Abstract

GOMEZ ALBARELLO, Juan Gabriel. THE “DEMOCRATIC” APPEARANCE OF THE 1991 CONSTITUTION: CRISIS AND FUTURE OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN COLOMBIA AND AROUND THE WORLD. anal.polit. [online]. 2019, vol.32, n.96, pp.103-121. ISSN 0121-4705.  https://doi.org/10.15446/anpol.v32n96.83753.

The constitutional change that took place in Colombia in 1991 generated the illusion that Colombian politics would not be exclusionary anymore. After a quarter of century under the new Constitution, Colombias seem to be split between what they aspire to and what they really achieve within the existing institutional framework. The cause of this dispary must be found in that very institutional framework. In this article, I highlight the absence of incentives to go to the polls, the extremely limited effect of the single national electoral district, and the antidemocractic nature of the regime of campaing financing. The consequencies of this mistaken institutional design are multiple: the difussion of corruption not only in the political system but in the overall society, an enduring unfair and opaque tax system, and the consolidation of an extractivist and rentist capitalism. In the concluding remarks, I argue that the poltical representation problems in Colombia must be seen against the background of a global crisis, specifically, the exhaustion of the electoral democracy. As an alternative, I advocate the adoption of the sortition democracy.

Keywords : constitutional change; corruption; rent-seeking; representation crisis; electoral democracy; sortition democracy.

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