Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND ARGUMENTS
- PART II CASES AND COMPARISONS
- 3 From State to Societal Corporatism in Mexico
- 4 From Corporatism to Reorganized Disarticulation in Brazil
- 5 Business in Colombia: Well Organized and Well Connected
- 6 Consultation and Contention in the Making of Cooperative Capitalism in Chile
- 7 Business Politics in Argentina: Fragmented and Politicized
- PART III IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
- Appendix A Background Information on Major Business Associations
- Appendix B Interviews
- Appendix C Conversions
- References
- Index
5 - Business in Colombia: Well Organized and Well Connected
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND ARGUMENTS
- PART II CASES AND COMPARISONS
- 3 From State to Societal Corporatism in Mexico
- 4 From Corporatism to Reorganized Disarticulation in Brazil
- 5 Business in Colombia: Well Organized and Well Connected
- 6 Consultation and Contention in the Making of Cooperative Capitalism in Chile
- 7 Business Politics in Argentina: Fragmented and Politicized
- PART III IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
- Appendix A Background Information on Major Business Associations
- Appendix B Interviews
- Appendix C Conversions
- References
- Index
Summary
At bottom, group interests are the animating forces in the political process. The exercise of the power of governance consists in the promotion of group objectives regarded as legitimate, in the reconciliation and mediation of conflicting group ambitions, and in the restraint of group tendencies judged to be socially destructive.
V. O. Key (1952, 23)Introduction
Colombia is often neglected in general theories and comparative studies of Latin America in part because its political economy in the twentieth century was so anomalous. Colombia enjoyed greater political and economic stability than most of the rest of the region while also suffering lasting civil violence and the corrosive effects of a booming underground drug economy. Colombia is also an intriguing outlier on several empirical dimensions of business politics. For most of the twentieth century, relations between government and business were very close and congenial, consistently more so than in any of the other large countries of Latin America. For sectoral governance, the strongest and most entrepreneurial association in all Latin America was the coffee growers' association, Federacafe (Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia). Government officials later extended the Federacafe governance model to rice and other agricultural sectors, and the flower association, Asocoflores, recently contributed to making Colombia the world's second largest exporter of cut flowers.
In Colombian politics, contestation by organized business against particular governments and in favor of democracy was remarkable by the standards common in Latin America.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004