Cardona
MPSA 2004
6
the government? In practical terms, this decision manifests on two levels: the government
ministry to which different elements of the public forces report, and the extent to which
any element of the public forces is under the control of elected or appointed officials. In
Colombia, as we will see in the case study below, the national and subnational police
frequently changed their institutional affiliation with regard to the ministry to which they
reported. In addition, the subnational police were beholden to subnational politicians,
namely governors and mayors, who operated within a strong two-party system.
What a consideration of the decentralized Colombian fuerza pública suggests is
that the availability of regular armed forces to state agents operating at the subnational
level. There have continuously existed police forces in Colombia operating at the
departmental (the equivalent of a U.S. state) and municipal levels.
5
Critically, these
forces have almost always been under the control of local politicians, governors being in
charge of departmental police and mayors in charge of municipal police. Both governors
and mayors were appointed by the central government until 1988, making them key
players in an ongoing struggle for partisan dominance at the local level.
The dynamics of party competition in Colombia are complex and poorly
understood. Amazingly, no comprehensive history of the evolution of the two main
parties, Liberal and Conservative, exists, despite the fact that they have dominated the
political landscape more or less continuously since the 1840s. What we do know suggests
that the parties are extraordinarily capable of both belligerence and cooperation. Partisan
struggles animated the many civil wars of the 19
th
century, and yet at various moments of
5
This is not an argument about federalism: the period in question (1930-1958) was under the highly
centralized 1886 Constitution, which lasted until 1991.
Convention