The Colombian Paradox: A Thick Institutionalist Analysis
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Description
This chapter examines the “Colombian paradox”: the coexistence of fairly stable political, economic, and social institutions on the one hand and very high levels of violence and territorial fragmentation on the other. Against the opposite view, which holds that Colombia is a “failed state” with collapsed institutions, the studies show that there are strong institutional niches embedded in transnational processes of managerial and technological modernization. Moreover, Colombian organizations are simultaneously solid in the institutional centers and precarious in the economic, political, and social peripheries. Clientelism—a combination of proactivity and lack of bureaucratic rationality that has contributed to the modest performance of the Colombian economy—serves as a form of suboptimal equilibrium that sustains and reproduces this asymmetry.
Source Publication
Institutions Count: Their Role and Significance in Latin American Development
Source Editors/Authors
Alejandro Portes, Lori D. Smith
Publication Date
2012
Recommended Citation
Rodríguez-Garavito, César, "The Colombian Paradox: A Thick Institutionalist Analysis" (2012). Faculty Chapters. 1896.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1896
