Recentralisation in Colombia by Julián D. López-Murcia published by Palgrave Macmillan (2022).
The aim of this book is to explain why and how after a comprehensive set of decentralising processes (political, fiscal and administrative), Colombia experienced significant recentralising policies and reforms (particularly in 2001, 2007, and 2011). These recentralising changes emerged not only against what was expected by leading works on decentralisation in Latin America (that did not predict this type of “back pedalling”), but in a way that the existing hypotheses on recentralisation cannot fully account for. The research design of the book traces and compares reform efforts across almost three decades. The period under study begins in 1994 and ends in 2020 (five different presidencies). This makes for a very detailed analysis and provides the adequate setting for a path-dependent approach. One of the highlights of the book are about a hundred interviews with the key decision makers. The interactive and cross-temporal framework developed to explain Colombia’s recentralisation could provide a template for the study of administrative recentralisation reforms across Latin American countries. Still, it does not aim to propose a general theory of recentralisation.
