A crucial problem in the construction of a democratic state, seeking to promote rights, unitary, decentralized, and multiethnic as proclaimed in the Colombian Constitution of 1991, is the efficient organization of the State regarding the local management, especially in the determination of the land and subsoil use. A model of territorial decentralization, as envisaged with the recent Colombian constitutional jurisprudence, seeks to deepen in the political-administrative decentralization and the citizen participation with the aim of democratizing the local management under the Social Rule of Law and within the framework of socio-ecological justice.
Territory, decentralization and autonomy is an analysis of the dilemmas, challenges and possible solutions around the construction of an unitary State in socioecological conditions that result from ethnic diversity and the proliferation of selfish and even criminal interests.
It certainly faces risks such as the potential reproduction of a decentralization coopted by exclusive legal and illegal interests. Nevertheless, this should not prevent its implementation to be ruled by the democratizing principle of deepening and expanding the deliberative democracy. That is the rationality of the constitutional jurisprudence in reference.
"TERRITORIO, DESCENTRALIZACIÓN Y AUTONOMÍA" is an analysis of the challenges around the democratizing decentralization of the local management in a unitary and multiethnic State.
LUIS JORGE GARAY-SALAMANCA is a member of the Verifying Commission on Public Policy on Forced Displacement, and Scientific Director of Vortex Foundation. His work covers economic integration, international migration; social exclusion and globalization; truth, reparation, forced displacement, and transitional justice; capture and reconfiguration of the State; building society, and socio-political ecology of the exploitation of non-renewable natural resources.
LAURA J. SANTACOLOMA MÉNDEZ has been an advisor to the District Secretariat for Planning and Environment of Bogotá and the General Comptroller of the Republic of Colombia, a consultant to FAO and the Unit for the Restitution of Dispossessed Lands. She has written about mining, agro, territorial organization, environmental law theory, and armed conflict and environment. We hope you find this work useful and interesting. You can get a copy here:
