by the national elites. Today, the eventual overcoming of the crisis has a higher price: pacification of the country seems to be impossible without a new distribution of power between the forces in conflict (Correa, 1999, Rangel, 1982).

The phenomenon of narcotraffic has played an essential role in the institutional fragmentation that characterizes the current Colombian crisis (Thoumi, 1995; Kline, 1996). It has come to deteriorate a situation of violence, illegitimacy and poverty which was hitherto delicate. Narcotraffic is a system of internationalized accumulation with a commercial and violent character (29). These features explain why it is a potential ally of whatever armed grouping, legal or illegal, of any source of economic accumulation and of any social national or international group. They also explain its determinantal influence in the process of de-ideologization, banalization and diffusion of violence within the Colombian society (30). Drug traffic not only weakens the State through its devastating effect on the rule of law, but also, indirectly, by unleashing the United States’ intervention in national politics.

Never before, not even during the Cold War when the Latin American governments feared the advance of the communist guerrillas, has the intervention of the United States been so open, so direct and so determinant as it has been during the last decade and, specifically, during the government of Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) who was accused of having known of the acceptance of money from the mafia during his presidential campaign. The legislative program throughout this period was defined and imposed by the United States through its embassy in Bogota. According to Gabriel Tokatlian (1997: 201) the centrality reached by the drug topic in Colombia has produced an unstable internationalization of the country. In such conditions, he proposes the acceptance of a flimsy sovereignty and the necessity of an international intervention in order to solve the problem. Between 1994 and 1998 the American government openly judged Colombian criminal policy - which in the current situation is the main policy - and conditioned the improvement of the relationship between both governments - and the possibility of certification (31) - on the legislative adoption of its own opinion. Extradition, increment of sentences, incorporation of new penal crimes, laundry of money, spraying of illicit crops, etc., have been decided according to U.S. drug policy (32).

Drug traffic is a typical globalized localism (Santos: ) in political, legal and economic matters. The current prohibitionist policy has its origins in the United States, starting from 1909 in the Shangai Conference (Del Olmo; 1986), and is a reflection of the dominant and conservative mainstream leading the North American State (Szasz; 1970). Colombia is directly affected by this sort of globalized morality, not only because of its imposition from Washington, but also because the international character of the phenomenon is only kept in mind in order to justify foreign intervention, rather than to solve the problem. Colombia faces the nuisances unleashed by a prohibitionist policy - corruption, repression, violence, terrorism, economic crisis - without obtaining any benefits (33), or even having the possibility of questioning such a policy. Regarding narcotraffic, the international community, commanded by the USA, globalizes the problem but, at the same time, localizes its eventual solution (34). On the one hand, Colombia is used as an experimental territory for new global policies of crime control (Global Crime Control) (J. Feest, 1998). On the other hand, it is the solitary and distant place where corruption and violence reign: too close to the hegemonic center to have drug mafias and too far away to have social and political problems derived from those mafias. In these conditions, the Colombian government is not only compelled to undertake a war in which it will certainly fail (35) due to its lack of social and political ability, but it is also obliged to drive the war through penal (36) and military repression. The result is the addition of criminal and social failure to the usual therapeutic failure.

This globalized morality (37) certainly favors the protection of American economic interests due to the enlargement of US intervention inherent in this kind of globalization. However, this fact doesn't explain everything (38). The dominant American conservatism, vis-à-vis health and drug problems, is also important in explaining the messianic representation ruling over the United States’ foreign policy. In order to explain the centrality of drugs in the American policy, Francis Gentleman - cited by Uprimny (1997) - argues, with realism and good humor, that the US policy in this matter consist of a conjunction of "a third of moral humanitarianism, a third of racist xenophobia, and a third of geopolitical interests".

Despite its economic growth during most of the last three decades, Colombian society maintains astonishing disparities in terms of revenues, health and quality of life, especially among regions and among social classes. According to the National Department of Planning, the Gini coefficient has fluctuated between 0.42 and 0.48 during the last decade and has been rising in the last few years (39). Fedesarrollo - a private and independent institution - confirms these data: in 1966 the richest quintile of the population received 54% of the labor revenues, while the poorest quintile only received 6%. The two richest quintiles of the population yield 72.9% of the labor revenues (40). This inequality is even more serious in relation to non-labor revenues. The work of Fedesarrollo shows that while in 1996 the poorest quintile received 2.7% of these revenues, the richest quintile obtained 60%. For this type of revenue, the Gini coefficient has passed from 0.52 in 1990 to 0.62 in 1996 (41).

The constitutional change that occurred in 1991 has not affected this situation of inequity. The first government of the new regime (Cesar Gaviria 1990-94) opened the economy to the international market and damaged the welfare State. The second government (Ernesto Samper 1994-98) counteracted the rigors of economic liberalism, and appeared as the ruler of a "social jump". Nevertheless, it continued to make cuts in the social budget, cuts even more drastic than those made at the beginning of the economic opening (42). Between 1986 and 1996 the Colombian economy has varied significantly: the agricultural sector, which at the beginning of the period represented 21.5 of the GNP, descended at the end of the period to its lowest historical level (19.2%). Manufactures fell from representing 21.2% of the GNP, to the level that they had during the fifties, which was 17.9%. Conversely, trade and financial services, had represented 19.1% at the beginning of the period and 27.5 % at the end. These data show a change in the orientation of the Colombian economy toward the financial sector, speculation and the so-called "casino economy".

With this change workers have been the most harmed. Unemployment reached 13% in 1997. Labor statute #50 of 1990 is a good example of what has been described as post-contractualization: permitting the indefinite existence of fixed-term contracts, facilitating the possibility of lay-offs, eliminating retroactivity of certain social benefits, suppressing judicial action of reinstatement, and putting an end to labor contract stability. Temporary recruiting increased from 11.6% in 1977 to nearly 20% in 1997. Libardo Sarmiento summarizes this situation in the following way: the economically active population is a third of the total population (around 13 million). 13% of this total are unemployed. The remaining percentages are distributed between 54% who work in the informal sector (more or less 6 million people) and 46% who work in the formal sector. According to Sarmiento, the number of poor that are located below the poverty line increased slightly between 1991 and 1995 (from 51.9% to 52.4%). However, this change is significant in the rural zones, where it went up from 65% to 72% between 1991 and 1995 (Ibidem). On the other hand, between 1990 and 1995, minimum-wage lost purchasing power by more than 8% (Ibidem). Finally, as for the distribution of revenue, the Gini coefficient corresponding to 1995 was located at 0.53, the same as in 1970. At the moment the distribution of revenue is at the same level as it was 25 years ago and the percentage of the population with insufficient revenue is still above 50% (Ibidem).

In the core countries national identity was achieved through the conversion of the hegemonic group’s culture into a national culture. The State played a central role in this process, using the judicial and the educational systems for this purpose. In Colombia, by contrast, a national identity of European character was promoted by the national bourgeoisie, which was never able to prevail completely. During the Colonial era, the national identity was diluted by other identities: regional, racial, linguistic, professional, etc. After independence, the idea of citizenship was employed by Bolivar and Santander in order to build a collective identity, starting with the State and disregarding social, ethnic and cultural differences. According to J.O. Melo (1992), this political element - imposed over the ethnic element - is at the base of the Colombian nationality; the nation derived from the colonial administrative division then extended to new institutions of the State (43). Daniel Pecaut also points out the merely political character of this element of unity. In his opinion, " the two political parties, Liberal and Conservative (...), have defined the forms of identification and of collective ownership (...); they have established a symbolic division without - or almost without - a link with social relations (Pecaut, 1998: 16).

The imposition of the political on the social never was consolidated. Centralism, imposed by the constitution of 1886, so hard in the letter, was only partially achieved. The weakness of the national bourgeoisie and the social disembeddedness of the idea of citizenship brought about the delegation of the educational system - in which the cultural and national identity is forged - to the Church and the family (44), whose traditional values mostly opposed an ideology of civic citizenship.

During the last three decades the secularization of the Colombian society has progressed at an incredible speed (45). The media, operating in the context of great labor mobility, has been replacing the Catholic Church in terms of moral education, engendering a kind of low intensity national unity - according to the expression of Melo - very bound to capitalist consumerism, but at the same time endowed with a great stability probably due to the absence of linguistic problems. The cultural system - as it happens with the political system (Touraine, 1988:308) - becomes a matter of consumption, rather than a matter of identity.

Nevertheless, the haste with which this process of secularization took place has left remnants that are observed, for example, in the religious character of some violent practices. Concerning the armed conflict, the religious element is especially clear in the behavior of the ELN, but is also present in the rural branch of the FARC. More dramatic still is the mythical-religious value-reference of sicarios in the poor communes of Medellín (46). In Colombia, says Daniel Pecaut, "the only collective representation is mythical. It is that of an original violence which doesn't stop repeating. It’s continuously trapped in a religious horizon, that of the fall and the sin". The facts of violence - he explains - are perceived as facts of nature, like catastrophes and "other curses of God that determine the course of things (Daniel Pecaut 1998: 28).

In the middle of the armed conflict the claim for cultural diversity becomes easily balkanized. This phenomenon happens frequently in the war zones, which are territories of great cultural diversity. In these areas, the indigenous peoples’ claim for cultural diversity, for example, loses its cultural character - loses its scale - and turns into an additional element of the war. Therefore, political participation and cultural expression are confined to the community space. However, the enormous cultural diversity of the country has not triggered armed conflicts in Colombia. The prevalence of the Spanish language, cultural hybridity and the unity of territory are taken for granted (47). They shape a national identity not substantially different from that of other Latin American peoples: a low intensity nationality due to the priority of merely symbolic elements over social and economic interests.

The worsening of public goods possesses different visibilities (Foucault 1975: 222, Deleuze 1986:56; Baudrillard, 1983): some processes of deterioration are more notorious than others. Violence and insecurity are by far the most visible. Poverty, lack of identity and illegitimacy are overshadowed by violent events. The explosion of a firecracker in the center of Bogotá, with a pair of victims bleeding in the middle of the street, causes more social alarm - is more easily seen - than the hundreds of victims of child abuse every day. From another side, the institutional devices also contain different visibilities: promulgating a constitution is a more notorious fact than making an agrarian reform; the decertification imposed by the United States causes more political damage than the increase of unemployment or the growth of administrative corruption. The hegemonic weakness of the State determines an institutional dependence of the most protuberant visibilities - small scale - in detriment to the most basic necessities -great scale.

Insecurity has been the most important social and institutional concern during the last fifteen years in Colombia. The relationship among public goods has been modified. First of all, within the social sphere, violence and armed conflict have introduced a hierarchical differentiation in satisfaction of needs connected with security and public order. Security is by far the public good most invoked and requested by all, even by the excluded. Secondly, in the institutional space, the lack of imperium and weakness of hegemony are supposed to be solved with the increase of military power. The State tries to derive its legitimacy from its achievements attained in the war against crime and against subversion (48).

Armed groups also depend more and more on their capacity to deliver security to the population and therefore less and less on their ideology or on their political proposals. Something similar happens with economic welfare and cultural identity. Only in some bounded counter-hegemonic spheres - indigenous, movements, left political groups, etc. - are these goods perceived of as essential and even subordinate to security. On the other hand, cultural identity, although having had better luck than social welfare in the new context of the constitution of 1991, has also suffered the impact of violence and insecurity.

Insecurity is felt in multiple ways by Colombians. Maybe all could be summarized as a constant sensation of institutional abandonment, which is directly linked to the idea of lack of justice. The increasing breach between social conflicts, demanding a judicial intervention and the supply of justice has been well documented (49). This gap doesn’t always manifest in the same way: the most renowned criminal cases - which characterize the so-called dramatic justice (50) - have had special attention in the judicial system but only have had a limited impact against corruption and narcotraffic. From another side, the growth of exceptional criminal justice has entailed the underestimation of ordinary conflicts. The result is a twofold dissociation between justice and conflict. On the one hand, at least in general terms, the emphasis on exceptional justice has not decreased the violence linked with armed groups. This inefficacy has entailed a sort of routinization of the exceptional: since success against mafias and other armed groups has not been reached, exceptional justice has been focused on ordinary cases (51) . On the other hand, ordinary non-criminal justice has been the object of multiple reforms destined to improve efficiency (Santos 1997 ). The few achievements attached to these reforms, having emphasis on the supply of justice - instead of the offer - have determined, here also, a dissociation between the existent conflicts and the decisions of justice (52).

Boaventura Santos identifies three institutional devices through which the social contract is materialized: 1) the socialization of the economy, 2) the politicization of the State, and 3) the nationalization of cultural identity. In Colombia these devices possess unequal importance. First of all, the socialization of the economy through the welfare State has been relatively ineffective. At least four reasons are at stake here: a) the small dimension of the welfare State and therefore the small level of contractualization due to this element (Sarmiento: 1998) (53); b) the relative independence between, on one side, socioeconomic and community spheres and, on the other side, the political sphere (Santos, 1995: 417, Touraine 1987:13); c) the enormous internal heterogeneity of each one of these spheres (Escobar, 1985: 218) which impedes a national contractualization and a reasonable stabilization of the expectations, and d) the fact that state neutrality as a condition for the emergence of politicization never was a clear-cut phenomenon (54).

On the other hand, the nationalization of cultural identity has been a minor element among the political national elite. The assimilation process of indigenous communities has obeyed a logic of capitalist expansion rather than a deliberated policy of dominance. It explains the relative lack of opposition, inside the dominant elite, to the recognition and protection of the indigenous people brought about by the constitution of 1991 (55).

The politicization of the State, conversely, has been an essential factor among the institutional devices. However, the type of politicization at stake here is different from that already described for the central countries; it is a sort of weak politicization, despite of the excessive power given to the executive branch (Schwartz, 1996, Zarmeño, 1981). The lack of isomorphism between the space of production and the space of community, on the one hand, and the space of the citizenship on the other hand, and its consequent hegemonic fragility configure a state distant from the social struggle which tries to replace its political and institutional impotency (56) with a strong legal and rhetorical presence. This type of weak politicization is also a type of strong juridicization (57) and acquires two manifestations in Colombia: 1) constitutional reformism on social and political rights, and 2) the state of exception.

In the context of fragmentation that have been explained before, the idea of a new social contract flourishes. It takes form in the proposal - omnipresent in the national history - of a constitutional change (58). The 1991 constitution had this contractual justification underlying it. Like all the previous constitutions promulgated since 1863 (59), this one was not the result of a popular revolution, but rather the outcome of a partial social mobilization accompanied by a political governmental impulse, during a time of extreme violence due to the war against the Medellin Cartel. This political need of constitutional reform focuses on a new charter of rights as the base for a new social contract. Here again, the legal system - as it happens with the political and cultural systems - becomes a matter of consumption rather than a matter of regulation.

According to Alain Touraine (1988:137) in Latin America the political sphere is defined in terms of participation or nonparticipation instead of representation or nonrepresentation. Colombia is a clear example of this phenomenon (60). During the 80, the diagnosis of the Colombian regime focused on the close character of the political system (61); its opening was thought to be a necessary condition in overcoming violence. The constitution of 1991, keeping in mind that diagnosis, has introduced substantial changes in terms of democratic participation. A clear anti-clientelist tendency has prevailed at the National Constituency Assembly. The mechanisms of civic participation were then presented as a new democratic alternative whereby the noxious traditional patrimonialization of political life would disappear and new spaces of democratic participation would be cleared. Nevertheless, the first decade of the new regime has put in evidence the enormous difficulties in carrying out this transformation and, mainly the strength and complexity of the clientelist phenomenon.

The mechanisms of political participation devised by the constitution of 1991 have not been efficacious and it is not very probable that they will be in the future (García Villegas, 1977). The requirements imposed by the new mechanisms of participation (Constitution Article 103) are too complex and difficult to accomplish in a country characterized by weakness of the social movements (Touraine 1976:249; 1988: 135; Munera: 1999) and, in general, by the incapability of the citizens in articulating social demands outside the instances of traditional politicians.

Given the clientelist structure of traditional parties, the challenge implied in a campaign for representatives elected in public corporations appears to be easier than the challenge implied in each one of the participation mechanisms (plebiscite, referendum, legislative initiative, revokation of mandate, etc,). Indeed, the percentages of votes demanded by the "law of participation" are much too high and thus discourage political mobilization. In these circumstances, the traditional partisan dynamic absorbs any other type of political enthusiasm (62). This conclusion is deduced from the electoral data presented by the [National Registration Agency] : for 1994, the electoral census regarding Congressional elections was of 17,722,980 votes. The effective voting was from 6,221,423 votes. The senator with the highest vote (Fuad Char) obtained 79,917 votes, while the senator with the lowest rate (Red. H. Eli) obtained 18,049 votes. This last number is very low and, therefore, very attractive compared with the 5 per thousand of the electoral census (89,000 votes) required to start a referendum or a legislative initiative (Article 10 Law 134 of 1994).

The opening of the political system was conceived of under the assumption of a renovation of political activity - due to the revocation of representatives in the Congress - which never occurred. Once the sanguineness of the political moment produced by the constitutional change passed, participation loses its initial impulse and the traditional forces find accommodation in the new institutional forms. An example of this phenomenon is appreciated in Bogotá, where the traditional parties reconquered almost all the newly created Local Administrators Committee. These new organizations reproduced the personnel and the practices from the old Committees of Communal Action, which were dominated by the clientelist dynamic (Gutiérrez, 1966: 44).

The current Colombian constitution contains the widest and most progressive catalog of social rights among Latin American constitutions. The social rights thus established in 1991 reflect the victory of political majorities guided by the idea of social constitutionalism, which has been very influential in the Spanish and German current charters (63). The process of application of such progressive norms has not been an easy task. Although Congress is the natural instance for the implementation of social rights (Friedman, 1967) it couldn’t accomplish its task; in part because the progressiveness of the legislation about social rights is determined by the availability of economic resources, which are linked to the improvement of the national economy, and also in part, because the weakness of political representation. The efficacy of these constitutional norms is therefore almost void. Structural economic factors during the 1990’s have prevailed over the new constitutional rules.

Courts are also supposed to apply social rights. Here the situation has been more complex. Since the implementation of social rights entails a redistribution of economic resources - which is rather a legislative matter - the intervention of judges is perceived as being illegitimate. Judges are very aware of this limitation and they consistently interpret and apply social rights’ norms according to institutional possibilities affecting the least division of powers and economic institutional stability. The Judicial enforcement of such rights ignores - it doesn't have another alternative - the civil strange society (a third part of the population) although being the more needed. Judicial decision restricts their application to public services users. In practice, judges protect only those who - located in the intermediated society - are already engaged in a relationship with a public service company, and whose benefits are threatened. The judicial protection of social rights is therefore converted in a sort of administrative protection linked to legislation instead of being connected to the constitutional norm (Rosenn, 1990:26, Garcia-Villegas, 1997).

The constitution of 1991 attempted to increase contractualization through the implementation of social rights. Nevertheless, only in the judicial realm have those norms had some effectiveness, especially regarding equality of rights in children, minorities, and people suffering physical disadvantages (64). The nonattendance of the Congress reveals the lack of the implementation process intended by the 1991 constitution, and displays the difficulties of making social changes exclusively through judicial institutions (65). Nearly one decade after the promulgation of the new constitution, hopes of social change have decreased steeply (66). Amid unquestionable benefits, two important limits of the contractualization project through the judicial branch show up: 1) The processes of social contractualization depend mostly on the political government impulse upon legislation; however, this political impulse is bound to the economic sphere and thus to the global constraints, 2) Contractual incorporation of marginal people is very rare and limited to very particular and dramatic cases.

In circumstances of weak political representation - although strong participation - such as those which took place in 1991, the promulgation of new and progressive rights rather than being harmless for the current dominant power becomes a useful strategy of legitimation (67). The weaker the political representation in Colombia the stronger the juridification of social rights or, in Bourdieu’s terms (1994), the weaker the political capital in Colombia the stronger the need to increase the symbolic capital through the production of legal discourse. There is a sort of "structural homology" (Bourdieu and Wacquart, 1992: 105-6) between the social disembededness of the Colombian political field and the social disembededness of its legal field, or, in other terms, between the politicization of social life and the constitutionalization of rights.

Colombia has lived most of its history under the rigors of violence. This bloody past has shaped its institutional structure and its political culture. The priority of public order policy, has led to the overestimation of the Army and to the imbalance of the constitutional equilibrium. This fact has been possible thanks to the almost permanent use of the state of emergency - or exception - since 1949 (68); i.e. thanks to the normalization of the exception (69). If the periods under which the country has remained in a state of exception during the second half of this century are added, they total 36 years of the 48 elapsed up to 1998, three quarters of the time.

Violence has been growing concurrently with the repressive apparatuses of the State and specifically, with the state of exception. The substance of the exceptional law has varied but its general picture shows its constant enhancement, not only in terms of the number of norms, but also in terms of the number of aspects of social life which have been colonized. The more it has prescribed and detailed with sharpness all the manifestations of crime, the more this crime has been reproduced and recreated everywhere (Foucault, 1975). The exceptional law in Colombia is a kind of mirror of reality. How can we explain this ongoing increasing parallelism? Is it perhaps the uncontrolled broadening of violence - overflowing all legal statement - that determines this inefficiency of the exceptional law? This explanation is the most common and shared. Nevertheless, we consider that frequently it is rather the opposite that happens: it is the exceptional character of the law that explains the reproduction of violence. In other words, the increase of violence is due not only to the social conditions in which it occurs, but also to the nature of the institutional apparatus by which it is controlled.

Governments - backed by political parties with vague popular support - lack the political capability, the hegemony, needed to counter the multiple expressions of social and institutional violence. This inability has, at least, three effects: a) there is an institutional tendency to resolve problems of public order through purely legal criminal reforms; to the increasing demands of security, governments respond with the promulgation of exceptional criminal norms; the inefficacy of each exceptional set of norms leads to the promulgation of another one and so on; b) a culture of exception is, in this way, spread out on all institutional levels; and c) based on the inefficacy of the exceptional law, members of the armed forces and security agencies transgress the legal frame - although exceptional - and violate human rights with full impunity. This process of communication between citizens’ claims and government law prompts a change of scale between the nature of the problem and the nature of the answer (Santos, 1996: 456) (70). A problem characterized by the lack of contractualization among the social forces is treated merely with a criminal and legal approach, which doesn’t change anything but the routine of bureaucracy and the enjoyment of fundamental rights (Santos, 1994: 277) (71).

The described circumstances create and reproduce the violence that the State tries to control: the blooming inefficacy of the exceptional law, on the one hand, gives rise to an increase of armed confrontation - each group thriving upon the weakness of the State - and, on the other hand, implies the proliferation of human rights violations by militaries, many of them trying to win the war whatever the cost. Therefore, the State becomes deinstitutionalized and implicated in a pre-contractual war of all against all.

In this confrontation of armed groups, each one with different interests, discourses and goals, the violence against the population frequently has a diffuse and uncertain origin, which is profitable for those who exert violence (Rubio, 1997c). The civil population is trapped in the middle of several types of struggles in which all capitalize upon the confusion. This lawless type of violence disarticulates almost all attempts at social and political mobilization (...). Whereas in the military regimes in Latin America during the 80s the latent presence of the social enemy facilitated civil union and even heroic actions in order to overthrow the enemy in power, today in Colombia the presence of multiple and confused enemies - not only within the institutional sphere but also in the social sphere - discourages the intent of social mobilization and reduces social practices to individual strategies like "every man for himself". So, the vicious circle is completed: crisis of political activity institutional weakness regime of exception dirty-war and human rights violations desinstitutionalization, state fragmentation and judicial crisis anomie and social heterogeneity and finally again - crisis of political activity.

A more theoretical understanding of this vicious circle is this: Social practices determined by the law are characterized by a tension between two types of relations. The first one combine state domination through emergency norms, consciousness of domination and deviant behavior. The second one joins rule of law, consciousness of legitimacy and political participation. Elements of this dichotomy have specific relations in each country. In Colombia, for instance, the increase of domination through the state of emergency has increased violence and illegal behavior. Conversely, the relation between the symbolic transformation of the rule of law -through constitutional reforms - and political mobilization has been much more weak and contingent in Colombia. Our hypothesis here is that the institutional excess in the use of the state of exception between 1957 and 1984 and the consequential increase of violence weakens both the symbolic power of the law and political agency

The state of emergency has configured an exceptional penal law: the liberal idea of the criminal - with its implications in terms of due process - has been replaced by the warlike idea of the enemy (Ferrajoli, 1995:822) (72). The normalization of the state of emergency has diffused a culture of exception, an environment (73) of rule-of-force opposing the rule of law, eroding legitimacy, despoiling sociability and thus, affecting the basic compliance needed for the efficacy of law (74). Two faces can be differentiated regarding this culture of exception: institutional and social.

As for the institutional face, during the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, the army and the security state agencies obtained prerogatives which are usually owned by military regimes and, for that reason, exempted them from the political costs inherent in the direct exercise of power. Since the mid-1980s, and especially since the constitution of 1991, these prerogatives have been drastically limited (Uprimny, and Vargas, 1990:114) . However, violence and the violation of human rights have been aggravated. This is due, partly, to the fact that some militaries and officials have perceived democratic reforms as being obstacles blocking the military strategy against guerrillas. Thus they have preferred to abandon the legal management of the public order with all the implications regarding human rights violations. From the culture of the exception the country has jumped to the culture of dirty-war, which reveals the shortness of the space between the state of emergency and the absence of the State, as the space between the exceptional law and the absence of law is also very short in practice.

Colombia experienced a process of fragmentation and institutional deterioration which gradually moved from a situation in which the constitutional abnormality had prevailed - until the mid-1980s - to a current situation of unrestrained proliferation of armed groups administering justice (75). Paradoxically, this process has been accompanied by governmental adoption of an explicit policy for the defense of human rights, since the middle of the 80s, which complicates the impact of the accusations against the state coming from NGO’s and human rights organizations (Sikkink 1996: 79).

The culture of the exception was significant in this rejection of the law: government employees - especially those whose tasks are related to the public order - frequently perceive legality as an additional tool of war instead of as an inherent limit to their functions (Ost, Van de Kerchove, 1987) (76). This instrumental understanding of law (Thoumi, 1995:172) is very widespread not only in the institutional sphere but also - and this is the second face of the problem- in civil society from drivers’ behavior in big cities to the creation of paramilitary groups, including family, sport, and almost all kinds of rules governing social life. It is especially serious when arms are used to apply private justice (Jaramillo, 1997) (77).

The use - and abuse - of the constitutional exception may be understood as a Colombian State’s answer to the crisis of the social contract (78). Douglas Hay (1975) explains a similar strategy implemented by the ruling class in eighteen-century England. He focus on the justification of capital punishment and on the failure of criminal reforms proposed - by Beccaria and others - to obtain more lenient and certain punishments. In another paper, Hay (1992) suggest that "the violence of the state may be a powerful determinant of violent in society (...) " Highly public, state sactioned death is a powerful reinforcement, at the very last, for resort to violence throughout a given society..." (152-153). A similar point of view is defended by Robert Weisberg (1992) who argues that, in fact, "much crime, rather than offering a general moral counterclaim to society’s vision of the good, is a directly parallel and purportedly supplementary form of moral claiming and indeed, law enforcement".

The crisis of contractual presuppositions gives rise to conflicts and tensions within the State. The crisis of metacontractual presuppositions also affects the relationships between organisms of the State. The tension between military and government - although having a long history of shared interest - is not confined to operative matters but rather a disagreement on the very concept of democracy. According to retired general Landazabal Reyes, for example, "The usurpation of the direct control of the army by the political boss destroys the primary foundations of any democratic organization, the one that starting from that moment begins to slide toward the roads of tyranny (79) (Landazabal 1993: 49). A notable example of this conflict came out in November of 1985 when the guerrilla M-19 took over the palace of justice. A conflict arose between President Betancurt and the commander of the army, who, seemingly, decided to advance the eviction operation without the consent of the President (80). More recently, President Samper has had public confrontations with the army’s commander-in-chief, General Harold Bedoya, who finally announced - from the army headquarters - that he had decided to resign and to run for president during the 1998 campaign. The number of military defeats of the army against the guerrillas since 1997 has accentuated these tensions. Similar conflicts, although less serious, have appeared not only between the Constitutional Court, on one hand, and the Supreme Court and the Council of State on the other hand, but also between the government and the Fiscalia (Nagle: 1995). These conflicts arise from the definition of public goods. The interinstitutional disagreement emerges when the prioritization of public goods is in question. The military, for example, always subordinates political values, like legitimacy or social welfare, over security values. The courts, on the other hand, usually reduce legitimacy to legality and subordinate all other public goods. The government usually acts strategically according to the political necessities of the moment.

1.Social inequality in Colombia is one of the highest in Latin America. Clientelist practices, institutional patrimonialization and the legitimacy of traditional political parties are still endemic problems in Colombia. Although the collective identity doesn’t represent an important problem its low intensity doesn’t help very much either. However, since the middle of the 1980s, these public goods problems have been overshadowed by violence and insecurity. Colombia has the worlds highest rate of homicides and the state faces somehow three kinds of wars: narcotraffic, guerrilla and common criminality.

2.Additionally, the hasty secularization of society, the incidence of some globalization process and the deterioration of the provision of public goods, especially security, accompany the erosion of metacontractual pressuppossition.

3.In Colombia, social conflicts are not translated into the political field and therefore the social and the political are severed from one another. Although this is a common trend in semi-peripheral countries - derived from the lack of isomorphism between the space of production, the space of community and the space of citizenship - this situation is aggravated in Colombia due to the pervasiveness of violence and its disaggregating effect on the political practices.

4.In these conditions political discourse acquires great volatility and political struggle becomes easily exacerbated. The centrality of this politic-uprooted or politic-pure has at least two implications: 1) the political arena is distinguished by the great symbolic character of its political language: the original sense of social interests remains forgotten in the intricate tangle of discursive divergences and 2) state policies are characterized by the lack of hegemony and difficulties in dealing with an solving problems in their own dimensions or scales.

5.The political field, the cultural field as well as the legal field, rather than spaces of citizenship, identity and regulation are spaces of consumption where the symbolic dimension of social relations between actors is predominant and the collective memory does not last.

6. In core countries the social contract has been materialized through three institutional devices 1) the socialization of the economy; 2) the politicization of the State; and 3) the nationalization of cultural identity. Neither the socialization of the economy through the welfare State, nor the nationalization of cultural identity have been essential factors of contractualization. The politicization of the State, although, being the most important institutional devices, represent a special type of politicization which is a weak politicization combining excessiveness of power in the executive branch with a notorious political incapacity.

7.The Colombian State tries to replace its political and institutional impotency with a strong legal and especially constitutional presence. The ruling class has carried out a two fold strategy: 1) They have resorted to the constitutional reform in order to create a new social contract which, unfortunately, goes a little further from the symbolic an ephemeral eagerness fulfilled by the act of promulgation and, 2) They have imposed the state of emergency almost permanently. However, given its political weakness, Colombian governments have enormous difficulties in implementing solutions through the legal system; the inefficacy of political and social reforms, on one hand and, and the abuse of the state of emergency, as well as its inefficacy, on the other hand, have diminished the rule of law, increased the violation of human rights by the army, and spread out a culture of violence all over the Colombian society.

8. The current crisis of contractualization in Colombia has been a propitious environment for the sprout of social fascisms. Institutional fragmentation and widespread violence are especially favorable conditions for the expansion of insecurity and parastate fascisms. They are directly related to the existence of the state and its capacity to exert imperium. But this is only part of the picture of abandonment and vulnerability affecting individuals in Colombia; social and economic domination is also pervasive, especially in urban spaces, under the fascism of parallel State and the social apartheid.

In Colombia the dichotomy social anarchy/state order interact with the dichotomy oppression/emancipation. In fact, the combination between factors of these dyads allows for a differentiation between the following situations: 1) State/oppression, which is the conventional class domination in liberal states; 2) anarchy/emancipation, which pop up in some cases related with guerrilla movements, militias and popular movements; 3) oppression/anarchy, which can be associated with paramilitary groups, and also can be related in some cases with guerrillas and other armed groups, and 4) emancipation/state which happens some times in decisions taken by the Constitutional Court or eventually by local governments. This spectrum of possibilities show up the complexity both of domination and emancipation in Colombia

• American Watch, La guerra contra las drogas en Colombia; la olvidada tragedia de la violencia política; Universidad de los Andes-Iepri, Bogotá, 1990
• -The Killings in Colombia; Universidad de los Andes-Iepri, Bogotá, 1989.
• Antunes, G. & Hunt A.L. "The Impact of Certainty and Severity of Punishment on Levels of Crime in American States: An Extended Analysis" in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 64, 486 (1973)
• Auerbach, Jerold S. Justice Without Law, Oxford University Press, 1983
• Baudrillard, Jean (1983), Simulations; translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman, New York.
• Bergquist, Ch., Penaranda, R. and Sanchez G. (eds.) (1992), Violence in Colombia; The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspectives; Scholarly Resource inc.
• Berkowitz L. and Walker N., "Law and Moral Judgments" in Sociometry 30, 410, 1967
• Berry, Albert, Hellman, Ronald and Solaun, Mauricio eds. Politics of Compromise: Coalition Government in Colombia; New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers, 1980.
• Bobbio, Norberto, Il futuro de la Democrazia, Einaudi, Torino, 1991.
• Bourdieu, Pierre and Wacquart Loic J.D., An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992
• Bourdieu, Pierre, Choses dites, Paris: Minuit, 1987
• Bourdieu, Pierre, Raisons Pratiques; Sur la Theory de l’Action, Paris: Seuil, 1994
• Bourdieu, Pierre, The logic of Practice, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990
• Braithwaithe, "John, Crime, Shame, and Reintegration", Cambridge University Press, 1989.
• Bumiller, Kristin, The Civil Rights Society; The Social Construction of Victims, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988
• Bumiller, Kristin, "Victims in the Shadow of the Law: A Critique of the Model of Legal Protection" , 12 Signs, 421, 1987
• Camacho Guizado, Alvaro, "Dimensión de lo público y lo privado en la violencia urbana en Cali", en Democracia y Sociedad; Nora Segura de Camacho (Comp.), Fescol, Bogotá, 1988.
• Camacho Guizado, Alvaro, Nuevas visiones sobre la violencia en Colombia, Fescol-Iepri, Bogotá, 1997
• Camacho Guizado, Alvaro , Pazrentable.
• Canclini, Culturas Híbridas, Grijalbo, Barcelona, 1990
• Carrizosa Julio, "Lo económico desde una visión ambiental compleja", en Revista Ecología Política; Icaria, Barcelona, pp.44-45.
• Carrigan, Ana, The palace of Justice, a Colombian Tragedy; Four Walls Eight Windows, N.Y, 1993.
• Castells, Manuel, The Rise of The Network Society, Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996 .
• Castoriadis, Cornelius, L'institution imaginaire de la societe; París : Seuil, 1975.
• Cepeda Ulloa, Fernando (Comp.), La corrupción administrativa en Colombia, diagnóstico y recomendaciones para combatirla; Tercer Mundo-Fedesarrollo-Contraloría General de la República, 1994.
• Cinep, Los bancos de datos, Bogotá, 1995.
• Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, Colombia, Derechos Humanos y Derecho humanitario: 1996; Bogotá, 1997
• Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, Segundo informe de la Comisión sobre Colombia, Comisión Andina de Juristas, Bogotá, 1994
• Correa, Nestor, "Paz y ordenamiento territorial", Fundacion Federich Ebert de Colombia, Bogota, 1999.
• Deas, Malcom, "Algunas notas sobre la historia del caciquismo en Colombia", en, Revista de Occidente, # 127, 1973
• Deas, Malcom, "Algunos interrogantes sobre la relacion guerras civiles y violencia" in Penaranda R. and Sanchez G. (eds) Pasado y presente de la violencia en Colombia, Bogota: Cerec.
• Deas Malcom and Gaitan Daza F., Dos ensayos especulativos sobre la violencia en Colombia, Bogota, Fonade, 1995, p. 268
• Deas Malcom and Gaitan Daza F, Del poder y la gramatica : y otros ensayos sobre historia, politica y literatura colombianas Santafe de Bogota, Colombia : Tercer Mundo Editores, 1983
• Deleuze, G., Foucault, Minuit, París, 1986
• Días Uribe, Eduardo, El clientelism en Colombia: un estudio exploratorio, Bogotá, El Ancora, 1986
• Dimaggio, P.J and Powell, Walter W., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, University of Chicago Press, 1991.
• Dix, Robert H. The Politics of Colombia; New York: Praeger Publishers, 1987
• Del Olmo, Rosa, La Cara oculta de la Droga, Bogotá, Temis, 1986.
• Edelman, Lauren B., "Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Law" in American Journal Of Sociology 97, pp. 1531-1576, 1992
• Edelman, Lauren B., Legal Environments and Organizational Governance: The Expansion of Due Process in the American Workplace" American Journal of Sociology 95:1410-1440
• Edelman, L. and Patterson, Stephen, "Symbols and Substance in Organizational Response to Civil Rights Law", Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1994.
• Edelman L. B. and Suchman, M. "When the "Haves" Hold Court: The Internalization of Law in Oganizational Fields", forecoming, Law and Society....
• Edelman L. B. and Suchman, M., "Legal Rational Myths: The New Institutionalism and the Law and Society Tradition", in Law & Social Inquiry, Vol. 21 # 4 1996 pp. 903-941
• Edelman, Murray (1964), The symbolic uses of politics, Urbana, University of Illinois Press.
• Escobar, Arturo, Encountering Development, Princeton University Press, 1995
• Feest, Johannes, Global Crime Control Talk, Mimeo, 1989.
• Felstiner, Abel & Sarat, The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming ..., 15 Law and Society Review 631 (1980-1981).
• Ferrajoli, L. Derecho y Razón, Trotta, Madrid,1995.
• Fescol, El Desplome Colombiano; Análisis de las Relaciones Estado, Economía y Sociedad, Fundación Friederich Ebert de Colombia (?)
• Fitzpatrick, Peter, "Law and Societies" 22, Osgoode Hall Law Journal 115
• Friedman, Lawrence, "Legal Rules and the Process of Social Change", 19 Stanford Law Review 789
• Foucault, M. Surveiller et Punir, Gallimard, Paris,1975
• Galanter, "Reading the Landscape of Disputes: What We Know and Don’t Know (and Think We Know) About our Allegedly Contentious and Litigious Society", UCLA Law Review, vol. 31:4, pp. 5-71.
• Galanter, Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change, Institute for Legal Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1982; originally published in Volume 9:1 Law and Society Review, 1974
• Gambetta, Diego, The Sicilian Mafia. The Business of Private Protection, Harvard University Press, 1996
• García-Villegas Mauricio, "Los límites de la democracia participativa", en Sociedad Civil, control social y democracia participativa, Fescol, Bogotá , 1997.
• García-Villegas Mauricio, La Eficacia Simbólica del Derecho, Uniandes, Bogotá, 1993.
• Garzon Valdez, Ernesto, (1993) Derecho, Etica y Politica, Madrid: Centro de Estudios Constitucionales
• Gibbs, J. P. "The Deterrance Doctrine: Theory, Research, and Penal Policy" in Leon Lipson & Stanton Wheeler (eds.) Law and the Social Science, New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1986
• Griffiths, John (1986), "What is Legal Pluralism", 24 J. Of Legal Pluralism 1.
• González, Fernando, "Poblamiento y Conflicto Social en la Historia de Colombia", en Renan Silva (comp.), Territorios, Regiones, Sociedades, Bogotá, Cerec-Universidad del Valle, 1994.
• Gordon, Robert W. (1998), "Some Critical Theories of Law and their Critics" in David Kairys (ed.) The Politics of Law, Op. Cit.
• Grahn, Lance, Political Corruption and Reform in Cartagena Province 1700-1740; University of Wisconsin, Center for Latin America, 1995
• Grasmick, H. G. and Bursik, R.J Jr., "Conscience, Significant and Rational Choice: Extending the Deterrence Model", in Law and Society Review, Vol. 24, Número 3, 1990
• Guillén, Gonzalo, Un país de cafres; antología de la corrupción contemporánea en Colombia; Planeta, Bogotá, 1995.
• Gunes-Ayata, [eds]. Democracy, Clientelism, [and] Civil Society, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publisher, 1994.
• Gutierrez de Pineda, Virginia, Familia y cultura en Colombia: tipologias, funciones, y dinamica de la familia; manifestaciones multiples a traves del mosaico cultural y sus estructuras sociales; Tercer Mundo; Universidad Nacional, Departamento de Sociologia , Bogotá, 1968.
• Gutierrez, Francisco, Dilemas y paradojas de la transición participativa, en Análisis Político, 29, Iepri, Universidad Nacional, Bogotá, 1996, p 35-52.
• Habermas J. Toward to Rational Society, Cambridge, 1971
• Habermas, Juren, "Technology and Science as Ideology", in Toward a Rational Society; Cambridge, 1971.
• Habermas, Juren, "Law as a Medium and as an Institution" in Teubner, Gunther (ed.) (1988) Dilemmas of Law in Welfare State; New York, Walter de Gruyter.
• Hart, H.L., The Concept of Law, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1961
• Hay, Douglas, "Property, Authority and the Criminal Law", in Hay, Douglas et al. (1975) Albion's Fatal Tree; Crime and Society in Eighteen-Century England, New York: Pantheon Books, 1975
• Hay, Douglas, "Time, Inequality, and Law’s Violence", in Sarat et al. (Eds) Law’s Violence, 1992
• Heidenhmeir, Arnold, (Comp.) Political Corruption: Readings in Comparative Analysis; New York, 1970
• Henderson, D. James, When Colombia Bled; University of Alabama Press, 1985
• Herman, Donald L., Democratic and Authoritarian Traditions in Democracy in Latin America: Colombia and Venezuela; Praeger, 1988.
• Hernández, Germán; La Justicia en Llamas, Carlos Valencia Editores, Bogotá, 1996
• Herrán, Maria Teresa, La industria de los medios masivos de comunicacion en Colombia, Fundacion Friedrich Ebert de Colombia, Bogotá, 1991.
• Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, Oxford 1958 (de la edición de 1651).
• Howard, J. Woodford, JR, (1969) "Adjudication Considered as a Process of Conflict Resolution: A Variation on Separation of Powers" 18 Journal of Public Law, 339.
• Hutchcroft, Paul, "The Politics of Privilege; Assessing the Impact of Rent, Corruption, and Clientelism on Third World development" in, Political Corruption, Paul Heywood (ed.), Backweel, 1997
• Human Rights Watch, War without Quarter, Colombian and International Humanitarian Law, New York, Washington, Londres, Bruselas1998
• Inter-Church Committee On Human Rights in Latin America, One Step Forward Three Steps Back; Human Rights in Colombia Under the Samper Government, 1997.
• Jimeno, Myriam, Las violencias. Inclusión creciente. Ces, Bogotá, 1998
• Jimeno, Myriam and Roldan Ismael (1996), Las sombras arbitrarias; violencia y autoridad en Colombia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia
• Kairys David (ed.) (1998) The Politics of Law; A progressive Critique, Basic Books.
• Kline, Harvey F., (1996) "Colombia: Building Democracy in the Midst of Violence and Drugs" in Dominguez, J. and Lowenthal A. (eds) Construction Democratic Governance; Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1990s, The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Losada, Rodrigo, Clientelism y elecciones, Bogotá, Universidad Javeriana, Programa de Estudios Políticos, 1984.
• Landazabal, F., El Equilibrio del Poder; Palza y Janés, 1993.
• Leal Buitrago, Francisco, Estado Y política en Colombia, Bogotá Siglo XXI, Segunda Edición, 1984, p. 134.
• Leal Buitrago, Francisco, Clientelism : el sistema politico y su expresion regional . Instituto de Estudios Politicos y Relaciones Internacionales-Tercer Mundo Editores, 1990
• López, Andres, "Consideraciones Acerca de la Implementación del Acuerdo de Cartagena, en Diversidad Biológica y Cultural: Retos y Propuestas Desde América Latina; ILSA, Bogotá, 1988.
• Losada, Rodrigo, Clientelism y elecciones, Bogotá, Universidad Javeriana, Programa de Estudios Políticos, 1984.
• Martz John D., The Politics of Clientelism: Democracy and the State in Colombia, Transaction Publishers, 1997.
• McFarlane, "Political Corruption and Reformism in Bourbon Spanish America, in, Political Corruption in Europe and Latin America; Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, Macmillan Press, 1996.
• Melo, Jorge Orlando, Predecir el pasado: ensayos de historia de Colombia, fundación Simon y Lola Guberek, Bogotá, 1992.
• Mintz and Wolf about the Compadrazgo in Mexico (Southwestern Journal of Anthropology VI (1950) 341-68
• Molano, Alfredo (1997), Rebusque Mayorñ relatos de mulas, traquetos y embarques, Ancora, Bogotá.
• Moore, Sally Falk (1973) Law & Social Change: The semi-Autonomous social Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study", 7 Law and Society Rev., 719-746
• Múnera, Leopoldo (1999), Los estudios sobre la participación en Colombia: análisis y perspectivas, forecoming , Bogotá.
• Nagle, Luz Estella, Evolution of the Colombian Judiciary and The Constitutional Court, in 6 Indiana International and Comparative Law Review, Review 59, 1995
• Nino, Carlos S. (1992), Un pais al margen de la ley: estudio de la anomia como componente del subdesarrollo argentino, Buenos Aires: Emece editores
• O’Donnell, Guillermo (1998), Polyarchies and the (Un)Rule of Law in Latin America; Kellogg Institute University of Notre Dame.
• Orozco Ivan, Gomez Gabriel, Los peoligros del nuevo constitucionalismo en materia criminal, Iepri-Ministerio de Justicia, Bogota, 1997.
• Orozco Ivan, Gomez Gabriel, Orozco, Ivan, Combatientes, rebeldes y terroristas; guerra y derecho en Colombia; Iepri-Temis, Bogota, 1995
• Ost, Fr., Van de Kerchove M., Jalons pour une Theorie Critique du Droit, Facultes Universitaires de Saint Louis, Brussels, 1987.
• Osterling, Jorge P., Democracy in Colombian, Clientelist, Politics and Guerrilla Warfare; Transaction Publishers, 1989
• Palacio Marcos, La paz es Rentable, Bogota, Mimeo, 1997
• Anthony D Smith, The Ethnic Origins Nations [of], Blackwell, 1993, p. 131
• Pearce, Jenny (1990), Colombia Inside the Labyrinth; Latin American Bureau.
• Pécaut, Daniel, Orden y Violencia en Colombia 1930-1954, Bogotá, siglo XXI, 1978.
• Pécaut, Daniel, "Violencia y Política en Colombia", en Democracia, etnicidad y violencia política en los países andinos; Lima IEP/IFEA, 1993.
• Pécaut, Daniel, "Presente, pasado y futuro de la Violencia", en Revista Análisis Político, No 30, IEPRI, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, 1997.
• Pieterse, Jean N. "Globalization as hybridization", in Mike Featherstone, Scoott Lash, R. Robertson (eds.) Global Modernities, London: Sage, 1997, capítulo 3.
• Pizarro, Eduardo, Insurgencia sin Revolución, la guerrilla en Colombia en una perspectiva comparada; Tercer Mundo-Iepri, Bogotá, 1996.
• Pizarro, Eduardo, "Revolutionary Guerrilla Groups in Colombia", in Bergquist et al. (eds) Violence in Colombia...Op. Cit. pp. 169-195.
• Pombo, Diana, "Biodiversidad: una nueva lógica para la naturaleza" en Diversidad Biológica y Cultural: Retos y Propuestas Desde América Latina; ILSA, Bogotá, 1988.
• Procuraduría General de la Nación; El palacio de Justicia y el Derecho de Gentes; Procuraduría General de la Nación, Bogotá, 1986
• Rangel, Alfredo (1998) Colombia: Guerra en el fin de siglo, Bogota, Tercer Mundo Universidad de Los Andes.
• Reyes Posada, Alejandro (1997), "Compra de Tierras por Narcotraffickantes", en Drogas Ilícitas en Colombia, su impacto político, económico y Social, Bogotá, PNUD-DANE, Ed. Ariel, Ciencia política.
• Rocha Garcia, Ricardo (1997), Aspectos económicos de las drogas ilícitas, en Drogas Ilícitas en Colombia, su impacto político, económico y Social, Bogotá, PNUD-DANE, Ed. Ariel, Ciencia política.
• Roniger, Luis (1994) "The Study [comparative] Clientelism [of and the] Changing Nature [of] Civil Society [in the] Contemporary World" In Roniger [and] Anyse
• Rosenn, "The success of Constitutionalism in the United States and its Failure in Latin America: an Explanation" in The University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, Vol. 22 # 1, 1990
• Rubio, Mauricio, (1996) Homicidios, Justicia, Mafias y Capital social. Ensayo sobre la violencia en Colombia. Universidad de los Andes.
• Rubio, Mauricio, (1997a) De las riñas de la guerra. Hacia una reformulación del diagnóstico de la violencia en Colombia, CEDE- Universidad de los Andes.
• Rubio, Mauricio, (1997b) "Perverse Social Capital-Some Evidence from Colombia" in Journal of Economic Issues, Vol XXXI, # 3, pp. 805-817
• Rubio, Mauricio, (1997c)La justicia en una sociedad violenta; los agentes armados y la justicia penal en Colombia; Paz Pública, Universidad de los Andes.
• Salama Pierre, De la deuda externa a la deuda social, Paris, 1998, policopiado.
• Sarmiento Libardo, Colombia, Fin de Siglo: Crisis de Hegemonías y EcoSocialismo, en Imprenta, Bogotá 1998.
• Sanchez, Gonzalo (1985), "La Violencia in Colombia: New Research, New Questions", in Hispanic American Historical Review 65: 4.
• Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, Toward a New Common Sense. Law, Science and Politics in the Paradigmatic Transition, Routledge, New York, 1996 pps. 456 y ss.
• Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, Pela Mao de Alice: o Social e o Politico na Pós-modernidade, Afrontamento, Porto, 1994, P. 277.
• Sarat, Austin and Kaerns, Thomas R. (eds.) (1992), Law’s Violence, The University of Michigan Press
• Schwartz R.D. and Orleans, S. "On Legal Sanctions", in University of Chicago Law Review, 274, 1967.
• Schwartz, Elisabeth F. Getting away with Murder: Social Cleansing in Colombia and the Role of The United States; The University of Miami Inter-American Law Review 27, Winter 1995-1996, 381.
• Schmidt, Steffen, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients: Party Linkages in the Colombian System" in Kay Lawson (ed.) Political Parties and Linkage: a Comparative Perspective, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980
• Shklar, Judith (1964), Legalism : Law, Morals, and Political Trials, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
• Sikkink, Kathryn, "The Emergence and Effectiveness of the Latin American Human Rights Network", in Elizabeth Jelin and Eric Hershberg (eds), Constucting Democracy. Human Rights, Citizenship, and Society in Latin America. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996.
• Steiner, Roberto (1997), Los dólares del narcotráfico, Cuadernos Fedesarrollo, Tercer Mundo, Bogota.
• Steiner, Roberto and Ocampo Jose Antonio (1994), Foreing Capital in Latin America, Inter-American Development Bank, Fedesarrollo, Bogotá.
• Stuart, Henry, "Community Justice Capitalist Societies, and Human Agency: The Dialectics of Collective Law in Cooperative", 19 Law and Society Review 303.
• Stuart, Henry, Private Justice (1983), Boston, Routledge and Kegan Paul
• Szasz Thomas S., Ideology and Insanity, Essays on The Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man, Garden City, New York, Anchor Books, 1970.
• Tenjo, Jaime, "Evolución de los retornos a la inversion en Educación 1976-1989" in Revista de Planeación y Desarrollo 24, dicember 1993.
• Thoumi, Francisco, Political Economy & Illegal Drugs in Colombia; Studies on the impact of the Illegal Trade, Lynne Rienner, 1995.
• Thoumi, Francisco, "Introduccion y panorama" (1997), en Drogas Ilicitas en Colombia..., Thoumi et al. (ed.) Op. Cit. pp. 17-33.
• Tirado Mejia, Alvaro (1976), Aspectos sociales de las guerras civiles en Colombia, Bogota: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura.
• Tokatlian, Juan Gabriel, "Drogas psicoactivas ilícitas y política mundial; la indudable e inestable Internacionalización de Colombia", en Ramírez, Socorro y Restrepo, Luis Alberto (eds.), Colombia: entre la inserción y el aislamiento; la política exterior de Colombia en los años noventa, Siglo del Hombre editores, Iepri, Bogotá , 1997.
• Trubek, David (1977), "Complexity and Contradictions in the Legal Order: Balbus and the Challenge of Critical Social Thought About Law", Law and Society Review 11: 520-70.
• Tushnet, Mark, An Essay On Rights, Texas Law Review, Vol. 62, # 8, 1984
• Tyler, Tom, Why People Obey the Law in Yale University Press, 1990
• Uprimny, Rodrigo "Legitimidad, Clientelism y Política en Colombia (1989). Un ensayo de interpretación", en Cuadernos de Economía,Volumen X, # 13, Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
• Uprimny, Rodrigo, Croissance, rentes et violence: "Le cas sui generis de la Colombie" in, Revue Yiers Monde, T XXX, Paris, 1990
• Uprimny, Rodrigo, "Las transformaciones de la administracion de justicia en Colombia" en Analisis Sociojuridico de la Justicia en Colombia, Cijus, universidad de Los Andes, cap.2, 1997
• Uprimny, Rodrigo, Etat, accumulation et légitimité: analyse théorique et interpétation du "Front National. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amiens- Picardie, 1992
• Uprimny, Rodrigo y Vargas, Alfredo (1990), "La palabra y la sangre : violencia, legalidad y guerra sucia en Colombia", en La irrupción del paraestado, Germán palacio (de), Ilsa- Cerec, Bogotá.
• Uribe, Maria Tereza (1997), "Las representaciones colectivas sobre la sociedad civilen Colombia" in, Sociedad Civil, control social y democracia participativa, Fescol, Bogotá.
• Uribe, Maria Victoria, Ni canto de gloria ni canto funebre; el regreso del EPL a la vida civil, Cinep, Bogota, 1994
• Uribe, Maria Victoria, Limpiar la tierra, Guerra y poder entre esmeralderos, Cinep, Bogota, 1992
• Uribe, Maria Victoria and Vasquez, Teofilo (1995), Enterrar y callar, Comite permanente para la defensa de los derechos humanos; Fundacion Terres des Homes, Bogota
• Valencia Villa, Hernando Cartas de Batalla, Cerec-Universidad Nacional, Bogotá 1987
• Weber, Max, Economy and Society, University of California, U.S.A., 1978.
• Weisberg, Robert "Private Violence as Moral Action: The Law as instiration and Example", in Sarat et al. (Eds) Law’s Violence
• Wolff, Robert Paul (1971), The Rule of Law, New York: Touchstone.
• Zarmeño, Sergio (1981), Las fracturas del estado en América Latina, en Lechner R.(ed.) Estado y Política en América Latina, México: Siglo Veinte

Information on demographic and other socio-economic indicators [in Excel format]:

1. Basic data about Colombia
2. Gross domestic product
3. Exports f. o. b.
4. GNP by sectors in %
5. Number of guerrilla soldiers.
6. Quality of life
7. Poverty
8. Socio-economic data

Notes
(1) Social studies in Colombia are frequently affected by the idea of terror - the same which tormented Hobbes by the middle of the XVII century - derived from the concurrence of rights, or if preferred, by the absence of limits between rights, which characterizes the state of nature (see Rubio (1996, 1997); Jimeno (1998); Camacho (1997), Camacho (1999). The weakness of State power and the emergence of armed groups, that take place today in Colombia, create a situation of natural equalization between individuals which, combined with the authoritarian behavior of the State, produce a terrifying scenario. In these circumstances, as Hobbes says, the worst comes from the fact that "nothing could be unjust" (Hobbes 1958: 98; Parsons 1964:90; Trubek 1972:341).
(2) This argument appear to be delicate if we bear in mind that militaries used it it order to justify the so-called, National Security Doctrine during the 1970s.
(3) During the period of the Frente Nacional (1959-1968) - after the civil war called La violencia - and according to the constitution, both Liberal and Conservative parties took turns in power every 4 years. Elections were free but only candidates from one party could participate. Additionally, the party in power had the obligation - also constitutional - of giving bureaucratic proportional participation (50%) to the other party.
(4)The constitutional reform of 1968 authorized the reelection of representatives in Congress and provided them with economic resources - known as auxilios parlamentarios (parliamentary aids) - which were used for the payment of clientelist-favors at the local level. These resources, added to the power of bureaucratic nomination attributed to the party of government, strengthened clientelist practices
(5) There is a wide bibliography on the importance of clientelism in Latin America. The pioneer text in this matter belongs to Mintz, S W. and Wolf E. R and (1950: 341-68). For a more recent view, see Robert H. Dix (1987), R Albert Berry, Ronald G. Hellman and Mauricio Solaun (eds.) (1980), Steffen Schmidt (1980). For a Colombian bibliography, see Francisco Leal Buitrago (1984, 1990), Rodrigo Losada (1984), Eduardo Uribe Diaz (1986),Rodrigo Uprimny (1989), Malcom Deas (1973) and Daniel Pecaut (1978).
(6) According to Touraine (1988: 136) the hyper-development of the political sphere in Latin America leads to the fact that political leaders are more important than political organizations as well as to a sort of lack of differentiation between the political system and the State. In Colombia, for instance, once the presidential period is finished, the former President remains with much political power. Those who say that in Colombia politicians look forward to being ex-presidents above all else, don’t exaggerate. Ex-presidents and their families have played an important role in the configuration of political elites throughout the Colombian history. They are landlords or have important participation in the media (in newspaper like, El Tiempo, El Espectador, La Republica; in weekly magazines like Nueva Frontera and Semana, in radio networks like Caracol; in television news like TV Hoy, 24 Hours, etc.); for this matter see Herran, María Teresa (1991) and Osterling, 1989: 167. Some presidential families got another of its members to be president - Alfonso Lopez (1974-78); Andres Pastrana 1998 - other families have participated as presidential candidates - Carlos Lleras de la Fuente, Alvaro Gómez Hurtado, Maria Eugenia Rojas - or as important politicians. The political aristocracy so configured is provided every four years with the "clientelist machinery".
(7) For instance, El Banco de la Republica, Planeacion Nacional, and somewhat Las Fuerzas Armadas.
(8) The survival of clientelism even in modern environments is today accepted. Nevertheless, the real dimension of this phenomenon among intermediate societies that has reached a certain modernization is somehow the object of debate. Two positions could be differentiated: from one side those who see in the clientelist practices a functional element for political development and on the other side those who think that clientelism introduces fragmentation and chaos in the political system. For an illustration of this debate see Marts (1997: 306). On the importance of clientelism in modern societies see Luis Roniger (1994).
(9) According to Touraine A. (1987: 14), the partial externality of the economic power in Latin America entails the fact that the political system acts as a distributor of resources - money, influence, protection, etc. - rather than as the manager of production.
(10) "Post-clientelism", Francisco Gutiérrez argues, "used blackmail up to down and below to up, as the main element of political representation; therefore, it effectively blocked the articulation of collective interests and the participation in the formation of public goods" Gutierrez, Francisco (1996).
(11) The armed-clientelism - says Francisco Leal - is one of the more disturbing and less analyzed realities of the Colombian democracy (cited by Gutierrez 199 : 47).
(12) Even in relation to guerrillas; they reproduce the relationship patron/client in its territories. From peasants, the guerrilla obtains political favors - for example, votes for a certain mayor, abstention, etc. - or logistical favors - information or harbor - all of this in exchange for protection
(13) Few people - Francisco Gutierrez says - could be involved in such participationism: so expensive, so dangerous and with so few outcomes. In consequence, the growing legal offer of participation finds very few followers (Gutierrez, Op. Cit, p. 48); on the inefficiency of the new participatory democracy mechanisms, see, Munera, (1999); Garcia-Villegas, Mauricio (1997).
(14) In Bourdieu scheme of power, the political field is structured upon the economic field whereas the intellectual and artistic fields have a relative autonomy vis-à-vis the economic field. We argue that this understanding isn’t useful to explain the role of the political field in Latin American countries due to the great degree of autonomy politics acquires here. This kind of parallelism between the intellectual field and the political field has been studied by Deas, Malcom (1983).
(15) According to Fernando Guillén (1986), the current function of political parties consists of maintaining solidarity and loyalty from lay people, likely during the Hacienda, the Patron achieved this purpose with his subjects; Fernando Guillen (1986).
(16) Corruption, on the other hand, is also a form of clientelism based on a "market of illegal reciprocations"; in this respect, see Heidenhmeir, Arnold (1970); for an explanation of the relationship between clientelism and corruption, see Hutchcroft, Paul (1997: 223-243); for the Colombian case, see Guillén, Gonzalo (1995), Cepeda, Fernando (1994); this is not a new phenomenon: see for example, Grahn, Lance (1995) and McFarlane (1996).
(17) See, Deas, M. and Gaitan-Daza F. (1995: 268). Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that El Salvador, during the last years and as a consequence of the peace process has violence indexes that reach and even overpass the Colombian indexes. See also Paz Publica - Carta # 1 Universidad de Los Andes July 1997...International Crime Statistics, 1995 [?]
(18) This number is very high compared with other countries where violence is a concern. For instance in Brasil the rate of homicides for 100,000 inhabitants is 25, in Panama is 23, in Peru is 12, in Sri Lanka is also 12 and in USA is 12 as well.
(19) See, Interpol, International Crime Statistics, 1995; Latin American Regional Reports (Apr. 13, 1995); Freedom in the World: the Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Rights 195, 1994-95, U.S Department of the State, Country Reports Human Rights Practices for 1994, Colombia 351, 1995... Amnesty International, Colombia: Political Violence, Myth and Reality, 1994 .
(20) 25,200 people were killed in 1998, 24,306 in 1997 and 27,428 in 1996 (Comision Colombiana de Juristas)
(21) According to the Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (Tercer Informe 1999:27) almost half of the total amount of annual kidnappings in the world happen in Colombia.
(22) According to the International Union Confederation (web page updated April 1999)
(23) The symbolic -almost sacred - character of the war at this time can be perceived in the fact that the identification of the opponents through the colors - blue and red - became an essential and almost independent element of the civil war. A regional perspective of this war is given in, James D. Henderson (1985).
(24) See, Ramirez (1990) and Pizarro (1996: 55-88); see also Camacho (1999).
(25) According to Rangel (1998: 31) the guerrillas spend about 650.000 dollars every day.
(26) According to data from the Comisión de Racionalización del Gasto Público - published in El Tiempo January 6th of 1999 - the cost of the war in 1997 rose 3,700 million dollars. For that year the GNP was 94,000 million dollars. Because of the war, the Colombian economy stops growing every year by 3 points of its GNP. In the last years the resources for defense has been multiplied by 5. The growth of the public expenses between 1992 and 1998 was 15%: it passed from 2.0% (GNP) to 3.5% (GNP). The number of soldiers [pie de fuerza] has been doubled from 85,000 soldiers to 160.000. This report mentions data from the National Department of Planning according to which, the losses generated by violence between 1990-1994 are calculated as 12.4 billion pesos (about 8,000 million dollars). However, this data does fit with a similar research from the CEDE (1998) (University of Los Andes) - also published in El Tiempo (July 20, 1998) - according to which the cost of the war in 1977 was 8,000 million dollars.
(27) The formation and expansion of paramilitaries has explanation in three parallel phenomena: 1) growth of guerrillas since the 1980s; 2) failure of the army vis-à-vis guerrillas; and 3) participation of narco-land-owners in zones of guerrilla influence. The first paramilitary group was founded in 1980 under the name of MAS: Muerte a Secuestradores (Death to kidnappers). There is little information about the paramilitary expansion. However, it is considered that there are about 4,500 men in arms (Camacho 1999... ). In war zones, a clear empathy exists between paramilitaries and army officers. In February 1983 the National Attorney General presented a report in which he accused 59 active-duty members of the police and military who belonged to MAS, including the commander of the Army’s Bombona Batallion (Human Rights Watch1: 998).
(28) According to Rubio (1997) the empirical literature validating a social capital approach to delinquency cannot be applied in Colombia. The low return on investment for some segments of the population and the high profit in criminal activities make education a bad deal. Rubio suggests that, in Colombia, criminal activity is mostly the result of a rational choice. " The simultaneous existence of a persistent and growing informal and illegal underground economy" He argues, "as well as the rise of powerful criminal organizations, has brought to light an institutional environment that favors opportunist and criminal behavior" (p. 808).
(29) There is a big debate over the dimension and influence of illegal capitals in Colombia. See for instance, Steiner, R., (1997), Ocampo and Steiner (eds.) (1994); Thoumi (1995); Rocha Garcia (1997)
(30) See Alejandro Reyes (1997); for instance, according to Reyes during the last fifteen years narcotraffickrs have carried out a sort of counter agrarian reform: they have purchased lands in 37 % of Colombian municipalities, specially those with the best quality of land.
(31) The annually announced ‘certification’ of the country made up by the Department of the State in Washington has an enormous incidence in the political and economic activity in Colombia. During the first months of every year, before the announcement of the result, the whole country seems to depend on this admonition. During the Government of Samper the country didn't receive a full certification. On August 10 of 1998 El Tiempo published information according to which the USA embassy in Colombia had conditioned certification on the accomplishment of a list of 7 items, all of them related to drugs, but also all depending on the political, the administrative or the judicial process. They were: adoption of an "integral politics against illegal drugs"; "budget increment headed to fight drug traffic"; "invigoration of penal investigation"; "enforcement of extradition"; "adoption of a strong crime legislation and penitentiary reforms".
(32) The American embassy justifies this intervention with the argument that drug traffic is an international matter that is part of its national interest.
(33) The supposed beneficent effects of drug traffic on the economical stability in Colombia raise controversy. Given their existence the question is to what extent can they be justified in relation with the harmful effects on the same economic system; see Uprimny (1990)
(34) So, the United States imposes a change of scale in the treatment of this problem that explains, partly at least, the inefficiency of the prohibitionist policy (Santos: )
(35) There are of course temporary achievements: the most important "capos" of the Cali Cartel and Medellin Carter are either in prison or death; but still the business is as strong as always.
(36) These circumstances lead to the inefficacy of criminal laws and confine State policy to the increase of penalties and the creation of new crimes, more and more repressive and harmful in relation to the rule of law. According to Diego Perez 618 detentions made by the jurisdiction of public order in the first semester of 1992, 584 cases were about people involved in civic and politic demonstrations. In this respect, Nemoga 1987, Uprimny 1999). But, inefficiency and institutional schizophrenia are not the only consequence of this policy: the uneven implementation of penal norms against peasants, small dealers and "mules" on the one hand, and the illegal use of repression for purposes linked to the war against the guerrillas on the other hand are two well known additional evils.
(37) This type of globalization is different - although maybe complementary- from that linked to the internationalization of the market dramatically affecting the periphery of the world system (Castells, 1996: 115; Escobar, 1995: 22; Santos, 1995). Colombia, like the other countries of the subcontinent, has been incorporated into this phenomenon with a doubled force since the eighties, when the national economy acquired its current speculative and financial character (Sarmiento; 1997: 20).
(38) Certainly, there is a great debate here. The Colombian left, for example, has always seen this policy exclusively as the extension of imperialism.
(39) The Gini coefficient would be 0 if all the individuals received exactly the same amount of money, and it would be 1 if an individual receives all.
(40) Fedesarrollo (1997:41). . According to the World Bank, in Colombia the richest 10 % receive the 46.9% of the national income while the poorest 10% receive only 1% of national income. (Informe sobre desarrollo mundial 1998-1999 : 198)
(41) Comision Colombiana de Juristas (1998) Mimeo
(42) In 1995 four cuttings came out in the Plan de desarrollo (Developing plan) that add up to 950,000 million pesos (about 600 million dollars); see, Sarmiento Anzola, Libardo (1996).
(43) According to Melo, this was a general phenomenon in Latin America; in no case was it possible to maintain united entities that during the Colony were not united. For that reason, intents for establishing national entities starting from the union between several administrative colonial entities always failed (Melo, 1992: 90).
(44) Gutierrez of Pineda, Virginia (1968).
(45) Demographic growth passed from 3% in 1970 to 1.8% in 1990; urban population passed from 40% in 1960 to 70% in 1990; the labor force in agriculture passed from 45% in 1965 to 25% in 1990; the expenses in education passed from 1.7 of the [PNB] in 1960 to 2.8 in 1990 (Desarrollo Humano 1990). According to Melo (Melo, 1990: 222), the central phenomenon of the national life during these years was the "extremely quick transformation of the mentalities and the structures of social life".
(46) See, Jaramillo Ana Maria ...
(47) Notwithstanding, in Colombia -as it is the case in the rest of Latin American countries - a sort of mixture between racial and class dominance has to be stressed.
(48) Frequently, the State dramatizes the conditions of the war and the imminence of chaos in order to be perceived as the only acceptable power.
(49) See, Analisis sociojuridico de la Justicia en Colombia, especially the first part; see also Uprimny and Garcia-Villegas (1999) . The relation between social conflicts and judicialization may be visualized as a pyramide, usually called The "Dispute Pyramide" which represents in its base the social conflicts or "grievances" (Felstiner, Abel and Sarat, 1980- 81) - perceived of as such - and, at the top, the disputes solved by judicial decisions; See Galanter, 1983, Santos, (19... ) for a more recent transformation of the pyramide in core countries see Edelman, L and Suchman, M, (1999).
(50) See, Analisis Sociojuridico de la Justicia en Colombia (1997).
(51) Ibidem
(52) Judicial reforms designed to lighten the load of the judicial system have been implemented with an essentially administrative understanding of the problem. According to this perspective, excellence is supposed to be the increase of answers the system provides to society. Because of such an emphasis on the offer, the system has stopped worrying about social demand of justice and has underestimated the need for symmetry between internal operation in the judicial system and social necessities. The emphasis on the outcomes prompts the primacy of data over the quality of solutions and, therefore, leads to a concentration of effort in the easy cases. Those cases in which the State has only a procedural role overtake those in which investigation, motivation and adjudication is needed. In these circumstances, it also changes the scale between conflicts and solutions or between adjudicative justice and bureaucratic - almost notarial - justice. The tutela action has been useful in order to attenuate this breach between demand and supply of justice. However, its achievements are very restricted in the general panorama of protection of rights.
(53) The welfare system created in Colombia - starting from 1936 (Melo, 1992: 155)- did not entail the type of contractualization which took place in the core countries: a contractualization between the organisms of capital and of work under the guidance of the State.
(54) According to Habermas (1971:101), legitimacy, in European liberal states from the middle of XIX century, doesn't derive -as it happens in "traditional societies" - from an institutional structure that provides sense and validity to social practices, but from the market and its implicit idea of equivalence. The system operated under the assumption of state neutrality. This situation changes with the appearance of dysfunctions owed to free change, which give rise to the introduction of the Beneficent State or Providence (Habermas, however doesn't keep in mind the fact that, beyond those dysfunctions, State politicization was due to the emergence of the labor movement). In these new conditions, a repoliticization of the State takes place. In Colombia, such politicization never existed, neither did such a market.
(55) Even more, from this inclusion of the indigenous people in the social contract, the dominant elite has found symbolic benefits, in terms of legitimacy, much more important than the risks derived from that partial contractual inclusion.
(56) For the idea of "weakness of the Colombian State" see Daniel Pécaut (1993: 267 y ss). In Hobbesian terms, this weakness has the following three manifestations: 1) lack of capacity to exercise coercion and impose obligations (imperium), 2) lack of capacity to contain the armed internal conflict, and 3) dependence on international restraints (globalization). The first of these manifestations is characteristic of a pre-state situation; the second of an anti-state situation and the third of an inter-state This difference is proposal by Norberto Bobbio interpreting Hobbes’ explanations (1958:97)
(57) According to Bourdieu (1987:96 ) "plus une situation est dangereuse , plus la pratique tend a etre codifiee (...) Plus la situation sera grosse de violence a l’etat ptentiel , plus il faudra mettre de formes, plus la conduite librement confie aux improvisation de l’habitus cedera la place a la conduite expresement regle par une rituel methodiquement institue, voir codifie"
(58) Not only in Colombia but in Latin American countries, See Rosenn, (1990:31)
(59) Colombia had 10 national constitutions between 1810 - the year of its independence - and 1886, when a new constitution was promulgated that lasted for 105 years. The constitution of 1886 had sixty-seven reforms. On the topic of constitutional reformism, see Hernando Valencia Villa (1987:43).
(60) For the symbolic character of the political participation in Colombia see Uribe, Maria Tereza (1977); Restrepo, Luis Alberto (1997); García Villegas, Mauricio (1997) and Múnera, Leopoldo (1999).
(61) See, for instance, the report published by the so called group of violentólogos (experts on violence) under the title : Colombia, Violencia y Democracia (1987); this book had much institutional importance during the last part of the 80s.
(62) On the restricted character of the electoral census, see Carlos Ariel Sánchez (1993: 187-207).
(63) L. E Nagel (1995) points out the French influence in Colombian institutions. She contrasts the Colombian history since colonial time with the American history and tries to show how different those processes are and how important the lack of administrative experience was for revolutionary people (for this matter, see also Rossen, 1990). However, in the analysis of the present, Nagel underestimates the importance of German and Spanish influence in the constitution of 1991; this misinterpretation leads her to a wrong comparative analysis between current American and Colombian constitutionalism.
(64) According to David Trubek (1977) the legal system must provide some benefits for subordinate groups or it would not be accepted as legitimate; see also, Gordon (998: 647). For progressive decisions at the Colombian Constitutional Court, see the following : T-406/1992, [completar]... For a critique of this kind of judicial activism in recent years, see Orozco Ivan and Gomez, Gabriel (1997).
(65) According to Galanter (1974: 135) " those who seek change through the courts tend to represent relatively isolated interests, unable to carry the day in more political forums"; and concerning the limits of progressive adjudication, he says : " even the most favorably inclined court may not be able to make those rule-changes most useful to a class of "have-nots" (137); not to mention the mere symbolic effect of some judicial decisions concerning marginalized people (138) (Garcia Villegas, 1993: ...). See also Howard. J and Woodford. Jr (1969).
(66) See Analisis Sociojuridico de la justicia en Colombia...(Garcia-Villegas. 1997); This empirical research about constitutional cases of tutela- which is the judicial action steered to the protection of fundamental rights - demonstrates how strict social rights decisions - those involving an economic grant - have represented only 2.6% of the total tutela-decisions in the whole country since 1992.
(67) Legal inefficacy cannot always be understood as the consequence of the resistance of social phenomenon to comply with norms but as the cause embedded in the norm itself which deliberately takes for granted the complexity of the social phenomena. To some extent the constitution foresees and looks for its own inefficacy. So, instead of asking for the causes of the failure of law, it may be asked: to what extent does such a failure explain a power situation in which the legal norm plays an important role? (Garcia Villegas 1993: 82). The production of law does not always obey efficiency reasons. Very often cultural environment determines the promulgation of norms as symbols. According to Edelman (1992:1535), law creates a ‘legal environment’ that consists not only of law and the sanctions that are built into law, but also of societal norms and culture associated with law" (see also: DiMaggio and Powell 1991; 1994). Law as symbols creates also new social relations (for the constitutive character of symbols, see: Friedland and Aldford in Di Maggio and Powell 1991); for the uses of law as political symbols see Scheingold, S.A. (1974), Edelman, Murray (1964) and Shklar, J. (1964); for an even more radical critic of rights see Tushnet, (1984:1392). Speaking against the rhetoric of positive rights, Tushnet (1984: 1392-93) argues that "By abstracting from real experiences and reifying the idea of rights, it creates a sphere of autonomy stripped of any social context and counterpose to it a sphere of social life stripped of any content". A more concrete explanation of the discrimination resulting from the civil rights legislation in Bumiller (1987). For an specific explanation in the symbolic use of norms by governments in Colombia during the period of the war against narcotraffic see Garcia-Villegas M. (1993).
(68) See Garcia Villegas (1997)
(69) Here it is possible to apply what Bourdieu (1987:97) explains for the cultural field: "S’il fallait proposer une définition transculturelle de l´excellence, je dirais que c´est le fait de savoir jouer avec la regle du jeu jusqu´aux limites, voir jusqu´a la transgression, toute en restant dans la regle".
(70) According to Rangel (1998) one of the institutional obstacles in relation to the guerrilla and the narcotraffic is its perception of both as one problem which need two different solutions.
(71) The activity of the State - in Habermas’ terms - is reduced to an instrumental rationality which, due precisely to that reduction, becomes useless; the efficientist and techno-bureaucratic emphasis leads to the ineptitude of the State. In these circumstances, the law, as the dominant discourse, is more and more marginal in its achievements (Habermas, 1971: 93).
(72) For a different point of view see Orozco (1992). According to Orozco, the law of war - based on a state/enemy perspective - governs conflict between armed groups that are somehow equally considered; so rebels are treated with a sort of ethic neutrality, which leads to low sentences. Terrorists, instead, are overcriminalized because they are judged through penal law norms which are based in a state/criminal view. Orozco’s understanding is still important as a defense of the application of the DHIL in Colombia and doesn’t diminish our argument vis-à-vis the enforcement of exceptional norms.
(73) According to L. Edelman and M. Suchman (1996: 924), the state as well as organizations are responsive to, and constitutive of , the rule environment. See also the idea of "cognitive environment of organization" in L. Edelmen (1990).
(74) For the relation between values and obedience of law see Tyler (1990:161), Braithwaite, (1989: 101), Schwartz Richart D. &Orleans Sonia (1967), Berkowitz L. & Walker N. (1967). An opposite perspective is developed in the so-called "rational choice studies", for instance: Antunes George & Hunt (1973) and Gibbs (1986).
(75) See, Human Rights Watch (1998:86) and Department of the State Report….(buscar titulo) 1997. For information about massacres in Colombia and armed groups involved see, Uribe, María Victoria and Vasquez, Teófilo (1995). For information about the war in the emerald region see, Uribe, Maria Victoria (1992); for information about social cleansing see Schwartz (1995).
(76) This is not a Colombian exclusive phenomenon; see for example Nino (1992) and Garzon Valdez (1993) and O’Donnell (1998)
(77) The civil groupings of armed defense, so-called "Convivir" created by the government, entail a confusion between the combatant and the civilian and thereby between law and war (Human Rights Watch, 1998: 88).
(78) Hay argues that criminal law was as much concerned with authority as it was with the protection of property. Combining three elements: 1) majesty (the spectacle of punishment as a symbolic power), 2) formalistic interpretation of rules and inefficacy, and 3) Mercy (50% were pardoned), criminal law was implemented as an ideological tool. "Criminal law -He explains- more than any other institution made it possible to govern eighteen-century England without a police force and without a large army. The ideology of the law was crucial in sustaining the hegemony of the English ruling class. This argument, if sound, helps us to explain their resistance to suggestions for drastic legal reform" (p. 56) Another very important element for maintaining hegemony was patronage which created vertical chains of loyalty. "Social control in the eighteen century seems a gentle yoke from this perspective: a spontaneous, uncalculated and peaceful relationship of gratitude and gifts" (p. 62) (...). "Eighteen century in England was not a free market of patronage relations. It was a society with a bloody penal code, an astute ruling class who manipulated it to their advantage, and a people schooled in the lessons of Justice, Terror and Mercy. The benevolence of rich men to poor, and all the ramifications of patronage, were upheld by the sanction of the gallows and the rhetoric of the death sentence' (63).
(79) In Colombia - as it is in most of Latin American countries (see Rosenn, 1990:29) - it appears to be normal that comanders-in-chief give their political opinions, especially when these are bound to problems of public order. Once retired, some generals become prestigious columnists in newspapers, publish books and give conferences on national politics. This was the case of General Landazabal who was an active member of the Conservative Party and was murdered in 1998 apparently by an extreme right group.
(80) On this dramatic event see, Procuraduria General de la Nacion (1986), Hernández, G. (1986) and Carrigan, A. (1993).