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POLICY ANALYSIS IN
INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF POLICY ANALYSIS
SERIES EDITORS:

IRIS GEVA-MAY & MICHAEL HOWLETT
Edited by
Pablo Sanabria-Pulido and Nadia Rubaii
Colombia

POLICY ANALYSIS IN
COLOMBIA

International Library of
Policy Analysis
Series editors: Iris Geva-May, Simon Fraser University,
Canada, Carleton Univ ersity, Canada and the Wagner
School, NYU, USA and Michae l Howlett, Simon Fraser
University, Canada
This major series brings together for the ﬁrst time a detailed
examination of the theory and practice of policy analysis systems
at diferent levels of government and by non-governmental actors
in a speciﬁc country. It therefore provides a ke y addition to
research and teaching in comparative policy analysis and policy
studies more generally.
Each volume includes a history of the country’s policy analysis
which ofers a broad comparative overview with other countries as
well as the country in question. In doing so, the books in the series
provide the data and empirical case studies essential for instruction
and for further research in the area. They also include expert analysis
of diferent approaches to policy analysis and an assessment of their
evolution and operation.
Volumes in the series include the following countries:
Australia • Brazil • Czech Republic • France • Germany • Japan •
Israel • The Netherlands • Turkey • Ireland • Spain • Mexico •
Taiwan • USA • Canada • Belgium
and build into an essential library of key reference works. The series
will be of interest to academics and students in public policy, public
administration and management, comparativ e politics and government,
public organisations and individual policy areas. It will also interest
people working in the countries in question and internationally.
In association with the ICPA-Forum and the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis.
See more at comparativ epolicy.org/about-jcpa-icpa-forum/ or at
policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/international-library-of-policy-analysis.

POLICY ANALYSIS IN
COLOMBIA
Edited by Pablo Sanabria- Pulido and Nadia Rubaii
International Library of Policy Analysis, Vol 15

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by
Policy Press, an imprint of
Bristol University Press
University of Bristol
1-9 Old Park Hill
Bristol
BS2 8BB
UK
t: +44 (0)117 954 5940
e: [email protected]
Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at
policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk
© Bristol University Press 2020
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-4473-4771-2 hardcover
ISBN 978-1-4473-4839-9  ePub
ISBN 978-1-4473-4772-9  ePdf
The right of Pablo Sanabria- Pulido and Nadia Rubaii to be identified as editors of this work has
been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise without the prior permission of Policy Press.
Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material.
If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher.
The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editors
and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Policy Press. The University of
Bristol and Policy Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting
from any material published in this publication.
Bristol University Press and Policy Press work to counter discrimination on
grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality.
Cover design by Qube Design
Front cover image: image kindly supplied by iStock
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd,
Croydon, CR0 4YY
Policy Press uses environmentally responsible print partners

This book is dedicated to the memory of Dr Maite
Careaga-Tagueña, Professor of Public Leadership, colleague and
friend, in recognition for her inspiration and her endless efforts
to educate better leaders for Colombia and Latin America. All her
teachings and lessons are part of this book and of us.

vii
Contents
List of figures and tables ix
List of abbreviations xi
Notes on contributors xiv
Editors’ introduction to the series xxii
Policy analysis in Colombia: an introduction 1
Nadia Rubaii and Pablo Sanabria- Pulido
Part One: Policy analysis in contemporary Colombia
one The policy analysis movement in Colombia: the state of theart 11
Pablo Sanabria- Pulido, Nadia Rubaii and Andrés Guzmán- Botero
two Evolution of policy analysis as a field of study and instruction
in Colombia
31
Nadia Rubaii and Pablo Sanabria- Pulido
three Policy analysis, bureaucratic capacity and public administration
reforms in Colombia
47
María Fernanda Ramírez and CarolinaIsaza
Part Two: Policy analysis within national and subnational governments
four Policy analysis inside central government in Colombia 65
Luis Bernardo Mejía- Guinand
five Policy analysis and the legislature in Colombia 81
Mónica Pachón and ManuelaMuñoz
six Policy analysis in the Colombian Constitutional Court 99
Juan Carlos Rodríguez- Raga and Santiago Virgüez- Ruiz
seven Metropolitan governance and policy analysis in Colombia 113
Santiago Leyva, Pablo Sanabria- Pulido and Enrique Rodríguez- Caporalli
eight Policy analysis for decision making in Colombian local governments 135
Claudia N. Avellaneda and Ricardo A. Bello- Gómez
Part Three: Policy analysis in key policy domains
nine Policy analysis in the education sector in Colombia 153
Sandra García, Darío Maldonado and Sarah Muñoz- Cadena
ten Policy analysis in the health sector in Colombia 169
Andres I. Vecino- Ortiz, Stephanie Puerto- García, Diego Lucumí and
Janeth Mosquera- Becerra

viiiPolicy Analysis in Colombia
eleven Policy analysis and decision making in the military
forces: the Havana experience
187
Paula Lorena Mora- Hernández, Juan David Gélvez-Ferreira,
Michael Weintraub and SebastiánBitar
twelve Technocracy, decision making and economic policy in Colombia 203
Marta Juanita Villaveces- Niño and Carlos Caballero- Argáez
thirteen Social policy, target populations and policy analysis in Colombia 223
Santiago Leyva and Carlos AndrésOlaya
Part Four: Policy analysis beyond the state
fourteen Political parties and policy analysis in Colombia 241
Sebastián Líppez- DeCastro
fifteen Policy analysis and NGOs in Colombia 257
Susan Appe and FabianTelch
sixteen Media, evidence and policy analysis in Colombia 271
Juan Guillermo Vieira- Silva
Conclusion: Building capacity for policy analysis amid tensions and
challenges in Colombia
287
Pablo Sanabria- Pulido and NadiaRubaii
Index 295

ix
List of figures andtables
Figures
2.1 Distribution of specialization programs in Colombia related to
public policy
36
2.2 Increase in Master’s- level public policy programs in Colombia,
1998– 2018
37
2.3 Degree titles and type of institution 38
2.4 Geographic distribution by city (department/ region) of Master’s
programs in public policy and related fields in Colombia in 2019
(n=21)
41
5.1 Fate of bills, by branch (1998– 2018) 86
5.2 Proportion of bills introduced by committee in both chambers 88
5.3 Fate of constitutional amendments, by presidential term 89
5.4 Proportion of national bills introduced by committee in
both chambers
89
8.1 PMD as a policy process 139
10.1 Principal– agent problem for the health sector 171
10.2 Data sources for monitoring and evaluation 178
Tables
2.1 Master’s degree programs related to public policy and public
administration in Colombia, 2019
40
2.2 Analysis of required curriculum components
(percentage of programs)
42
3.1 PNDs, NPM principles and key practices 50
3.2 Categories used to observe bureaucratic capacity 53
3.3 Levels of capacity by category and organization 55
5.1 Legislative peace initiatives approved between January and June 2017 91
5.2 Results of consulta anticorrupción by question 98
7.1 Colombian metropolitan regions with more than 250,000 inhabitants 116
7.2 Composite indicator of metropolitan pressure 119
12.1 Undergraduate studies of the Minister of Finance, the Director
of the DNP and the Governor of BR, 1958– 80 and 1981– 2016
(while in office)
205
12.2 Graduate studies of the Minister of Finance, the Director of the
DNP and the Governor of the BR, 1958– 80 and 1981– 2016
206
13.1 National policies based on target populations 226
14.1 Colombian political parties’ seats in Congress 2006– 22 248
14.2 Colombian political parties’ think tanks as of 2019 250
16.1 Colombian media outlets, audience and owners 275
16.2 Case 1: articles, general and specific sources 277
16.3 Case 2: classification of technical sources 278

xPolicy Analysis in Colombia
16.4 Case 2: articles, general and specific sources 279
16.5 Case 2: classification of technical sources 280
16.6 Case 3: articles, general and specific sources 281
16.7 Case 3: classification of technical sources 282
16.8 The three cases compared 284

xi
List of abbreviations
AICO Autoridades Indígenas de Colombia – Colombian
Indigenous Authorities
AL Legislative Act
BPIN Banco de Programas y Proyectos de Inversión
Nacional – Programs and Projects Bank
CCC Corte Constitucional de Colombia – Colombian
Constitutional Court
CCONG Confederación Colombiana de Organizaciones No-
Gubernamentales – Colombian Confederation of
Nongovernmental Organizations
CID Centro de Investigación para el Desarrollo – Center for
Development Research
CIDER Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies
CNA Consejo Nacional de Acreditación – National
Accreditation Council
CNP Consejo Nacional de Planeación – National Planning
Council
COET Comando Estratégico para la Transición – Strategic
Command for Transition
COLCIENCIAS Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia, Tecnología e
Innovación – Administrative Department of Science,
Technology and Innovation
COLDEPORTES Departamento Administrativo del Deporte, la
Recreación y la Actividad Física – Administrative
Department of Sports, Recreation and Physical
Education
CONACES Comisión Nacional Intersectorial para el Aseguramiento
de la Calidad de la Educación Superior – National
Commission for Quality Assurance in Higher Education
CONPES Consejo Nacional de Política Económica y Social –
National Council for Economic and Social Policy
CNSC Comisión Nacional del Servicio Civil – National
Commission of Civil Service
CRC Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones –
Communications Regulation Commission
DAFP Departmento Adminstrativo de la Función Pública –
Administrative Department for the Public Function
DANE Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística –
National Administrative Department of Statistics
DAPRE Departamento Administrativo de la Presidencia –
Administrative Department of the Presidency

xiiPolicy Analysis in Colombia
DNP Departamento Nacional de Planeación – National
Planning Department
DPS Departamento Administrativo de la Prosperidad Social –
Administrative Department of Social Prosperity
ESAP Escuela Superior de Administración Pública – Higher
School of Public Administration
FARC Fuerza Alternativa Revolucionaria del Común –
Common Revolutionary Alternative Force
(political party)
FARC-EP Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia –
Ejército del Pueblo – Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia – People’s Army (guerrilla group)
Fecode Federación Colombiana de Trajadores de la Educación –
Colombian Federation of Education Workers
FEDESARROLLO Fundación para la Educación Superior y el Desarrollo
GSCs Grupos significativo de ciudadanos – significant groups
of citizens
ICFES Instituto Colombiano para la Evaluación de la
Educación (formerly Instituto Colombiano para
el Fomento de Educación Superior) – Colombian
Institute for the Evaluation of Education
IDI Índice de Desempeño Integral – Integral
Performance Index
ILPA International Library of Policy Analysis
JACs Juntas de Acción Communal – Community Action
Committees
M19 Movimiento 19 de Abril – April 19 Movement
(guerrilla group)
MAIS Movimiento Alternativo Indígena y Social – Social and
Indigenous Alternative Movement
MEN Ministerio de Educación Nacional – Ministry of
National Education
MHCP Ministry of Finance and Public Credit
MIRA Movimiento Independiente de Renovación Absoluta –
Independent Movement of Absolute Renovation
MPA Master of Public Administration
MPM Master of Public Management
MPP Master of Public Policy
NASPAA Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and
Administration
NBC Núcleo básico del conocimiento – basic knowledge  core
NGO Nongovernmental organization
OECD Organisation for Economic Co- operation and
Development

xiii
List of abbreviations
PMD Plan Municipal de Desarrollo – Municipal
Development Plan
PND Plan Nacional de Desarrollo – National
Development Plan
POAI Programa Operativo Anual de Inversiones – Annual
Investments Operational Plan
PRAP Programa de Renovación de la Administración
Pública – Program for Public Administration Renewal
PTN Puntos Transitorios de Normalización – Transitional
Points for Normalization
SDG Sustainable Development Goal
SGP Sistema General de Participaciones – General
Participation System
SINERGIA Sistema Nacional de Evaluación de Gestión y
Resultados – National Performance, Management and
Results System
SNA Sistema Nacional de Acreditación – National System of
Accreditation
SNIES Sistema Nacional de Información de la Educación
Superior – National Information System for Higher
Education
SUIP Sistema General de Información Administrativa del
Sector Público – General System for Administrative
Information for the Public Sector
TEs Entidades territoriales – territorial entities
UP Unión Patriótica – Patriotic Union
UTLs Unidades de Trabajo Legislativo de los Congresistas –
Congress Members’ Legislative Work Units
ZVTNs Zonas Veredales Transitorias de Normalización –
Transitional Local Zones for Normalization

xiv
Notes on contributors
Susan Appe is Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Policy at the
Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, State
University of New York, US. Her research focuses on government– nonprofit
relations; the dimensions and evolution of the nonprofit sector; and philanthropy in
international development. She is co- editor- in-chief of VOLUNTAS: International
Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, one of the leading academic
journals in third sector studies, publishing on topics related to civil society,
nonprofit organizations, volunteering and philanthropy.
Claudia N. Avellaneda is Associate Professor in the O’Neill School of Public
and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. She specializes in governance
and public management in developing countries, with an emphasis on local
governments in Latin America. Specifically, she investigates the drivers of
municipal performance by focusing on the role of mayors’ education, experience,
networking and political support on local social service delivery, public finances,
tax collection and decision making.
Ricardo A. Bello-Gómez is a PhD candidate in Public Affairs at the O’Neill
School of Environmental and Public Affairs, Indiana University. He studies
public management, intergovernmental relations and organization theory, with
a particular interest in local government performance. His overall research
agenda explores the institutional, organizational and managerial factors affecting
government performance, often focusing on the provision of social services.
Sebastián Bitar is Associate Professor in the Escuela de Gobierno Alberto
Lleras Camargo at Universidad de los Andes. In his latest publications he has
studied Colombian foreign policy, security challenges in the Americas, human
rights, US military bases in Latin America, the defense sector in Colombia,
the internationalization of the Colombian economy, foreign investment in the
energy sector and development in border areas in Colombia. He is the author
of the books Los Primeros Pasos de los Derechos Humanos en Colombia (Ediciones
Uniandes, 2007), US Military Bases, Quasi-Bases, and Domestic Politics in Latin
America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016; Spanish translation by Ediciones Uniandes,
2017) and he is co- editor, with Arlene Tickner, of the book Nuevos Enfoques para
el Estudio de las Relaciones Internacionales de Colombia (Ediciones Uniandes, 2017).
He received a PhD in International Relations from the American University in
Washington, DC.
Carlos Caballero-Argáez is Professor of Economics and Government at
Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. He has an MSc in Transportation
Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, an MPA from the

xv
Notes on contributors
Woodrow Wilson School of Government at Princeton University and an MA in
History from Universidad de Los Andes. Professor Caballero- Argáez has more
than 40 years of experience, both in the public and private sector. He has been
Minister of Mines and Energy of Colombia, Member of the Board of Directors
of Banco de la República (the Central Bank of Colombia), President of the
National Banking Association of Colombia, Founding- President of Bancoldex
(the foreign trade bank of Colombia) and Director of FEDESAROLLO, among
other positions. Professor Caballero- Argáez’s research interests cover Colombia’s
economic policy, economic history in Colombia’s 20th century and business
history. He is a columnist for El Tiempo newspaper in Colombia and has published
several books on Colombian politics end economic history.
Sandra García is Associate Professor at the School of Government at the
University of Los Andes in Colombia. Her research focuses on social policy,
children and adolescents’ wellbeing and education policy. Her research has been
published in numerous international peer- reviewed journals such as Review of
Educational Research, International Journal of Educational Development, Child Indicators
Research and Journal of Development Effectiveness. She is also co- author of the book,
Tras la Excelencia Docente: Cómo Mejorar la Calidad de la Educación para Todos los
Colombianos (Fundación Compartir, 2014). She received her PhD in Social Work
from Columbia University in 2007 and her MPA in 1999 from the same university.
Juan David Gélvez- Ferreira has a Master’s in Public Policy and BSc in
Government and Public Affairs from Universidad de los Andes. His research
focuses on illicit drugs, citizen security and development. He previously worked
in the School of Government at Universidad de los Andes and at Fundación
Ideas para la Paz, where he conducted impact evaluations as well as field work
in coca-crops zones. Currently, he works in the Colombian National Planning
Department as an advisor in citizen security issues.
Andrés Guzmán-Botero is an advisor to the Statistical Regulation, Planning,
Standardization and Normalization Division Directorate at the National
Administrative Department of Statistics of Colombia, and a teaching assistant at
Universidad de los Andes. His research focuses on strategic issues of public and
nonprofit organizations. He attained an MSc in Economics from Universidad
de los Andes.
Carolina Isaza is Professor and Researcher at Universidad Externado de
Colombia and is the leader of the Research Group in Government and Public
Policy. Professor Isaza has a PhD in Government and Public Administration from
Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Her research specialties are corruption,
accountability and public administration in Colombia. She is currently working
on interpretive perspectives. She is also the editor of Opera journal on government
and public policy published by Universidad Externado de Colombia.

xviPolicy Analysis in Colombia
Santiago Leyva is Professor in the Department of Government and Political
Science at Universidad EAFIT, Medellín, Colombia. He holds a PhD in
Administration (Public Governance) from Lancaster University, and he is a
member of the Sociedad, Política e Historias Conectadas research group which is
hosted at EAFIT University. His research interests include public administration,
public policy implementation and intergovernmental relations.
Sebastián Líppez-De Castro is Director and Assistant Professor of the
Department of Political Science at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá,
Colombia, and a PhD candidate in Community and Public Affairs at Binghamton
University, State University of New York. His research uses the largest and most
comprehensive cross- national evaluation of subnational governments’ authority
to date, in order to unfold the relationship between intra- state armed conflict
and decentralization. His research interests include government decentralization,
local government management, local governance processes and challenges, public
affairs education and genocide and mass atrocity prevention.
Diego Lucumí gained a PhD in Health Behavior and Health Education in
the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan and is currently
an Associate Professor in the School of Government at the Universidad de los
Andes, Colombia. His research focuses on social determinants and prevention of
cardiovascular disease, and public health services and systems at the local level. He
is a member of the American Public Health Association and the Urban Health
Network for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Darío Maldonado is Associate Professor and Research Director of the School
of Government at Universidad de los Andes. His research focuses on public
economics and social policy with emphasis in education and youth. He has
been involved in several studies about the Colombian education sector that have
been central to education reform discussions in Colombia. He has published
in refereed journals such as Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, European
Journal of Political Economy, Pediatrics, Scandinavian Journal of Economics and Journal of
Public Economics. He is also co- author of the book Tras la Excelencia Docente: Cómo
Mejorar la Calidad de la Educación para Todos los Colombianos (Fundación Compartir,
2014). He received his PhD in Economics from Toulouse University in 2005 and
his Master’s in Economics and Econometrics in 2000 from the same university.
Luis Bernardo Mejía-Guinand has a Master’s degree in Public Policy
from New York University and a PhD in Public Policy from the University
of Maastricht (Netherlands). He currently serves as Associate Professor in the
Political Science Department at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.
His work focuses on the organizational effects of the bureaucratic politics. His
most recent publications, as co- author, include “Agency loss and the strategic
redesign of the presidential office in Colombia” in Latin American Politics and

xvii
Notes on contributors
Society (Mejía- Guinand et al, 2018a) and “Bait and switch? Cabinet ministers in
Colombia (1958– 2014)” (Mejía- Guinand et al, 2018b). Prior to his academic
career, he worked in the National Planning Department and Ministry of Education
of Bogotá.
Paula Lorena Mora-Hernández is an LLM candidate at the University of
California, Los Angeles and Master in Public Policy in the School of Government
at Universidad de los Andes. Her main research interests are international affairs,
human rights, judicial systems and immigration law. Since 2016, she has worked
as an advisor on international affairs for the Colombian government.
Janeth Mosquera-Becerra is Associate Professor at the School of Public
Health at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia. She is the Director of
the Center for the Development and Evaluation of Public Health Policies and
Technologies at Universidad del Valle. Professor Mosquera’s research specialties
are health conditions in urban areas, focused on the relationships between urban
environments, active transportation and access to food. She also works in the
fields of racism and discrimination of black populations, and public health. She
holds a Master’s in Social Service from the Federal University of Pernambuco
and a PhD in Sociology from Portland State University.
Manuela Muñoz holds an MA in Public Policy from Universidad de los Andes.
She is currently a PhD student in Political Science at Texas A&M University.
Her research focuses on political behavior and comparative political institutions.
Specifically, she is interested in how different institutional contexts with competing
information affect the political preference formation of citizens, and the origins
and consequences of electoral rules.
Sarah Muñoz-Cadena gained a BSc in Political Science with minors in
Journalism, and Government and Public Affairs at Universidad de los Andes. Her
area of interest is public policy analysis focuses on two main topics: education and
post-conflict. She has worked as a member of the research team at the School of
Government at Universidad de los Andes.
Carlos Andrés Olaya is a researcher and lecturer at Universidad de Antioquia
(Faculty of Law and Political Sciences) and Universidad EAFIT (Department of
Government and Political Sciences). He holds a Master’s degree in Government
and Public Policy from Universidad EAFIT. His research interests include public
administration and management, theory of state building, political economy
(focused on social policy) and policy analysis. He is co- author of Análisis para las
Políticas Públicas. La Búsqueda de la Igualdad de Género en Medellín (EAFIT,  2018).
Mónica Pachón holds an MA in Political Science from Universidad de los
Andes, an MPhil in Latin American Studies from Oxford University and a PhD

xviiiPolicy Analysis in Colombia
in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego. She is currently
an Associate Professor at Universidad de los Andes in the Architecture and Design
Department. Her research focuses on executive– legislative relations, organization
and institutional evolution of the Colombian Congress, fiscal efforts and political
decentralization, electoral systems and institutions and more recently political
and voting behavior. She worked as Project Manager of Congreso Visible in the
Political Science Department at Universidad de los Andes from August 2009 to
August 2013, and was Associate Professor at the School of Government Alberto
Lleras Camargo at Universidad de los Andes. She was Dean of the Faculty Political
Science, Government and International Relations at Universidad del Rosario
until December 2018, and Tinker Fellow at Columbia University from August
to December 2018.
Stephanie Puerto-García is a social scientist consultant in the Red Criteria
at the Inter- American Development Bank, and researcher at Instituto de Salud
Pública at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. She has an MSc
in Economics from the same university. Her work focuses on health economics
and public policy issues related to the social sector, particularly on life- course
inequalities in health, childhood nutrition, economic regulation in medicines and
medical devices and health systems in Latin America. She has worked extensively
with policy makers and public health leaders across the Latin American region
to provide sound technical advice in health systems issues.
María Fernanda Ramírez is Professor of Public Administration and Political
Science in the Department of Government and Political Science at Universidad
EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia. Professor Ramírez has a PhD in Political Theory
and Public Administration from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.
Her research interests include new public management reforms, policy transfer
processes and public administration in Colombia. She is currently working on
participatory budgeting.
Enrique Rodríguez-Caporalli is Director of the CIES Research Center in
the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences at Universidad Icesi in Cali, Colombia.
He holds a Master’s degree in Sociology with a research focus on Cultural
Consumption and Urban Identity in Buenaventura and Tumaco, a project that
was financed with a National Research Grant from the Ministry of Culture in
1997. He is also a PhD candidate in History and Civilizations at the University
Paris 7 (Denis Diderot). His dissertation evaluates modernization and public
socialization in Cali in the first half of the 20th century. His research interests
focus on urban issues, especially those associated with urban culture, history,
urban planning and public space. He is currently a co- researcher in the Builders
of Peace project “Strategies of young people and Afro- descendant women for
sustainable peace in urban Colombia (Cali, Buenaventura, and Puerto Tejada)”,
financed by the International Development Research Centre of Canada. Professor

xix
Notes on contributors
Rodríguez- Caporalli’s is co- editor and author of the books Transforming the
Public: Perspectives on the Administrative Reform in Santiago de Cali in 2016 (Editorial
Icesi, 2018), Poder y Ciudad en Cali 1910–1950 (Universidad del Valle/ Universidad
Icesi, 2018) and Percepción y Ciudad (Universidad Autónoma de Occidente/
Universidad Icesi, 2016).
Juan Carlos Rodríguez-Raga holds a PhD in Political Science from the
University of Pittsburgh. He is an Associate Professor of Political Science and
Co-Director of the Observatorio de la Democracia at Universidad de los Andes,
Bogotá, Colombia. His research interests and areas of publication include political
institutions – especially courts, electoral systems and political parties – and public
opinion.
Nadia Rubaii is Professor of Public Administration and Co- Director of the
Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University,
State University of New York, and has a research affiliation with Universidad de
los Andes in Colombia. She is the founding co- editor of Gobernar: The Journal of
Latin American Public Policy and Governance, and an associate editor of the Journal
of Comparative Policy Analysis. She is past president of the Network of Schools
of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration and has served on the board of the
Inter-American Network of Public Administration Education (INPAE). She
has had two Fulbright appointments in Colombia and one in Venezuela, and
has provided consultancy to public affairs programs in Latin America, Africa,
Asia, the Middle East and the US. She was a contributor to the International
Library of Policy Analysis volume, Policy Analysis in the United States (2018). Her
current research focuses on assessing and improving the policies and practices
of governments in Latin America related to protecting the rights of indigenous
peoples as part of a broader strategy of preventing mass atrocities.
Pablo Sanabria-Pulido is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate
Programs in the School of Government at Universidad de los Andes, Colombia.
He is also Affiliate Professor of the Public Administration Division of the Centro
de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, CIDE, Mexico. He holds a PhD in
Public Administration and Policy from American University in Washington,
DC and a Master’s in Public Policy from the London School of Economics
(LSE). He has held various positions in public affairs and policy analysis with
the government of Colombia, the private sector and think tanks. He has also
served previously in academic and executive positions at Pontificia Universidad
Javeriana and Universidad Icesi, both in Cali, Colombia. His areas of interest
are public management and policy analysis, organizational behavior and public
employment, corruption and transparency, local government and public affairs
education. His research has been published in key public administration and
policy outlets, and he has published books on public employment and human
resources in the public sector, public sector reform, local government and policy

xxPolicy Analysis in Colombia
analysis. Professor Sanabria- Pulido has received recognition for his research from
the Association for Policy Analysis and Management and the Journal of Comparative
Policy Analysis. He has served as board member of the International Research
Society for Public Management and INPAE, among others. He currently serves
as a member of the executive committee of the Network of Schools of Public
Policy, Affairs and Administration, and sits on the editorial boards of the journals
Public Administration, Public Administration Review and the Asia-Pacific Journal of
Public Administration. He is Associate Editor of the journal Gestión y Política Pública
and co- convenor of the Special Interest Group in Public Sector Human Resource
Management of the International Research Society for Public Management.
Fabian Telch is a PhD candidate in Community and Public Affairs at
Binghamton University, State University of New York, US. He has extensive
experience in the public sector in Colombia. His research focuses on national
development planning, development administration and governance of public,
nongovernmental and civil society organizations.
Andres I. Vecino-Ortiz gained a PhD in Health Systems at the Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health, and after holding different global health
positions, he is currently a faculty member on the same program where his work
focuses on health systems and health economics issues. He is an elected board
member of the research society, Health Systems Global. His research focuses
on the economics of prevention activities, and on the translation of scientific
knowledge to solve health systems issues for decision makers.
Juan Guillermo Vieira-Silva is Professor of Public Policy at Universidad
Autónoma de Manizales, Colombia. He is currently finishing a PhD in Political
Science at the National University of Colombia. His dissertation studies
the presidential policy agenda in Colombia, applying the codebook of the
Comparative Agendas Project. His main academic interests are policy theory,
policy analysis, comparative public policy, presidential studies and presidential–
congressional relations. His most recent article, titled “La teoría del juego social
de Carlos Matus y los estudios de políticas públicas: exploraciones teóricas”, was
published in Revista Latinoamericana de Políticas y Acción Pública in September 2019.
Marta Juanita Villaveces-Niño is Associate Professor in the School of
Economics at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. She has an MSc
in Comparative Politics from the LSE and a PhD in Political Studies from the
Universidad Externado de Colombia. Her research specialties are Colombian
economic history and political economy of land in Colombia since the
independence. She has written three books on Colombian economic history
of the early republican period, as well as publications on land reform and land
policy in the 20th century. She is currently Director of the School of Economics
at Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

xxi
Notes on contributors
Santiago Virgüez-Ruiz is a PhD student in Political Science at University of
Massachusetts Amherst. He holds a JSM from Stanford University. His research
focuses on law and courts and the cross-links between access to justice and
state building.
Michael Weintraub is Associate Professor in the Escuela de Gobierno Alberto
Lleras Camargo at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, Director of the
Security and Violence Area of the Center for the Study of Security and Drugs at
the same university, and Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo
(PRIO). His research focuses on crime, political violence and impact evaluation
of security and justice policies in Latin America, particularly in Colombia, Central
America and Mexico. He has published in the Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict
Resolution and Journal of Peace Research, among other outlets, and has received
funding for his work from the National Science Foundation, Research Council
of Norway, Innovations for Poverty Action and the United States Agency for
International Development, El Salvador. He has a PhD in Government from
Georgetown University.

xxii
Editors’ introduction to the series
Professor Iris Geva-May and Professor Michael Howlett, ILPA series editors
Policy analysis is a relatively new area of social scientific inquiry, owing its origins
to developments in the US in the early 1960s. Its main rationale is systematic,
evidence-based, transparent, efficient, and implementable policymaking. This
component of policymaking is deemed key in democratic structures allowing
for accountable public policies. From the US, policy analysis has spread to other
countries, notably in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s and in Asia in the 1990s and
2000s. It has taken, respectively one to two more decades for programmes of public
policy to be established in these regions preparing cadres for policy analysis as a
profession. However, this movement has been accompanied by variations in the
kinds of analysis undertaken as US-inspired analytical and evaluative techniques
have been adapted to local traditions and circumstances, and new techniques
shaped in these settings.
In the late 1990s this led to the development of the field of comparative
policy analysis, pioneered by Iris Geva-May, who initiated and founded the
Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, and whose mission has been advanced
with the support of editorial board members such as Laurence E. Lynn Jr., first
co-editor, Peter deLeon, Duncan McRae, David Weimer, Beryl Radin, Frans van
Nispen, Yukio Adachi, Claudia Scott, Allan Maslove and others in the US and
elsewhere. While current studies have underlined differences and similarities in
national approaches to policy analysis, the different national regimes which have
developed over the past two to three decades have not been thoroughly explored
and systematically evaluated in their entirety, examining both sub-national and
non-executive governmental organisations as well as the non-governmental sector;
nor have these prior studies allowed for either a longitudinal or a latitudinal
comparison of similar policy analysis perceptions, applications, and themes across
countries and time periods.
The International Library for Policy Analysis (ILPA) series fills this gap in the
literature and empirics of the subject. It features edited volumes created by experts
in each country, which inventory and analyse their respective policy analysis
systems. To a certain extent the series replicates the template of Policy Analysis
in Canada edited by Dobuzinskis, Howlett and Laycock (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2007).
Each ILPA volume surveys the state of the art of policy analysis in governmental
and non-governmental organisations in each country using the common template
derived from the Canadian collection in order to provide for each volume in the
series comparability in terms of coverage and approach.
Each volume addresses questions such as: What do policy analysts do? What
techniques and approaches do they use? What is their influence on policymaking
in that country? Is there a policy analysis deficit? What norms and values guide

xxiii
Editors’ introduction to the series
the work done by policy analysts working in different institutional settings?
Contributors focus on the sociology of policy analysis, demonstrating how analysts
working in different organisations tend to have different interests and to utilise
different techniques. The central theme of each volume includes historical works
on the origins of policy analysis in the jurisdiction concerned, and then proceeds
to investigate the nature and types, and quality, of policy analysis conducted by
governments (including different levels and orders of government). It then moves
on to examine the nature and kinds of policy analytical work and practices found
in non-governmental actors such as think tanks, interest groups, business, labour,
media, political parties, non-profits and others.
Each volume in the series aims to compare and analyse the significance of the
different styles and approaches found in each country and organisation studied,
and to understand the impact these differences have on the policy process.
Together, the volumes included in the ILPA series serve to provide the basic
data and empirical case studies required for an international dialogue in the area
of policy analysis, and an eye-opener on the nuances of policy analysis applications
and implications in national and international jurisdictions. Each volume in the
series is leading edge and has the promise to dominate its field and the textbook
market for policy analysis in the country concerned, as well as being of broad
comparative interest to markets in other countries.
The ILPA is published in association with the International Comparative Policy
Analysis Forum, and the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, whose mission is
to advance international comparative policy analytic studies. The editors of each
volume are leading members of this network and are the best-known scholars
in each respective country, as are the authors contributing to each volume in
their particular domain. The book series as a whole provides learning insights for
instruction and for further research in the area and constitutes a major addition
to research and pedagogy in the field of comparative policy analysis and policy
studies in general.
We welcome to the ILPA series Volume 15, Policy Analysis in Colombia, edited
by Pablo Sanabria-Pulido and Nadia Rubaii, and thank the editors and the authors
for their outstanding contribution to this important encyclopedic database.
Iris Geva-May
Professor of Policy Studies, Baruch College at the City University of New
York, Professor Emerita Simon Fraser University; Founding President and
Editor-in-chief, International Comparative Policy Analysis Forum and
Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis
Michael Howlett
Burnaby Mountain Professor, Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser
University, and Yong Pung How Chair Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of
Public Policy, National University of Singapore
newgenprepdf

1
Policy analysis in Colombia:
an introduction
Nadia Rubaii and Pablo Sanabria-Pulido
This book represents the first comprehensive examination of policy analysis in
Colombia, and it does so at a critical juncture in the country’s history when having
government officials capable of making evidence- based policy decisions – and
having nongovernmental actors in universities, the media, civil society and political
parties supporting that – is as important as ever. This volume includes a diverse
array of chapters that describe and critically evaluate the role of different levels
of government, institutions of government, and actors outside of government in
the development, implementation and evaluation of public policy, with attention
to the extent to which they engage systematically in policy analysis. The book
also highlights the degree to which analysis informs key substantive policy areas,
and how Colombian higher education institutions are teaching public policy and
have policy analysis as a field of study.
It will be apparent to the reader of the book or any individual chapter that
public policy and policy analysis are relatively new academic fields and professional
career options in Colombia, and the systematic application of policy analysis to
government decision making also is a relatively new phenomenon. That said, there
are a number of notable examples throughout this book of how governmental
and nongovernmental institutions and actors have historically contributed to
analysis of policy options and outcomes. We highlight those examples throughout
the book. Colombia, as a country, exemplifies a particular path of development
whereby, even with the presence of key institutional challenges, the country has
been able to configure a relatively developed public administration apparatus.
A primer on the Colombian context
The Republic of Colombia is structured as a constitutional, multiparty democracy
per the terms of the Constitution adopted in 1991. It is a unitary, decentralized
republic in which the national government includes executive, legislative and
judicial branches. Although the Constitution prescribes a system of separation of
powers and checks and balances, extensive policy- making powers are vested in
the President and, by extension, executive branch agencies. The capacities and
inclinations of each branch of the Colombian government to engage in policy
analysis are discussed within individual chapters within this volume. Colombia
is the fourth- largest country in South America as measured by land mass, and
the third most populous in all of Latin America (around 50 million inhabitants),

2Policy Analysis in Colombia
following only Brazil and Mexico, notably the only other countries in the region
yet to be profiled in this series.
The country is divided into 32 departments (provinces) and one capital district,
as well as 1,103 municipalities. It is mostly an urban country, with roughly 78% of
its population living in urban areas according to the 2018 census (DANE, 2020).
Unlike other countries in the region, Colombia has an entrenched network of
large cities/ metropolitan areas that have developed concurrently and somehow
separated from each other (Barranquilla, Bogotá, Cali, Medellín). Another
interesting trait is that the country has a significant number of middle- level cities
(between 100,000 and 500,000 inhabitants) that offer a certain ample supply of
quality public goods to their citizens (Armenia, Bucaramanga, Cartago, Envigado,
Manizales, Montería, Palmira, Pasto, Pereira, Santa Marta, Sogamoso, Tuluá, Tunja
and Valledupar, among others). Reflecting the importance of the major urban
centers and local governments, this book includes two chapters focused on the
use of policy analysis at the subnational level of government.
The Colombian public administration comprises more than 6,000 agencies,
both at the national and subnational levels, with around 1.4 million public officials,
although the number of personnel hired through fixed- term contracts is said to be
higher than such figure (Sanabria et al, 2019). The public administration system
shows a particular combination of models, a hybrid system (Sanabria, forthcoming)
that includes elements of the political patronage system, the bureaucratic model,
the New Public Management (NPN) model and a series of post- NPM practices
such as open government, new governance and transparency.
The political system of modern Colombia was established by the 1991
Constitution. Yet, it continues to be shaped by historical events dating to the
earliest times, including, but not limited to, its lengthy and rich pre- Columbian
history of indigenous peoples dating back more than 20,000 years; its colonial
legacy; and the efforts during both colonial rule and the early years of liberation
to be part of a larger entity that would include modern-day Colombia, Venezuela,
Ecuador and Panama. These historical characteristics continue to influence
internal policy debates as well as relations with its neighbors.
Even though the country has been classified as one of the five most developed
civil services by the Inter- American Development Bank (Cortazar et al, 2014),
there have been strong wicked problems that have challenged, and in some cases
hindered, the institutional capacity of the state (drug trafficking, internal armed
conflict, illegal groups, urban criminality and natural disasters, among others). One
key determinant of the path the public administration apparatus has followed in
Colombia has been the long- term conflict with guerrillas and paramilitary groups.
Also of importance to the examination of modern public policy analysis in
Colombia is its experience with long periods of violence, including the period
known as La Violencia (the violence), which raged for more than ten years from
the mid- 1940s through the late 1950s and resulted in more than 300,000 deaths,
related to the political patronage model of public jobs. For more than 50 years
from the mid- 1960s until 2015, Colombia was engulfed in a series of insurgencies

3
Introduction
and counterinsurgencies, complicated by drug trafficking, which pitted the
government against a series of guerrilla groups, including the National Liberation
Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN), April 19 Movement (Movimiento
19 de Abril – M19), People’s Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Popular)
and most (in)famously the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s
Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo –
FARC- EP). As important as these periods of violence are to understanding
Colombia’s current policy environment, it is equally important to recognize the
country’s resilience in maintaining democratic political institutions and processes
throughout these periods.
Throughout this book, the authors refer to the recent negotiations and
agreement that influence all current policy debates. The negotiations that took
place in Havana, Cuba, from 2012 through 2015 between the Colombian
government and FARC- EP resulted in an historic agreement intended to put
an end to more than 50 years of armed conflict between the FARC- EP guerillas
and various Colombian government administrations. The process, the resulting
agreement, and the implementation process have made Colombia the focus of
considerable international attention from scholars and policy actors, most of
whom view the situation with both great hope and considerable doubts about its
prospects for lasting success. There are lessons we can learn from the Colombian
example, both as a case study and in comparison with other countries. It is an
interesting case for it success in economic development, its internal and external
policy decisions, its processes of decentralization, its management of cultural
diversity, its handling of large- scale and long- standing violence, and its ongoing
efforts to transition to peace. The chapters explore how Colombia has been able
to develop state capacity for policy analysis amid intense internal conflict and
with a tradition of minimal state presence in several key areas. A quick note on
terminology as it relates to the current status of the country. Given the contested
nature of the ongoing process of implementation, chapter authors have been
allowed the flexibility to refer to the current period using labels they consider
most appropriate. As editors, we have not insisted on standardization because there
is no consensus. Thus, throughout the book, readers will encounter references
to post- conflict, post- agreement, or other terms. These variations remind us of
the complexity and tenuity of Colombia’s situation today.
Organization of the book
This volume is organized according to a similar design to the other books that
comprise the International Library of Policy Analysis (ILPA) series, and it is
intended to serve the dual roles expected of each volume in that series. Specifically,
it provides both an in- depth country study and the basis for comparisons across
countries. Those interested in horizontal comparisons across the volumes in the
series will observe some variations that represent the unique context in Colombia.
Specifically, there are chapters dedicated to certain issues, which demand more

4Policy Analysis in Colombia
attention, and for which there may not be comparable chapters in other volumes,
such as the peace process and policies aimed at different populations. At the
same time, there is less attention to other topics, such as the role of legislative
committees, for example.
We have prepared this book with a variety of audiences in mind, including
policy actors and scholars within Colombia, in the region, and on a global
scale. Within Colombia, it can serve as a teaching tool in the still small but
growing number of public policy and public management programs. Within
the Latin America region, policy actors and scholars are seeking more in- depth
knowledge about the successes of other countries as they consider signing trade
and other agreements. Colombia is the third country in Latin America to be
included in the series, joining Brazil and Mexico for that honor. Like Brazil
and Mexico, Colombia has a strong reputation for the quality of its higher
education institutions in terms of academic programs and research. Additionally,
the Inter- American Development Bank consistently ranks the Colombia within
the top five countries in Latin America in terms of civil service development
and public administration capacity. On an international scale, this book will
facilitate comparisons of Colombia with other middle developed economies
and other post- conflict environments.
The volume draws on the expertise of more than 20 authors, including faculty
members from the leading research universities in Colombia, practitioners in
key Colombian government agencies, and scholars based at universities in the
United States who are Colombian by birth and/ or have extended, in- country
research and teaching experience in Colombia. In an effort to promote the
future of the scholarship and practice of public policy analysis, several of the
chapters bring together established scholars and practitioners with students and
recent graduates. The authors include established and leading scholars, several
of whom have substantial public sector experience in the country, and some of
whom are collaborating with early career scholars who will be the future of the
field in Colombia.
The book is organized in four sections, each consisting of three to five chapters.
In Par , Policy analysis in contemporary Colombia, three chapters provide a
context for understanding the subsequent sections and chapters. To get things
started, in Chapter 1, Pablo Sanabria- Pulido, Nadia Rubaii and Andrés Guzmán-
Botero provide a broad overview and a big- picture assessment of the “state of
the art” of policy analysis in Colombia, tracing the policy analysis movement
from the 1950s to the 1991 Constitution to the present. This is followed by a
chapter by Nadia Rubaii and Pablo Sanabria- Pulido, which documents the brief
but intense period of development of public policy education in the country in
recent years, and examines the characteristics of existing educational programs
in terms of their potential to contribute to capacity building across actors and
sectors. The first section concludes with a chapter by María Fernanda Ramírez
and Carolina Isaza in which they critically assess the capacity of bureaucratic

5
Introduction
actors and institutions in Colombia to engage in policy analysis, and evaluate the
extent to which bureaucratic reforms have contributed to increasing capacity.
Part II consists of five chapters that examine the extent to which various
national and subnational government institutions apply tools and techniques of
policy analysis. Luis Bernardo Mejía- Guinand starts this section by providing an
overview of the structure and powers of the Colombian central government,
with particular attention on the executive branch. He discusses the roles of the
President and key agencies, such as the National Planning Department (DNP),
the Administrative Department of the Presidency (DAPRE), and the National
Council for Economic and Social Policy (CONPES) in policy making and
policy analysis. In Chapter 5, Mónica Pachón and Manuela Muñoz describe the
operation of the legislative branch in Colombia and the challenges of applying
evidence- based analysis in the public policy process that occur within such a highly
politicized environment. In Chapter 6, using a specific case example from the
Colombian Constitutional Court (Corte Constitucional de Colombia – CCC),
Juan Carlos Rodríguez- Raga and Santiago Virgüez- Ruiz provide insights into the
phenomena of judicialization of politics and public policy. They not only explain
the structure, powers and operation of the CCC, but also examine its decisions
with respect to public policy on illicit drugs as part of the peace agreement.
The remaining two chapters in this section examine the subnational level of
government, an important focus for a country recognized for its decentralization
efforts. Looking specifically at metropolitan areas in Colombia, Santiago
Leyva, Pablo Sanabria- Pulido and Enrique Rodríguez- Caporalli illustrate the
explanatory capacity of path- dependency models for understanding the pattern
of metropolization and, subsequently, to make the case for the importance of
considering metropolitan institutions as key policy actors or tools. Applying a
very different approach to examining policy analysis at the local level, Chapter 8,
by Claudia Avellaneda and Ricardo Bello- Gómez, asks which local government
officials use policy analysis and under what circumstances. Reminiscent of the
references by Luis Bernardo Mejía- Guinand to the National Development Plan
(Plan Nacional de Desarrollo – PND) and the DNP in Chapter 4, the evidence
at the local level also leads Avellaneda and Bello- Gómez to focus primarily on
the application of analysis to planning process albeit, in this case, with a focus on
municipal developmentplans.
Part III includes chapters that examine policy analysis within the realm of five
specific policy areas, namely education policy, health policy, defense and security
policy, economic policy, and social welfare policies. These areas were selected on
the basis of having met one or more of three important criteria. In identifying
policy domains for attention, we sought to include those that, first, are featured
in some other volumes in the series and thus would allow for cross- national
comparisons; second, provide concreate examples of the use of policy analysis tools
and techniques; and/ or third, are particularly relevant to the current Colombian
political, social and economic context. Notably, these characteristics are not
mutually exclusive, and the policy areas in some chapters meet all three criteria.

6Policy Analysis in Colombia
In Chapter 9, drawing on their extensive experience working with government
officials in education policy reforms, Sandra García, Darío Maldonado and Sarah
Muñoz- Cadena present a detailed case study of policies governing the hiring,
training, compensation and evaluation of school teachers. Tracing reforms over a
period of two decades, they are able to identify key actors and competing decision
criteria at each stage of the policy process.
Health care is a universal concern and health policy has been the subject of
chapters in several of the volumes in the ILPA series. In Chapter 10, Andres
Vecino- Ortiz and colleagues provide an overview of policy analysis within
this sector across problem definition, policy development and implementation
stages, and at the national, departmental and local levels of government. With
information gathered through document analysis and interviews with key
government officials, they identify four concrete examples of opportunities for
policy analysis in the health sector as well as two substantial obstacles, or what
they refer to as “bottlenecks”.
While all chapters in this volume address to some extent how the peace
agreement has influenced institutions, actors and policy domains, ,
by Paula Mora- Hernández and colleagues, examines more directly the role of
the Colombian military during the Havana peace negotiations in shaping policy
decisions regarding demobilization of guerilla forces. Using semi- structured
interviews with individuals involved in the negotiations, including active and
former military and government officials, this chapter provides the reader with
an important glimpse into the behind- the- scenes policy negotiations that led to
specific provisions in the agreement.
Policy analysis has strong theoretical and practical connections to economic
analysis and, as such, a chapter on economic policy is an important element
of any comprehensive country study of policy; it is particularly relevant in the
Colombian context given the country’s economic advances despite lengthy
periods of violence. Chapter 12, by Marta Villaveces- Niño and Carlos Caballero-
Argáez, highlights how economic experts, or what they refer to as an economic
technocracy, have played a crucial role in building the capacity for policy analysis
in the realm of economic policy. They use several concrete examples of economic
policy decisions informed by analysis.
The final chapter in this third section of the book explores an issue of
considerable importance in Colombia, that of persistent inequality and poverty
for historically excluded groups despite dramatically increased expenditures in
social policy, both overall and targeted to those groups. Here Santiago Leyva
and Andrés Olaya illustrate how the truncated nature of the Colombian welfare
system contributes to the problem, and document how even widespread use of
targeted social policies for specific populations cannot attain the redistributive
policy outcomes associated with a more general approach to welfare policy.
The fourth substantive section of the volume, on policy analysis beyond the
state, includes three chapters on key nongovernmental actors: political parties,
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the media. In Chapter 14,

7
Introduction
Sebastián Líppez- De Castro traces the development of the political party
system in Colombia, with attention to characteristics most directly related to
their production or consumption of policy analysis. He cautions that as long
clientelistic linkages prevail, political parties will not fully utilize policy analysis
to guide their decisions and priorities. The third or nongovernmental sector is
increasingly recognized as an important policy actor, or potential policy actor,
in all countries, and Colombian is no exception. In their examination of third
sector contributions to policy analysis in Chapter 15, Susan Appe and Fabian
Telch document how, despite an increasingly restrictive environment for civil
society actors, there continue to be windows of opportunity for them to exert
influence in policy development and implementation, as illustrated by examples
from both the peace process and planning decisions to promote Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs). In the final substantive chapter of the book, Juan
Guillermo Vieira- Silva examines another critical actor in Colombian society –
the media. The power of the media to shape policy agendas and discourse is well
documented, although its ability to do so based on analysis rather than politics
is less certain. This is a particularly relevant topic of exploration in Colombia
given the history of major media outlets being owned by elite political families
or having other strong connections with political parties. Vieira- Silva examines
the extent to which journalists rely on technical sources, as well as political ones.
He examines the use of government, think tank, and university sources, and then
presents the results of an analysis of number and type of sources used to inform
reporting in major media outlets on three specific issues.
This book project, like the practice of policy analysis itself, is challenged by
an ever- changing environment. “Policy interventions unfold in large, complex,
dynamic social systems … [and] There are systems effects on individual actors
and the system as a whole, including emergent, indirect, and delayed effects, as
well as unintended and unpredictable consequences from the interactivity of a
system’s elements” (Prewitt et al, 2012, p. 5). When this project was undertaken,
and the authors wrote their respective chapters, it was with special attention to
the hopeful prospects under the then recently approved agreement between the
government of Colombia and the FARC- EP guerillas to put an end to more
than a half century of violence. Many of the chapters in this volume are attentive
to the role of policy analysis in getting to that accord and with an eye toward its
importance in implementing the agreement and moving toward peace. At the
time that this book goes to press, that same agreement and prospects for lasting
peace are in jeopardy. In presence of such event, one can appeal to the historic
contributions to the study of public policy, such as Pressman and Wildavsky’s
(1973) seminal work, tracing the implementation of a domestic economic
development policy. Thanks to them, we know now the need for so many pieces
to fall into place and for many actors to do their part for policy implementation
to be successful, but we also know that there are seemingly infinite possibilities
for a single actor or event to derail a project. In this context, the role of policy
analysis in “speaking truth to power” (Wildavsky, 1979) becomes ever more vital

8Policy Analysis in Colombia
to understand how policy analysis can be instrumental to ensure that a promising
country like Colombia can achieve all its institutional capacity and overcome
several of its wicked problems through sound, evidence- based, policy analysis
and evaluation.
References
Cortazar, J., Lafuente, M. and Sangines, M. (eds.) (2014) Serving Citizens: A
Decade of Civil Service Reforms in Latin America (2004– 13). Washington, DC.
Inter-American Development Bank.
DANE (Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística) (2020).
“Proyecciones de población: 2018– 2023”, 31 January. Available from www.
dane.gov.co/index.php/estadisticas-por-tema/demografia-y-poblacion/
proyecciones-de-poblacion
Pressman, J. and Wildavsky, A. (1973) Implementation: How Great Expectations in
Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Or, Why It’s Amazing that Federal Programs
Work at All, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told
by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Prewitt, K., Schwandt, T. and Straf, M. (eds.) (2012) Using Science as Evidence in
Public Policy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Sanabria, P. (forthcoming) “Modernización de la gestión pública en
Colombia: coyunturas críticas y dependencia del sendero en un proceso no
lineal”. In P. Sanabria and S. Leyva (eds.) El Estado del Estado. Bogotá: Ediciones
Uniandes/ Editorial EAFIT/ Departamento Administrativo de la Función
Pública.
Sanabria, P., Gonzalez, M. and Becerra, O. (2019) ¿Cómo Mejorar y Racionalizar
la Contratación por Prestación de Servicios en el Sector Público en Colombia? Una
Mirada desde la Calidad del Empleo, Nota de Política No. 35. Bogotá: Facultad
de Economía, Escuela de Gobierno Alberto Lleras Camargo, Universidad de
los Andes.
Wildavsky, A. (1979) Speaking Truth to Power: The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis.
New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.

9
Part One
Policy analysis in contemporary
Colombia

11
ONE
The policy analysis movement
in Colombia: the state of the art
Pablo Sanabria-Pulido, Nadia Rubaii and Andrés Guzmán- Botero
Introduction
Policy analysis in Colombia appears to be a relatively recent trend, both in
scholarship and practice. Yet, revisiting policy analysis in Colombia, its approaches,
and practices, implies the recognition of key challenges in describing its evolution.
First, since the actual development of policy analysis, although short, stretches for
more than 50 years of evolution, the act of identifying those milestones is thus
far from straightforward. Considering that policy analysis involves a complex and
cyclical process made of manifold moments, it has to be able to acknowledge the
sociopolitical process of a particular country. Namely, it also needs to recognize the
multiple intentions of organizing and rationalizing public actions and decisions in
a particular country, even long before the terms “policy analysis” or “public policy
sciences” were widely used. It should also take into account the actors involved
in enhancing the adoption of a more technical perspective towards public policy.
A second challenge that cannot be set aside while tracing the evolution of policy
analysis in the country, and the particular ways in which it has occurred, is the
fact that its development has been probably influenced by external forces, such
as the evolution of the discipline or field of study abroad; the influence of policy
transfer and the transmission of the different narratives from foreign governments
and multilateral organizations; and the role of international epistemic communities
and networks that have fed policy- making processes in the country. Thus, there
are both internal and external factors that need to be taken into account when
analyzing the evolution of policy analysis in Colombia.
In this way, this chapter proposes the examination of policy analysis progression
in Colombia based on historical and analytical background by identifying key
actors, and by defining three essential moments that allow us to better recognize
the key, internal and external, actors and the major milestones along the road.
Thus, in the first moment, we start by listing the first efforts whereby a “scientific”
approach to public policy started to be proposed (and initially adopted) in the
Colombian context. In particular, we consider the role of international missions
in the second half of the 20th century as defining forces that laid the groundwork
for the early institutional and organizational developments in the country’s public
administration. Then, we analyze the consequent beginning of national planning
in Colombia, as the expression of the arrival of policy analysis techniques to the

12Policy Analysis in Colombia
country, and identify some local scholarship that reflects early efforts to adopt
new policy analysis techniques and practices.
Then, in the next part of our analysis, we address a second moment in which
policy analysis started to develop key roots within the administrative apparatus
of the country, particularly at the national level of government. This moment
has been recognized by several authors as the formal emergence of a narrative of
public policy analysis in Colombia: the late 1990s (Roth, 2002, 2016). At this
point, not only do key academic works start to arrive and inform public policy
for the first time, but an economic crisis in the continent triggers a process of
administrative and state reconfiguration focused on results achievement.
Finally, we focus on the current state of policy analysis practices in Colombia.
In doing so, we develop a general review of practices, loci and modes of policy
techniques. We discuss those developments in light of institutional capacity, the
educational supply of public policy and administration programs, and the local
scholarship that has developed in recent years around the subject. Hence, our analysis
aims to cover a chronological account of the, far from linear, development of policy
analysis abilities and skills in Colombia, both at the national and institutional levels.
Key milestones
The origin: international missions and national planning in Colombia
Initial efforts to adopt a more technical approach to public policy formulation
and implementation in Colombia can be traced to the prominent role played
by several international missions during the 20th century that aimed to provide
recommendations to “modernize” the country (Sanabria, 2010, forthcoming).
Particularly after the Second World War, the Bretton Woods conference established
an international narrative on “developing” and “developed” countries, and started
to identify a set of prescriptions for closing the gap between these two groups. In
this order of ideas, public affairs in Latin America, and Colombia in particular,
had from their beginning a wide international influence, embodied in different
“missions of international experts” by foreign governments or multilateral
organizations. As some argue, these postures had a key influence in the country’s
administrative and economic design (Franco, 1994, p. 53).
In Colombia, for example, the international mission of the World Bank in 1949,
chaired by Lauchlin Currie, not only included key aspects of public administration
within its recommendations, but also marked the importance of establishing planning
activities within the country, for which reliable information was required to ensure that
decision makers had the necessary elements to perform their task (Pinzón and Motta,
2011). In other words, it recognized that policy analysis and formulation ought to be
based on evidence. A direct consequence of the World Bank mission was the creation
of the National Planning Board (Junta de Planeación Nacional), in which Currie
became an advisor (Sandilands, 2015). This particular moment can be identified as
one of the initial efforts to adopt a more technical approach towards policy analysis.

13
The policy analysis movement
This pioneering influence would create a strong focus in the country to
“plan” public actions and to make informed decisions, further enhanced by later
international missions (for example, Wiesner- Bird). The role of international
mission is closely linked to the attempts to create a central planning agency in order
to adopt a more planned approach towards social and economic development. For
example, the Colombian government would create in 1958 the National Council
for Economic Policy and Planning (Consejo Nacional de Política Económica
y Planeación), which later became the Administrative Department of Planning
and Technical Services, and which in turn would eventually, in 1968, become
the renowned DNP,
1
which has historically been considered the think tank of
Colombia’s public administration.
The middle of the 20th century marks the use of more evidence in policy
formulation in the country. From that point onwards, the DNP would play a
leading role in establishing key practices for policy analysis and evaluation of
projects and investment decisions in the country. In fact, the issuance of Law
19, 1958 and a subsequent reform in 1963, aimed to grant the DNP (and other
related councils and bodies) powers of a highly technical nature, in order to
make its role more explicitly related to the study and recommendation of public
projects and public investment programs in the country. This would eventually
lead to the configuration of a singular planning structure, rare even in the Latin
American context.
Such reforms established the use of two strategic instruments that, even today,
guide public policy planning in the country: the so- called CONPES
2
documents
(a type of policy document of the Colombian government), and the PND, which
defines priorities, programs and projects for each government and would become
compulsory for each administration (national and subnational) in order to start its
period in office. Both measures have been instrumental in adopting a planning
approach in the country. Even today, the CONPES documents remain a key
instrument for substantive policy formulation in different policy domains in the
country. Likewise, the PND is key, not only for defining government priorities
and foci, but in particular for setting policy goals and the policy instruments
required for their execution (Alonso,  2018).
A key aspect of the PND was that it aimed, for the first time, to imbue public
policy goals with a wide perspective. It also considered the interplay between
policy and public management (by including elements regarding capacity and
resources), and recognized the importance of formulating public policy in
stages with reference to the relevant policy field in terms of decision making,
implementation, evaluation and so on. For instance, the first CONPES document
(Documento CONPES 0) recognized that it was up to the political sphere to
determine the social desired goals, whereas the technical sphere should limit itself
to seeking the adequate means to achieve them (DNP, 1967, p. 3).
Similarly, the first development plan suggested that government should not
only concern itself with the design of relevant courses of action to meet social
needs, but also with the importance of monitoring compliance, an essential stage

14Policy Analysis in Colombia
in the actual policy analysis process. The importance of the different stages of the
policy process is evident in the following excerpt: “It is considered essential that
planning does not stop at the simple enunciation of a plan, but that it reaches
the control of the execution of the different programs and projects that integrate
said plan” (DNP, 1967, p. VII-5).
Nonetheless, in spite of such promising start, public planning in Colombia
would only begin to be systematic until well into the 1970s and 1980s, with
the constant publication of PNDs and CONPES documents. Some of these
documents would become gradually more and more technical during the 1970s.
As an example, in CONPES Document 1408 of 1976, the government not only
proposed specific policy options, but also listed – and systematically analyzed –
different alternatives and policy instruments to address the problem at hand,
while also discussing their prioritization and feasibility. This was, however,
no different in other countries of the same development level, particularly
because, during those years, the approaches towards policy analysis were more
general than specific, and were usually based on assumptions of homogeneity
at the political level, within a rather simple, stable and closed world (Aguilar,
1992, p. 26).
To sum up, policy analysis in Colombia started to be adopted more strongly
at the national level of government, thanks to the adoption of an agreed strategy
towards national planning. Such strong emphasis on planning emerged in response
to the recommendations and prescriptions of different international missions.
Although it is hard to argue that these pioneer plans and formulations constituted,
from the very start, policy analysis in its current form, they opened the avenue for
the gradual development of institutional capacity in the Colombian government
for policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. The succeeding decades
would witness the emergence of technical capacity, particularly arising from
key groups of professionals and experts, who would capitalize the legacy of the
international missions and the reforming governments in the 1960s and the 1970s,
even against a strong backdrop of cronyism and political patronage in the country.
The beginning of local capacity
Although there were some key developments in the 19th century (Dunn,
2012), the international emergence of policy analysis is usually attributed to
the pioneering work of Lasswell (1951) and the later development of centers
such as the RAND Corporation and different academic outlets such as Policy
Studies Journal. But it seems that policy analysis also started developing, at least in
practical terms, from the planning functions of the United States (US) government
implemented during the Roosevelt administration through the National Planning
Board (Dunn, 2012). Key professional groups such as economists, political
scientists and anthropologists played a vital role in this process. As we show later,
professional groups would be also key in Colombia in the emergence of a more
technical approach towards policy analysis.

15
The policy analysis movement
This phenomenon can be enclosed in the notion of “epistemic communities”, a
term coined by Peter Haas for describing the joint action of actors outside central
government to develop a coordinated public policy analysis (Haas, 1989). In
other words, this concept refers to a group of people or institutions who share a
certain perception about public problems and try to promote a set of analysis and
proposals to advocate a policy or regulatory change (Subirats, 2001, p. 262). The
participation and feedback of key professional groups and epistemic communities,
not only from outside, but also from within, would represent an important factor
in the emergence and development of policy analysis in the Colombian context.
Such epistemic communities based their development in spaces in which
international ideas and approaches towards development started to become
influential, particularly in universities and think tanks, as well as in the nascent
government planning agencies. In particular, two initiatives clearly emerged in
universities, out of international forces later joined by key professionals of the
economics domain: the Center of Economic Development Studies (Centro
de Estudios de Desarrollo Económico – CEDE), established in 1958 at the
Universidad de los Andes close to the School of Economics; and the Development
Research Center (Centro de Investigaciones para el Desarrollo – CID), established
in 1962 at the National University of Colombia, School of Economic Sciences.
Both centers, and schools, would become key spaces for the diffusion of
methodologies and techniques in planning, budgeting and policy formulation/
evaluation, and for the training of economists who would later join the higher
ranks of public service.
The two initiatives became key centers for analysis and policy formulation,
developing characterizations of social problems based on economic analysis tools
that would, in many cases, feed the policy alternatives in the country. For example,
it is known that CEDE was responsible for conducting employment surveys in
large cities before this was a function of the National Administrative Department
of Statistics (Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística – DANE).
From these activities, at the end of the 1970s, key policy recommendations
regarding structural unemployment in the country were designed (Fajardo et al,
2008, p. 85). Likewise, from the 1970s, the CID proposed academic works on
social security, energy and income distribution that would later be instrumental
in different policy domains.
3
Outside the academic world, but strongly connected to it, particularly to the
Schools of Economics, some nonprofit think tanks appeared as active centers for
the study of development problematics. The Foundation for Higher Education
and Development (FEDESARROLLO) appeared in 1970, as an initiative
led by key economic actors and professionals. Its arrival was accompanied by
other internationally originated endeavors such as the Friedrich- Ebert- Stiftung
(FESCOL) in 1979, and other academic initiatives such as the Higher School
of Public Administration (Escuela Superior de Administración Pública – ESAP)
in 1958 and CIDER in 1976. Whereas FEDESARROLLO was recognized as
having a focus on macro- and microeconomic studies, FESCOL, on the other

16Policy Analysis in Colombia
hand, showed a more social focus, and aimed at the study of human rights and
democratic union activities. Finally, ESAP would contribute to the technical
training of public servants, but also to the study of phenomena related to public
affairs with the appearance of a related journal in 1962 (Administración y Desarrollo).
CIDER, at Universidad de los Andes, would later become a key center in the
country for the study of regional development and decentralization with strong
links with Europe. Thus, although all these centers were hardly homologous in
ideological stances, methodological approaches, and/ or emphases, they started
to contribute from different perspectives to the development of policy analysis
skills, through research, consultancy or professional training.
Although access to international academic outlets was limited in the country
during these decades, and the academic community was quite small and limited
in terms of methodological resources and so on, two significant articles were
published relating to public policy in Colombia. In 1970, an article in Policy
Sciences used the the Colombian Health Department as a model to exemplify the
importance of rigor in programming and execution of policy objectives (Ugalde,
1973). Likewise, in 1975 Albert Hirschman (who was participant in a mission of
the World Bank to Colombia in 1952) wrote an article named “Policymaking
and policy analysis in Latin America: a return journey”. This article, based on
the author’s experience around the Carlos Lleras Restrepo’s Presidency (1966–
70), depicted the role of the planning office after the international missions
and its importance in monitoring technical decisions and the quality of public
expenditure and investments (Hirschman,  1975).
To sum up, aside from the emergence of academic centers and think tanks
that pioneered the development of technical analysis and academic studies in
different policy domains, there was a group of professionals who played a key
role. Economists in particular started to introduce international techniques and
ideas to improve decision- making processes, as well as planning, budgeting and
policy formulation in Colombia’s public sector. Hence, the emergence of policy
analysis in Colombia is strongly linked, not only to the role of academic centers,
but also to the leading role played by professionals from the social sciences,
particularly the economists.
Policy capacity and nation construction
Condensing the arrival of the discipline of policy analysis, or at least its narrative,
to a single moment or fact can be complex and even futile. Instead, we aim to
identify a series of triggers and contextual factors that, in different moments and
with different intensity, allowed the consolidation of policy analysis techniques
and approaches in the country. Capacity building in Colombia emerged as a
stringent need in order to avoid becoming a failed state and to create a new
republic (Sanabria, forthcoming). In such a context, policy analysis techniques and
instruments became highly valuable in order to allow for a more effective public
administration, able to tackle an almost unique combination of national wicked

17
The policy analysis movement
problems. In this vein, in this section, we start by analyzing the geopolitical context
of the events that enabled the arrival of the principles, techniques and practices
that epitomized the initial moments of public policy analysis in Colombia. We
then describe the different ways in which the Colombian state introduced such
approaches and tools, and how such approaches began to be functional in such a
complex context. Finally, we discuss the evolution of local knowledge, and the
academic community, about policy analysis in Colombia.
Crisis of the state and the diffusion of policy ideas
The debt crisis in the Latin American region during the early 1980s opened the
door to greater influence in internal policy from international donors and actors,
particularly multilateral organizations. The Washington Consensus, a series of
recommendations and prescriptions for several actors in the region, posed various
challenges in terms of economic policy. It brought not only NPM practices,
but also a whole ideological stance around the role of the state, with a specific
focus on liberalizing markets, privatization and deregulation. Although these
recommendations were adopted differently according to the country, they affected
the policy agenda of national governments during the 1990s, as well as the design
of public administration apparatus, and the way resources were allocated accord
policy domains and organizations (Flórez, 2001; Castañeda and Díaz,  2017).
Regarding public management and policy, the original text of the Washington
Consensus reflected a particular posture about public sector, closely related to
public choice approaches: the inefficiency of public organizations and public
management against its private counterpart, which supports the need for adopting
a more competitive, private sector- like, approach in public sector activities
(Williamson, 1990). These assumptions and ideological stances towards the role
of the state resounded intensely in moments of stringent fiscal pressures in Latin
America. Thus, many developing countries looking for funding and financial
support to overcome the crisis were certainly eager to adopt structural adjustment
programs that included first- generation reforms that aimed to reduce the role
of the state and allow for more private sector participation, and to adopt a more
managerial approach in public administration.
Nonetheless, the intensity of reforms differed across countries in the region.
Some countries advanced strongly in shrinking the state and its role, while
others implemented a more customized combination of state versus market
activities. Yet, a whole new corporative culture was arriving in Latin America’s
public organizations. In order to break with bureaucracy, public administration
must move from an emphasis on rules to one on results, and management and
policy practices consequently started to pursue efficiency and effectiveness rather
than unending processes and paperwork. Hence, in order to achieve greater
effectiveness, a rather technical approach was beginning to be adopted, particularly
changing the way in which policy problems were identified, formulated,
monitored and evaluated. Thus, although not necessarily an intended goal of the

18Policy Analysis in Colombia
Washington Consensus, policy analysis techniques and practices started to travel
more easily thanks to the so- called structural adjustment programs, whereby
several governments in the region also enhanced their approaches and structures
towards improving policy analysis, formulation and evaluation. As Roth (2016)
mentions, the concept of public policy was disseminated more widely after the
state reform that was concretized in the principles established in the Washington
Consensus of 1989. Therefore, policy transfer took place through the channel of
international donors and their conditions for loans and aid. In fact, it not only
brought prescriptions about the role of state, but also enabled the dissemination
of techniques and practices that were not necessarily available in developing
countries like Colombia before the 1990s.
The 1990s would epitomize, at least in the Colombian context, a dynamic time
in which policy analysis ideas and techniques were more widely disseminated and
put into practice. Yet, as an exceptionality of the Colombian case, the adoption
of these reforms occurred in a context where the country also had to unravel a
deep governance crisis within a lack of institutional legitimacy, with enormous
precariousness in terms of guarantees to the basic rights of the Colombians (Flórez,
2001) and poor state presence across its territory (Sanabria, forthcoming). In
fact, during the last half of the 20th century, Colombia had to deal with a set of
wicked policy problems that almost no other Latin American country faced at
the time: drug trafficking, narco- terrorism, guerrillas, para- militarism, frequent
natural disasters, political violence, massive internal population displacement,
prevalent poverty and urban insecurity, to mention but a few. As a result, in the
midst of such economic, institutional and social crisis, the citizenry would demand
a new form and structure for the state. Thus, in spite of international pressures to
adopt fiscal austerity and state shrinkage, a country with such a complex social
context as Colombia required a stronger and more legitimate state, a gap that
the Constitution of 1991 would fill.
A new framework for institutional capacity and New Public Management
The consolidation of public policy analysis as a discipline, and as formal (and
informal) practice, cannot be separated from regulatory changes and from the
political conceptions about the relevance of technique in public action. In this
section, we discuss the main elements that favored the consolidation of this field,
from a practical perspective, in Colombia.
One of the crucial institutional changes of the 20th century was the introduction
of the National Constitution of 1991, with its participatory emphasis and
its progressivism towards the configuration of a “rule of law” in Colombia.
Additionally, in terms of the operation of the state and the importance of
building a stronger institutional and administrative capacity to understand and
address social problems, the Colombian Constitution managed to enshrine and
prioritize the configuration of a meritocratic and egalitarian public administration
(Sanabria, 2010), a key institutional trait whose failure was historically connected

19
The policy analysis movement
to political violence in the country (Sanabria, 2015, forthcoming). Thus, the
Constitution aimed to set a new framework for public administration in the
country, attempting to improve state presence and capacity, and the quality of
public policy in the country.
In contrast to the downsizing and managerialism prevalent in other developing
countries, the 1991 Colombian Constitution aimed at creating a more capable,
technical- oriented state. New organizations in key policy domains were created
by the new Constitution (for example, the Attorney General, Ministry of
Trade and Ministry of Environment). A more decentralized approach in public
administration was adopted, granting more autonomy to Colombian regions
and delegating to them the direct execution of social policy. Ideas relating
to decentralization/ fiscal federalism also arrived to the country thanks to the
role of key epistemic communities, particularly at CEDE and CIDER (or the
Interdisciplinary Center of Regional Studies, as it was known at the time), both
at Universidad de los Andes.
Moreover, key aspects of budgeting and planning, related to NPM practices,
emerged in a more technical fashion from the constitutional definitions. Here
the role of international actors was predominant in conveying ideas to encourage
states in developing countries to be more effective and efficient. For example, a
results- oriented management approach was enhanced at the national level as well
as a whole process for the formulation and assessment of investment projects at
the national and regional level. Both elements, which were strongly supported
by the World Bank and the Inter- American Development Bank (DNP, 2010),
were specifically established and endorsed by the Colombian Constitution
of 1991 (Constitución Política de Colombia, 1991, art. 343 and 344). These
measures reflect how, during the 1990s, the Colombian government pursued a
combination of approaches that aimed to build a more capable and present state
from the ground upwards, while also including some practices relating to NPM
and efficiency.
The process would continue later with the promulgation of a planning law
(Ley Orgánica de Planeación – Ley 152 de 1994, or Law 152, 1994) whereby
the government’s interest in building capacity for formulation and monitoring
of public initiatives would be explicit. The components of the law reflected key
issues of public policy and public management theory and practice of the time.
In particular, Law 152 detailed the procedures, institutions and mechanisms
under which public decisions and actions should be designed, chosen, executed
and evaluated. Its materialization would start in the National and Regional
Development Plans and would include both planning and the participation of
legislative, civil society and controlling bodies. As some scholars acknowledge,
two key traits of this law were, first, that it brought a participatory approach
to policy, enabling civil society representatives to participate in its elaboration,
and, second, that it set the formulation and execution of the plans as mandatory
for national and subnational government bodies (Rincón, 2009, p. 51). Thus,
the law, as a spin- off of the constitutional determinations, intended to generate

20Policy Analysis in Colombia
institutional capacity at the subnational level, again starting from the planning
actions of the government.
The Colombian development of policy analysis is then, from its own beginning,
clearly tied to the development of planning functions, and this would continue
in the following years. Parallel to the promulgation of Colombia’s Law 152,
CONPES, the highest planning authority at the national level, created a National
Performance, Management and Results System (Sistema Nacional de Evaluación
y Gestión de Resultados – SINERGIA) within the DNP. The objectives of this
initiative concerned both the follow- up of the efficiency and effectiveness of
the administration in the formulation and execution of policies, programs and
projects, and the generation of adequate information for decision making for
planning and allocation of resources (DNP, 1994). Among the implications for
public management, it attributed to all agencies and entities of the executive
branch the duty to elaborate, approve and adopt a Four- Year Action Plan to
specify the expected results of the programs, and the institutional management
to be developed to achieve these results (DNP,  1994).
These regulatory changes established the use of an evidence- based narrative,
at least in the documents, surrounding the importance of a technical and logical
approach in public action. This also included key ideas and approaches of state-
of-the-art authors of policy analysis and public management. For instance,
the idea of policy cycle was adopted, including the phases of prioritization,
formulation, decision making, implementation and evaluation (Jann and
Wegrich, 2007). This allows us to see again the particularity of the Colombian
case. Whereas some of these measures responded to the efficiency requirements
and/or recommendations of international donors and other actors (NPM- like
reforms), the Constitution created firmer ground for state capacity with a more
active role and greater presence of the state. All in all, taking into account the
strong prismatic characteristic of Colombian policies (Sanabria, forthcoming),
these newly created regulations boosted the need for actual capacity building
within public organizations in order to effectively carry out and implement  them.
Thus, the challenge was now to uphold a Constitution and to implement a
somehow sophisticated legal framework. The commitment to consolidating the
capacity of the Colombian public management apparatus would begin with
CONPES Document 2790 of 1995, which made compulsory the orientation of
Colombian public administration (its organizations and personnel) towards the
achievement of results. This would identify the need for a National Training and
Instruction Plan for the Public Service in order to internalize a results- oriented
management culture within public organizations (DNP, 1995). This aim would
be more tangible with the publication of Decree 1567, 1998, which created a
National Training System and Stimulus System for state employers, and reflected
a commitment to provide formal and informal tools for public organizations
to raise the level of employee commitment with respect to the policies, plans,
programs, projects, and objectives of the state, as well as raise efficiency and
effectiveness levels.
4

21
The policy analysis movement
These attempts to train the public workforce were relevant for the execution of
public policy analysis programs within the state. In particular, they reaffirmed that
public managers’ training was essential, especially if they were to be considered
as the inspirers, coordinators, managers and leaders of the comprehensive public
policy process (Salazar, 1995, p. 233). This was in fact the beginning of the
adoption of a performance management system that complemented the efforts
made at the organizational level by the SINERGIA program (DNP, 2010) and still
today faces important challenges in the adoption of a results- oriented approach
at the level of public personnel strategies (Sanabria,  2015).
Another challenge was to create a similar ecosystem for results- oriented
management at the subnational level. The National Municipalities Training System
(or Sistema Nacional de Capacitación Municipal) was developed in an agreement
between the Government of Colombia and the European Union (signed in
1998). This project, which entered into force in 2000, attempted to articulate
different spaces of socialization of practices and tools to strengthen local capacity –
all this through the regional headquarters of the official government’s public
administration university (ESAP). One of its components included the generation
of knowledge and local public policy observatories (Castilla, 2002). However,
the development of a more homogenously distributed institutional capacity at
the subnational level is still one of the key challenges for the Colombian state.
The adoption of concepts and the generation of local knowledge about policy
The previous sections illustrated five key drivers of the development of policy
analysis capacity in Colombia: the creation of capacity at universities and think
tanks, particularly in the Schools of Economics; the role of international missions
in introducing policy ideas and techniques; the configuration of epistemic
communities, particularly those comprising economists; policy transfer through
different channels (international donors and lenders); and the adoption of a new
constitutional framework in the search for greater institutional capacity to deal
with highly complex societal and policy problems.
Those changes were accompanied by the relatively slow development of public
affairs academic capacity in the Latin American region in general and in Colombia
in particular. Yet, during the last two decades some regional developments
awakened this process. Perhaps, the most relevant of these were the arrival in
Latin America of policy literature translated into Spanish, the consolidation of
specialized centers in policy analysis, and the appearance of the first education
programs in public administration and public policy in Colombia.
Since its emergence in the 1950s, policy analysis scholarship had come mainly
from Anglo- Saxon scholars and to a lesser degree from some Nordic European
authors and institutions. Accordingly, most of such literature was written in
English, delaying somewhat its arrival in Latin America. Thus, the concepts and
narratives relating to public policy and administration in Latin America would
only start to arrive decades later, thanks to the translations of some Mexican

22Policy Analysis in Colombia
scholars such as Luis Aguilar Villanueva (Aguilar, 1992). The new Spanish
translated versions of these international contributions allowed the introduction
of a new whole array of works, concepts and terminology that could now be
used by academics in the continent.
This brought one anecdotal problem of the type that commonly arises when
translating academic terms and concepts into other languages. “Policy” and
“politics”, when translated, are the exact same word in Spanish: “política”. In
other words, they are homographs, thus creating not only a language problem
(since they are written and pronounced the same), but a conceptual one, since
politics and policy are necessarily intertwined concepts in our field. In this way,
the challenge was then finding a word in Spanish that would reflect the term
policy in its entirety (Salazar, 1995) without confusing it with politics. That is why,
when talking about public policy in Spanish, the term used is “políticas públicas”
in plural, in order to avoid confusions with “política” or politics.
Hence, it is in the 1990s that the first attempts at adopting and generating
knowledge within the specific framework of public administration and public
policy can be identified in Spanish- speaking countries. With this, a contribution
to the understanding of national realities from a local perspective was nourished.
This is evidenced by the appearance of first specialized journals such as Gestión
y Análisis de Políticas Públicas [Policy Analysis and Management] in Spain in 1994,
or Gestión y Política Pública [Public Policy and Management] in Mexico in 1992, as
well as other journals in countries such as Chile, Argentina and Brazil (in both
Portuguese and Spanish).
In Colombia, aside from the ESAP journal Administración y Desarrollo journal
created in 1962, other academic outlets under the name of, or related to, “policy
analysis” or “public policy/ administration” would not yet appear. However,
some works relating to public affairs started to appear in journals covering other,
broader, topics, such as administration, sociology, political science, economics
and/or social studies. These included articles such as “Las políticas públicas: nueva
perspectiva de análisis” (Salazar, 1992) and “El análisis de las políticas públicas: una
disciplina incipiente en Colombia” (Hernández, 1999). In fact, the first academic
articles on the topics could be traced, for instance, in the journals Universitas from
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, the Revista de Estudios Sociales and Desarrollo y
Sociedad from Universidad de los Andes, Cuadernos de Economía and INNOVAR
from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and Sociedad y Economía and Cuadernos
de Administración from Universidad del Valle, among others.
In addition to the incipient work in scientific journals, the first academic texts
on public policy and administration in the country would also appear at this time.
They were certainly descriptive rather than analytical, and basically translations
of other works in English. These include Salazar’s pioneering book entitled
Las Políticas Públicas (1995), a text that exposed the elements and discussions
behind public policy and written after the author finished his Master’s in Public
Administration and Policy at the London School of Economics. Another key
work is Wiesner’s (1997) La Efectividad de las Políticas Públicas en Colombia: Un

23
The policy analysis movement
Análisis Neoinstitucional. This work examined the institutionalism approach to the
functioning of societies, and analyzed empirical evidence of the country in terms
of institutional structure and capacity in different policy areas (environmental,
telecommunications and transportation, among others). Before the end of the
century, more specialized works appeared, such as that of Nieto (1996) on the
design and formulation of citizen security and coexistence policies for Bogotá,
and a publication proposing a “public policy analysis” of education and its relation
with the state (De León, 1997). In particular, the works of Eduardo Wiesner were
highly influential for the diffusion (and the practical adoption) of key concepts
regarding public policy and administration in the country during the 1990s and
the 2000s, such as decentralization and fiscal federalism.
It is in only since 2000 that further local publication of books and texts regarding
public policy and administration has started to advance (for example, Roth, 2002;
Varela, 2006; Vargas et al, 2007; Lozano, 2008; Cuervo, 2012; Ordoñez, 2013;
Guerrero et al, 2018). Although recent publications are now more analytical
than descriptive, there is still a lack of local knowledge and approaches about
public policy. At the same time, different academic documents and publications
from state organizations (such as the DNP, the Comptroller and the General
Attorney’s Office, as well as some ministries) also were developed. These works
were practical in essence, and focused more on substantive areas of public policy,
in diverse topics such as health, education, security, demobilization development
and other social variables.
The evolution of more abundant local knowledge about public affairs has
been accompanied the emergence and strengthening of different think tanks and
research centers that address the subject, as well as the development of the first
educational programs related to policy. First, key centers have continued to be
closely involved in policy formulation and evaluation, particularly CEDE and
CIDER from Universidad de los Andes, CID from Universidad Nacional and the
nonprofit FEDESARROLLO. However, in the meantime other specialized public
policy centers have appeared, such as the Observatory of Public Administration
Policies, Execution and Results at Universidad Externado de Colombia in 1995,
the Research Group in Management and Public Policy at Universidad del Valle
in 1998, the School of Government of Antioquia (Universidad de Antioquia)
in 2004, the Observatory of Public Policy at Universidad Icesi in Cali in 2006,
and the School of Government at Universidad de los Andes in 2006, which is
the first school to follow the US model of schools of public affairs in Colombia.
Second, the first graduate programs to contribute to the generation of policy
analysis capacity would appear in 1989, with the creation of the Graduate
Program in Social Appraisal of Projects in the School of Economics at
Universidad de los Andes, with the support of the Inter- American Development
Bank to train people across Latin America. Later, programs related to policy
more specifically would appear in 1998 in CIDER’s graduate program in State,
Public Policy and Development, in the form of a Master’s in Government
and Public Policy at Universidad Externado in 1999, and a Master’s in Public

24Policy Analysis in Colombia
Policy at Universidad del Valle in 2002 and at the School of Government of
Universidad de los Andes and in 2008, respectively. As will be seen in Chapter 2,
educational programs have continued to appear in the country, although they
expose differences in terms of the approaches and tools they help to create
for greater capacity for policy analysis in the country today. We explore these
approaches in the following section.
The state of the art: a more complex and rich
setting for policy analysis
This section completes the general review of the evolution of policy analysis in
Colombia, by analyzing the current state of practices and research in the country.
In particular, it offers contextualization in terms of current institutional capacity
to address the current challenges facing the practice of policy analysis and in
terms of the role of societal actors and the citizenry. We also review the current
state of policy analysis education and research in the country.
A brief revision of the current state of policy analysis in the country should
start by recognizing the beginning of the 21st century as the beginning of a
more sophisticated role for policy analysis, both in practice and in scholarship
in Colombia. The current context is characterized by more rapid dynamics
of information, a more defined role of government/ state organizations in
terms of policy analysis, formulation and evaluation, and more complex policy
communities across several policy domains. In this context, more elaborate
governance structures can be recognized (and addressed) in public policy and
management (multilevel, collaborative, metropolitan, intersectoral and so on). The
last two decades have also seen a greater role for non- state actors, government’s
boundaries in policy analysis and implementation are less defined, which brings
new challenges and implications in terms of governance.
A more complex governance scenario confirms that it is not only the Colombian
public sector that has become more sophisticated in terms of policy analysis
tools and techniques, but also civil society and other sectors (private, nonprofit).
In this respect, it is relevant to recognize the role that key societal groups have
had in policy analysis/ implementation, either for their own reasons or for the
establishment of complex policy subsystems, or even empowered or commissioned
by the state itself. Hence, the evolution in the role that the state plays in policy
vis- à- vis the increasing role of other actors, shows more frequent state– society
interactions in policy deliberations in the country than previously.
Today Colombia reflects the evolution towards a more technical state,
particularly at the national level, with some islands of excellence (Bersch et al,
2017)
5
in some policy domains (economic policy and social policy) and in the
most developed regions (Bogotá DC, Antioquia, Valle del Cauca, Atlántico,
Cundinamarca). Government agencies are expected to comply with legal and
administrative provisions that require high standards for the analysis and evaluation
of alternatives prior to most public policy decisions. Technical strategies towards

25
The policy analysis movement
planning and budgeting are not uncommon in the national government, and key
organizations are recognized as advanced hubs for technical policy analysis (for
example, the Central Bank, the DNP and the Ministry of Finance and Public
Credit, among others). Yet, key challenges remain in other policy sectors and
regions and, as Sanabria and Avellaneda (2014) have claimed, in promoting more
advanced and continuing training in public policy and public management for
public officials in the country.
Nonetheless, the advancement of the policy analysis narrative and its tools has
also permeated, although with different intensities, other components of the
state, such as the judiciary and the Congress of the Republic. As has happened
in other countries, there have been effervescent internal debates in Colombia
about the more active role that the courts and judges have played in policy
since the 1991 Constitution. Accordingly, to avoid criticisms, the courts have
aimed to rely more on expertise and concepts from policy experts in order to
make better informed decisions. In turn, the legislature, at least in the case of
some senators and representatives, has aimed to reinforce the different capacities
within the Legislative Work Units that are responsible for writing bills, as well
as the policy documents that are more frequently produced in order to justify
normative changes.
6
Although not the focus of this chapter, the evolution of policy analysis capacity
in state actors in Colombia has been complemented by the increasing role of
other sectors and actors in public policy. This is evidenced by the more active
role assumed by civil society actors and citizen organizations and interest/ pressure
groups in tackling public problems, in areas such as environmental issues, minority
rights (for example, for Afro- Colombians, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
(LGBT) people, women), and corruption and transparency, among others. Also, it
is important to give credit not only to the actors that have contributed to the public
debate by using evidence and providing analysis from outside the state, but also,
to the active role of societal, private sector and nonprofit groups/ organizations/
actors, which has led to the establishment of important policy networks at the
national and subnational levels. The role of those actors is well documented in
Chapters 13 and Appe and Telch 16 of this volume.
Alongside the evolution of state and societal capacities, there has been a rapid
development in public policy and administration scholarship in the country
(explored further in Chapter 2). It is evident that the educational offer has
evolved and has begun to be more evenly distributed, albeit slowly, across the
territory. In order to understand the current offer of educational programs and
research groups in policy- related issues, we turn to information available on
the platforms of the Ministry of National Education (Ministerio de Educación
Nacional – MEN) and the Administrative Department of Science, Technology
and Innovation (Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia, Tecnología e
Innovación – COLCIENCIAS).
First, a review of the National Information System for Higher Education
(SNIES) by the MEN indicates that there are currently 17 active programs that

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“I will not attempt to depict our intense emotions during this new
conflict. This child, who, like the other riders, had only the horse’s
mane to cling to, afforded an example of the power of reasoning
over instinct and brute force. For some minutes he maintained his
difficult position with heroic intrepidity. At last, to our great relief, a
horseman rode up to him, caught him up in his outstretched arm,
and threw him on the croup behind him.”
We will now lay before our readers the economy of a Russian
taboon, as described by Kohl, the German traveller. A small number
of stallions and mares, placed under the care of a herdsman, are
sent into the Steppe as the nucleus of the herd. The foals are kept,
and the herd is allowed to go on increasing, until the number of
horses is thought to be about as large as the estate can conveniently
maintain. A taboon seldom consists of more than a thousand horses;
but there are landowners in the Steppe, who are supposed to
possess eight or ten such taboons in different parts of the country. It
is only when the taboon is said to be full, that the owner begins to
derive revenue from it, partly by using the young horses on the
estate itself, and partly by selling them at the fairs, or to the
travelling horse-dealers in the employ of the government
contractors.
The tabunshick, to whose care the taboon is intrusted, must be a
man of indefatigable activity, and of an iron constitution; proof alike
against the severest cold, and the most burning heat, and capable of
living in a constant exposure to every kind of weather, without the
shelter even of a bush.
It must be a matter of indifference to him whether he makes his
bed at night among the wet grass, or upon the naked earth, baked
for twelve hours by an almost vertical sun. In the coldest weather he
can seldom hope for the shelter of a roof; and though the hot winds
blow upon him like the blast of a furnace, and his skin cracks with
very dryness, yet he must pass the greater part of his day in the
saddle, ready at every instant to gallop off in pursuit of a stray
steed, or to fly to the rescue of a young foal attacked by a ravenous

wolf. The shepherd and the herdsman carry their houses with them.
Their large wagons, that always accompany them on their
wanderings, afford shelter from the weather, and a warm nest at
night; but these are luxuries the tabunshick must not even dream of.
His charges are much too lively to be left to their own guidance. His
thousand horses are not kept together in as orderly and disciplined a
fashion as those of a regiment of dragoons; and it may be doubted,
whether an adjutant of cavalry has to ride about as much, and to
give as many orders, on a day of battle, as a tabunshick on the
quietest day that he spends in the Steppe. When on duty, a
tabunshick, scarcely ever quits the back of his steed. He eats there,
and even sleeps there: but he must beware of sleeping at the hours
when other men sleep; for while grazing at night, the horses are
most apt to wander away from the herd, and at no time is it more
necessary for him to be on his guard against wolves, and against
those adventurous dealers in horseflesh, who usually contrive that
the money which they receive at a fair, shall consist exclusively of
profit. During a snow-storm, the poor tabunshick must not think of
turning his back to the tempest; this his horses are too apt to do,
and it is his business to see that they do not take flight, and run
scouring before the wind.
The dress of a tabunshick is chiefly composed of leather, fastened
together by a leathern girdle, to which the whole veterinary
apparatus, and a variety of little fanciful ornaments, are usually
appended. His head is protected by a high cylindrical Tartar cap, of
black lambskin; and over the whole he throws his sreeta, a large,
brown, woollen cloak, with a hood to cover his head. This hood, in
fine weather, hangs behind, and often serves its master at once for
pocket and larder.
The tabunshick has a variety of other trappings, of which he never
divests himself. Among these, his harabnick holds not the least
important place. This is a whip, with a thick short stem, but with a
thong often fifteen or eighteen feet in length. It is to him a sceptre
that rarely quits his hand, and without which it would be difficult for
him to retain his riotous subjects in anything like proper order. Next

comes his sling, which he uses like the South American lasso, and
with which he rarely misses the neck of the horse whose course he
is desirous of arresting. The wolf club is another indispensable part
of his equipment. This club which mostly hangs at the saddle, ready
for immediate use, is three or four feet long, with a thick iron knob
at the end. The tabunshicks acquire such astonishing dexterity in the
use of this formidable weapon, that, at full gallop they will hurl it at
a wolf, and rarely fail to strike the iron end into the prowling bandit’s
head. The club, skilfully wielded, carries almost as sudden death
with it as the rifle of an American back-woodsman. A cask of water
must also accompany the tabunshick on every ride, for he can never
know whether he may not be for days without coming to a well. A
bag of bread, and a bottle of brandy are likewise his constant
companions, besides a multitude of other little conveniences and
necessaries, which are fastened either to himself, or his horse. Thus
accoutred, the tabunshick sallies forth on a mission that keeps his
dexterity and his power of endurance in constant exercise. His
thousand untamed steeds have to be kept in order with no other
weapon than his harabnick; and this, it may easily be supposed, is
no easy task. His greatest trouble is with the stallions, who, after
spending their ten or twelve years on the Steppe, without having
once smelt the air of a stable, or felt the curb of a rein, become so
ungovernable, that the tabunshick will sometimes threaten to throw
up his office, unless such or such a stallion be expelled from the
taboon.
Such constant exposures to fatigue and hardship, make the
average life of a tabunshick extremely short. At the end of ten or
fifteen years he is generally worn out, and unfit for such arduous
duty. His pay therefore is proportionably high; for every tabunshick is
a hired servant, as no serf could be impelled by any dread of
punishment to exert that constant vigilance, without which the
whole taboon would be broken up in a few days. What the fear of
the whip, however, cannot effect in a slave, the hope of gain may
insure from a freeman. The wages of a tabunshick are regulated by
the number of horses committed to his care. For each horse he

usually receives five or six rubles a year; so that the guardian of a
full taboon may earn his six thousand rubles annually (£275), if he
can keep the wolf and thief at bay; but every horse that is lost the
tabunshick must pay for; and horse stealing is carried on so largely
and dextrously on the Steppe, that he may sometimes lose half a
year’s wages in a single night. He must also pay his assistants out of
his own wages, and three assistants at least will be required to look
after a taboon of a thousand horses. Notwithstanding all these
drawbacks, however, the tabunshick, if he were vigilant and careful,
might always save money; but few of them do so, and it rarely
happens, that when invalided, they have hoarded together a little
capital to enable them to embark in any more quiet occupation.
The hardships to which they are constantly exposed, and the high
wages which they receive, make the tabunshicks the wildest dare-
devils that can be imagined; so much so, that it is considered a
settled point, that a man who has had the care of horses for two or
three years, is unfit for any quiet, or settled kind of life. No one, of
course, that can gain a tolerable livelihood in any other way, will
embrace a calling that subjects him to so severe a life; and the
consequence is, that it is generally from among the scamps of a
village that servants are raised for this service. They are seldom
without money, and when they do visit the brandy-shop, they are
not deterred from abandoning themselves to a carouse by the
financial considerations likely to restrain most men in the same rank
of life. They ought, it is true, never to quit the taboon for a moment,
but they will often spend whole nights in the little brandy-houses of
the Steppe, drinking and gambling, and drowning in their fiery
potations all recollections of the last day’s endurance. When their
senses return with the returning day, they gallop after their herds,
and display no little ingenuity in repairing the mischief that may have
accrued from the carelessness of the preceding night.
The tabunshick lives in constant dread of the horse-stealer, and
yet there is hardly a tabunshick on the Steppe that will not steal a
horse if occasion presents itself. The traveller, who has left his horses
to graze during the night, or the villager, who has allowed his cattle

to wander away from his house, will do well to ascertain that there
be no taboon in the vicinity, or in the morning he will look for them
in vain. The tabunshick, meanwhile, takes care to rid himself, as
soon as possible, of his stolen goods, by exchanging them away to
the first brother herdsman that he meets, who again barters them
away to another; so that in a few days, a horse that was stolen on
the banks of the Dniepr, passes from hand to hand till it reaches the
Bug or the Dniestr; and the rightful owner may still be inquiring after
a steed, which has already quitted the empire of the Czar, to enter
the service of a Moslem, or to figure in the stud of a Hungarian
magnate. The tabunshicks have constantly little affairs of this kind to
transact with one another, for which the Mongolian tumuli, scattered
over the Steppe, afford convenient places of rendezvous.
Accustomed to a life of roguery and hardship, and indulging
constantly in every kind of excess, the tabunshick comes naturally to
be looked upon, by the more orderly class, as rather a suspicious
character; but his friendship is generally worth having, and his ill-will
is always dreaded. His very master stands a little in awe of him, for a
tabunshick is not a servant that can be dismissed at a day’s notice.
When the taboon has once become accustomed to him, the animals
are not easily brought to submit to the control of a stranger. The
tabunshick, moreover, has learned to know his horses; can tell the
worth of each, can advise which to sell and which to keep, and
knows where the best pasture ground may be looked for. Such a
fellow, therefore, if intelligent and experienced, whatever his moral
character may be, becomes necessary to his master, and, feeling
this, is not long without presuming upon his conscious importance.
He plays his wild pranks with impunity, and looks down with
sovereign contempt upon the more decent members of society,
particularly upon the more honest shepherds and cowherds, whom
he considers, in every point of view, as an inferior race.
At the horse-fairs, the tabunshick is always a man of great
importance; and it is amusing and interesting to see him, with his
wild taboon, at Balta and Berditsheff, where are held the greatest
fairs between the Dniepr and the Dniestr. The horses are driven into

the market in the same free condition in which they range over the
Steppe, for if tied together they would become entirely
ungovernable. When driven through towns and villages, the
creatures are often frightened; but that occasions no trouble to their
drivers, for the herd is never more certain to keep together than
when made timid by the appearance of a strange place. In the
market-place the taboon is driven into an enclosure, near which the
owner seats himself, and the tabunshick enters along with his
horses. The buyers walk round to make their selection. They must
not expect the horses to be trotted out for their inspection, as at
Tattersall’s, but must judge for themselves as well as they can, with
the comfortable reflection, that, after they have bought the animals,
they will have ample time to become acquainted with them. “I have
none but wild horses to sell,” the owner will say. “Look at them as
long as you please. That horse I will warrant five years old, having
bred him on my own Steppe. Further than that I know nothing of
him. The price is a hundred rubles. Will you take him? If you say
yes, I’ll order him to be caught; but I’d advise you to make the
tabunshick a present, that he may take care not to injure the animal
in catching it.” This last caution is by no means to be neglected, for
a horse, carelessly caught, may be lamed for several weeks; and as
the horse is never caught till the bargain has been concluded, any
injury done to the animal is the buyer’s business, not the seller’s. If,
on the other hand, the tabunshick be satisfied with the fee given
him, he goes about his task in a much more methodical manner. The
sling is thrown gently over the neck of the designated steed, but the
latter is not thrown with the jerk to the ground. He is allowed for a
little while to prance about at the full length of his tether, till his first
fright be over. Gradually the wild animal becomes reconciled to the
unwonted restraint, and the buyer leads him away quietly to his
stable, where it will often take a year’s tuition to cure him of the
vicious habits acquired on the Steppe.
After saying so much of the tabunshick, it will be but fair to give
some account of the life led by the riotous animals committed to his

charge. During what is called the fine season, from Easter to
October, the taboon remains grazing day and night in the Steppe.
During the other six months of the year, the horses remain under
shelter at night, and are driven out only in the day, when they must
scrape away the snow for themselves, to get at the scanty grass
underneath. When we say the horses remain under shelter, it must
not be supposed that the shelter in question resembles in any way
an English stable. The shelter alluded to consists of a space of
ground enclosed by an earthen mound, with now and then
something like a roof towards the north, to keep off the cold wind.
There the poor creatures must defend themselves, as well as they
can against the merciless Boreas, who comes to them unchecked in
his course all the way from the pole. To a stranger it is quite
harrowing to see the noble animals, in severe weather, in one of
these unprotected enclosures. The stallions and the stronger beasts,
take possession of the shed; the timid and feeble stand in groups
about the wall, and creep closely together, in order to impart a little
warmth to each other. Nor is it from cold that they have most to
suffer on these occasions. Early in winter they still find a little
autumnal grass under the snow, and the tabunshick scatters a little
hay about the stable to help them to amuse the tedious hours of
night. The customary improvidence of a Russian establishment,
however, seldom allows a sufficient stock of hay, to be laid in for the
winter. As the season advances, hay grows scarce, and must be
reserved for the more valuable coach and saddle horses, and the
tabunshick is obliged to content himself with a portion of the dry
reeds and straw stored up for fuel. For these he has soon to battle it
with the cook and the stove heaters, whose interest never fails to
outweigh that of the poor taboon horses. These, if the winter last
beyond the average term, are often reduced to the thatch of the
roofs, and sometimes even eat away one another’s tails and manes;
and that in a country where every year more grass is burnt during
the summer, than would suffice to provide a profusion of hay, for a
century of winters!—It will hardly be matter of surprise to any one,
to learn that the winter is a season of sickness and death to the

horses of the Steppe. After the mildest winter, the poor creatures
come forth, a troop of sickly looking skeletons; but when the season
has been severe, or unusually long, more than half of them,
perhaps, have sunk under their sufferings, or have been so reduced
in strength that the ensuing six months are hardly sufficient to
restore them to their wonted spirits. The year 1833 was remarkably
destructive to the taboons, and they had not recovered from its
effects five years afterwards, when I last visited the Steppe. In such
years of famine, the most enormous prices are sometimes paid for
hay; yet every careful agriculturist may secure his cattle against such
sufferings, by a little industry and forethought. In the proper season
he may have as much hay as he pleases, for the mere trouble of
cutting it; and such is the dryness of the climate during summer,
that the hay may always be carried home, and stacked within a few
hours after it has been mown.
From the hardships of an ordinary winter, the horses quickly
recover amid the abundance of spring. A profusion of young grass
covers the ground as soon as the snow has melted away. The
crippled spectres that stalked about a few weeks before, with
wasted limbs, and drooping heads, are as wild and mischievous at
the end of the first month, as though they had never experienced
the inconvenience of a six months’ fast. The stallions have already
begun to form their separate factions in the taboon, and the
neighing, bounding, prancing, gallopping, and fighting, goes on
merrily from the banks of the Danube to the very heart of Mongolia.
In a taboon of a thousand horses, there are generally fifteen or
twenty stallions, and four or five hundred brood mares. The
stallions, and particularly the old ones, consider themselves the
rightful lords of the community. They exercise their authority with
very little moderation, and desperate battles are often fought among
them, apparently for the mere honour of the championship. In
almost every taboon there is one stallion who, by the rule of his
hoof, has established a sort of supremacy, to which his comrades
tacitly submit. Factions, cabals, and intrigues are not wanting.
Sometimes there will be a general coalition against some particular

stallion, who, if he get into a quarrel, is immediately set upon by ten
or a dozen at once, and has no chance but to run for it. There is
seldom a taboon without two or three of these objects of public
animosity, who may be seen with a small troop of mares grazing
apart from the main body of the herd.
The most tremendous battles are fought when two taboons
happen to meet. In general, the tabunshicks are careful to keep at a
respectful distance from each other; but sometimes they are away
from their duty, and sometimes, when a right of pasturage is
disputed, they bring their herds together out of sheer malice. The
mares and foals on such occasions keep aloof, but their furious lords
rush to battle with an impetuosity, of which those who are
accustomed to see the horse only in a domesticated state, can form
but a poor conception. Tho enraged animals lash their tails, and
erect their manes like angry lions; their hoofs rattle against each
other with such violence, that the noise can be heard at a
considerable distance; they fasten on one another with their teeth
like tigers; and their screamings and howlings are more like those of
the wild beasts of the forests, than like any sounds ever heard from
a tame horse. The victorious party is always sure to carry away a
number of captive mares in triumph; and the exchange of prisoners
is an affair certain to bring the tabunshicks and their men by the
ears, if they have been able to keep themselves out of the battle till
then.
The spring, though in so many respects a season of enjoyment, is
not without its drawbacks. The wolves, also, have to indemnify
themselves for the severe fast of the winter, and are just as desirous
as the horses to get themselves into good condition again. The foals,
too, are just then most delicate, and a wolf will any day prefer a
young foal, to a sheep, or a calf. The wolf accordingly is constantly
prowling about the taboon during the spring, and the horses are
bound to be always prepared to do battle, in defence of the younger
members of the community. The wolf, as the weaker party, trusts
more to cunning than strength. For a party of wolves openly to
attack a taboon at noon-day, would be to rush upon certain

destruction; and, however severely the wolf may be pressed by
hunger, he knows his own weakness too well, to venture on so
absurd an act of temerity. At night, indeed, if the taboon happen to
be a little scattered, and the wolves in tolerable numbers, they will
sometimes attempt a rush, and a general battle ensues. An
admirable spirit of coalition then displays itself among the horses. On
the first alarm, stallions and mares come charging up to the
threatened point, and attack the wolves with an impetuosity, that
often puts the prowlers to instant flight. Soon, however, if they feel
themselves sufficiently numerous, they return, and hover about the
taboon, till some poor foal straggle a few yards from the main body,
when it is seized by the enemy, while the mother, springing to its
rescue, is nearly certain to share the same fate. Then it is that the
battle begins in real earnest. The mares form a circle, within which
the foals take shelter. We have seen pictures in which the horses are
represented in a circle, presenting their hind hoofs to the wolves,
who thus appear to have the free choice to fight, or to let it alone.
Such pictures are the mere result of imagination, and bear very little
resemblance to the reality; for the wolf has, in general, to pay much
more dearly for his partiality to horseflesh. The horses, when they
attack wolves, do not turn their tails towards them, but charge upon
them in a solid phalanx, tearing them with their teeth, and trampling
on them with their feet. The stallions do not fall into the phalanx,
but gallop about with streaming tails, and curled manes, and seem
to act, at once, as generals, trumpeters, and standard bearers.
When they see a wolf, they rush upon him with reckless fury, mouth
to mouth, or if they use their feet as weapons of defence, it is
always with the front, and not the hinder hoof, that the attack is
made. With one blow the stallion often kills his enemy, or stuns him.
If so, he snatches the body up with his teeth, and flings it to the
mares, who trample upon it till it becomes hard to say what kind of
animal the skin belonged to. If the stallion, however, fail to strike a
home blow at the first onset, he is likely to fight a losing battle, for
eight or ten hungry wolves fasten on his throat, and never quit him
till they have torn him to the ground: and if the horse be prompt and
skilful in attack, the wolf is not deficient in sagacity, but watches for

every little advantage, and is quick to avail himself of it; but let him
not hope, even if he succeed in killing a horse, that he will be
allowed leisure to pick the bones: the taboon never fails to take
ample vengeance, and the battle almost invariably terminates in the
complete discomfiture of the wolves, though not, perhaps, till more
than one stallion has had a leg permanently disabled, or has had his
side marked for life with the impress of his enemy’s teeth.
These grand battles happen but seldom, and when they do occur,
it is probably always against the wolf’s wish. His system of warfare is
a predatory one, and his policy is rather to surprise outposts, than to
meditate a general attack. He trusts more to his cunning than his
strength. He will creep cautiously through the grass, taking special
care to keep to leeward of the taboon, and will remain concealed in
ambush, till he perceive a mare and her foal grazing a little apart
from the rest. Even then he makes no attempt to spring upon his
prey, but keeps creeping nearer and nearer, with his head leaning on
his fore feet, and wagging his tail in a friendly manner, to imitate, as
much as possible, the movements and gestures of a watchdog. If
the mare, deceived by the treacherous pantomime, venture near
enough to the enemy, he will spring at her throat, and despatch her
before she have time to raise an alarm; then, seizing on the foal, he
will make off with his booty, and be out of sight perhaps before
either herd or herdsman suspect his presence. It is not often,
however, that the wolf succeeds in obtaining so easy a victory. If the
mare detect him, an instant alarm is raised, and should the
tabunshick be near, the wolf seldom fails to enrich him with a skin,
for which the fur merchant is at all times willing to pay his ten or
twelve rubles. The wolf’s only chance, on such occasions, is to make
for the first ravine, down which he rolls head foremost, a gymnastic
feat that the tabunshick on his horse cannot venture to imitate.
As the summer draws on, the wolf becomes less troublesome to
the taboon; but a season now begins of severe suffering for the poor
horses, who have more perhaps to endure from the thirst of
summer, than from the hunger of winter. The heat becomes
intolerable, and shade is nowhere to be found, save what the

animals can themselves create, by gathering together in little
groups, each seeking to place the body of his neighbour between
himself and the burning rays of a merciless sun. The tabunshick
often lays himself in the centre of the group, for he also has
nowhere else a shady couch to hope for.
The autumn again is a season of enjoyment. The plains are anew
covered with green, the springs yield once more an abundant supply
of water, and the horses gather strength at this period of
abundance, to prepare themselves for the sufferings and privations
of winter. In autumn, for the first time in the year, the taboon is
called on to work, but the work is not much more severe than the
exertions which the restless creatures are daily imposing upon
themselves, while romping and rioting about on the Steppe. The
work in question is the thrashing of the corn.
A thrashing-floor, of several hundred yards square, is made, by
cutting away the turf, and beating the ground into a hard, solid
surface. The whole is enclosed by a railing, with a gate to let the
horses in and out. On such a floor, supposing the taboon to consist
of a thousand horses, five hundred score of sheaves will be laid
down at once. The taboon is then formed into two divisions, and five
hundred steeds are driven into the enclosure, stallions, mares, foals,
and all, for when in, the more riotous they are the better the work
will be done. The gate is closed, and then begins a ball of which it
requires a lively imagination to conceive a picture. The drivers act as
musicians, and their formidable harabnicks are the fiddles that keep
up the dance without intermission.
The horses terrified, partly by the crackling straw under their feet,
and partly by the incessant cracking of the whip over their heads,
dart half frantic from one extremity to the other of their temporary
prison. Millions of grains are flying about in the air, and the labourers
without have enough to do to toss back the sheaves that are flung
over the railing by the prancing, hard working thrashers within. This
continues for about an hour. The horses are then let put, the corn
turned, and the same performance repeated three times before

noon. By that time a thousand sheffel of corn have been thrashed,
after a fashion that looks more like a holiday diversion, than a hard
day’s work; but in such ah operation, more corn is lost than is
gained on many large farms in Germany.

CHAPTER VII

THE COSSACKS—THE CIRCASSIANS—THE MAMELUKES.
NDER the name of Cossacks of the Bug, of the Don, of
the Ural, of Orenburg, of Astrakhan—Cossacks of the
Black Sea—and Siberian Cossacks—this hardy and
spirited race is disseminated over all the southern
portions of European and Asiatic Russia. Every man of
them, between the age of fifteen and fifty, is a soldier,
eager for war, and ready to engage in it, no matter at
what extremity of the earth. The Russian empire is
undoubtedly indebted to these tribes for the vast
extension of its dominion; and Europe has to thank
them for the preservation of her civilization, when
threatened by the ruthless Tartar invaders. Nature seems to have
fitted the Cossack to become the conqueror of the Tribes of the
Desert by endowments as peculiar as those which enable the camel
to traverse it. Distance and climate vanish before his wandering and
adventurous spirit: the regions where the burning sun destroys all
life and vegetation, or those where “the frost burns frore and cold
produces the effect of fire,” have never stayed his purpose, or
arrested his onward march. With singular versatility he adapts
himself to all outward circumstances; as occasion requires, he
combines with his warlike profession the labours of the
husbandman, the fisher, the herdsman, and the trader, and readily
abandons one character to adopt the other whenever it may be
needful. It is not only at the point of the lance he has subdued the
wild inhabitants of so large a portion of the globe; but by his

wonderful facility of adapting himself to the customs of the
wilderness, and establishing a commercial intercourse with its
fiercest hordes. It required a mixture of the reckless and wandering
spirit of the sons of Ishmael, with the intense love of gain peculiar to
the children of Israel, both of which his character exhibits, to form
the wandering merchant, who could trade and defend his
merchandise, and who would penetrate, to effect his purpose, a
thousand miles away from his station, either towards the
hyperborean regions, or through the parched plains of the naked
Steppes.
A Russian Tsar might speedily collect from amongst this people a
larger and more formidable force of cavalry than the whole of united
Europe could bring together; and in all the regular cavalry of the
Russian line, there never was a horseman, however laboriously
drilled, whom the untutored Cossack would not charge, wheel round,
and overcome, though armed cap-a-pie, with his mere nagaica, or
whip. The Cossacks are invaluable as light cavalry; they are the most
daring and intelligent foragers in the world, who take care of
themselves by instinct, and without taxing the foresight or the
ingenuity of the general. Spreading on every side, they strike terror
into the neighbourhood, and render it almost impossible to surprise
a Russian force. Brought up amongst turbulent tribes, the vigilant
Cossack never exposes himself to be taken unawares, as all other
light troops do, when scattered abroad; and thus he can act even in
the midst of a guerilla peasantry.
France still remembers with shuddering rage the two irruptions of
those terrible barbarians upon her soil. The fearful image of another
Cossack invasion has been embodied by Beranger, the greatest poet
of France, in his “Chant du Cosaque,” thus vigorously translated by
“Father Prout:”—

Come, arouse thee up, my gallant horse, and bear thy rider on!
The comrade thou, and the friend I trow, of the dweller on the Don:
Pillage and death have spread their wings; ’tis the hour to hie thee forth,
And with thy hoofs an echo wake to the trumpets of the North.
Nor gems, nor gold do men behold upon thy saddle tree;
But earth affords the wealth of lords for thy master and for thee.
Then proudly neigh, my charger grey! Oh! thy chest is broad and ample.
And thy hoofs shall prance o’er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes
trample.
Europe is weak, she hath grown old, her bulwarks are laid low;
She is loath to hear the voice of war, she shrinketh from a foe:
Come, in our turn, let us sojourn in her goodly haunts of joy,
In the pillared porch to wave the torch, and her palaces destroy:
Proud as when first thou slak’st thy thirst in the flow of conquered Seine,
Ay, thou shalt lave within that wave thy blood-red flank again: Then proudly
neigh, &c.
Kings are beleaguered on their thrones by their own vassal crew,
And in their den quake noblemen, and priests are bearded too.
And loud they yelp for the Cossack’s help to keep their bondsmen down,
And they think it meet, while they kiss our feet, to wear a tyrant’s crown.
The sceptre now to my lance shall bow, and the crosier and the cross,
All shall bend alike, when I lift my pike, and aloft that sceptre toss.
Then proudly neigh, &c.
In a night of storm, I have seen a form, and the figure was a giant,
And his eye was bent on the Cossack’s tent, and his look was all defiant.
Kingly his crest, and toward the West with his battleaxe he pointed;
And the form I saw was—Attila—of this earth the scourge anointed:
From the Cossack’s camp let the horseman’s tramp the coming crash announce;
Let the vulture whet its beak sharp set on the carrion field to pounce!
And fiercely neigh, &c.
What boots old Europe’s boasted fame, on which she sets reliance,
When the North shall launch its avalanche on her works of art and science?
Hath she not wept her cities swept by our herds of swarming stallions,
And tower and arch crushed in the march of our barbarous battalions?
Can we not wield our fathers’ shield, the same war-hatchet handle?
Do our blades want length, or the reapers strength, for the harvest of the
Vandal?
Then fiercely neigh, my charger grey! Oh! thy chest is broad and ample,
And thy hoofs shall prance o’er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes
trample.

tape
The horses of the Cossacks, bred on the Steppes, though far
inferior to those of the Circassians, are, nevertheless, a serviceable
race, strong-boned, well-limbed, and with a good proportion of
blood; though their forms are angular and inelegant, and their necks
ewed, they are fast and hardy. The Cossacks, like all equestrian
nations, ride with very short stirrups, and they use only the snaffle
bridle.
Why is it that all the regular armies of Europe, including that of
England, have adopted a style of riding which has no one advantage
except that of pleasing the eye, and, in reality, only the eye of those
unacquainted with the true principles of equitation? A rider sitting
bolt upright, with his legs at full stretch, is in the worst possible
position for grasping the animal’s body by the pressure of his thighs,
knees, and calves, for exercising an easy control over the mouth,
and favouring the efforts of the horse by the motions of the rider’s
body. According to all the varieties of the long or military system of
riding, the horse requires as much teaching as the rider; and nearly
every horse, of a vigorous and spirited breed, is ruined by this
course of teaching. “All equestrian nations ride with the bended leg,
or as it is commonly termed, short, simply because experience has
taught them its advantages. The English jockies, fox-hunters, and
steeple-chasers, who get the utmost speed out of their horse, who
teach him to traverse, and assist him over the most tremendous
leaps, all ride short. The South American Indians—men who live and
die, as it were, on the backs of their horses—the Moors of the coast
of Barbary—and the Bedouin Arabs of the Desert, all ride short. The
extinct body of Mamelukes, who were Circassians, and the tribes of
Circassians now inhabiting the Caucasus—the most dextrous men in
the universe, in the use of their arms, and the management of their
horses, for all the purposes of combat; who stop them in their
wildest gallop, who wheel them round a hat, and who, not riding
more than an average of eleven stone, can lift from the saddle the
most brawny and burly riding-master as if he were a child—these
men not only use nothing but a snaffle, but actually double up the

leg and thigh almost in the following manner: 〉. One moment’s
examination of the limb in this position, will, by showing the
muscles, both of the calf and inner thigh, brought to their utmost
prominence, at once explain how singularly the powers of adhesion
must be increased by it.
“The seat of a Cossack, who is accustomed to back a horse from
his earliest childhood, is about as short as that of the English fox-
hunter. It is amusing, in the sham fights of Krasnoe Zelo, to see the
contemptuous ease with which a single Cossack forager, will
disengage himself from a dozen or two of cuirassiers of the guard,
raining the blows of his lance-shaft about their helms and shoulders,
loosening in their saddles those who attempt to stop him, and then
getting away from them like a bird, with a laugh of derision in
answer to the curses they mutter after him.”—Revelations of Russia.
From the perpetual snows of Mount Elbrouz, the highest peak of
the Caucasus, two rivers take their rise, the Kouban and the Terek.
The former flows westward to the Black Sea, while the latter runs in
an opposite direction into the Caspian. The two together form a
natural barrier against the inroads of the Caucasian mountaineers,
who are hemmed in between the respective shores of those great
waters. But this barrier, probably, all the Russian forces would be
unable to defend, were it not for the Tchornomorskie, or Black Sea
Cossacks, the most daring and warlike of their nation, and alone
fitted to cope with the Circassians, to whom only they are inferior.
Though in the predatory excursions, which have desolated both
sides of the border, these Cossacks have, from time to time, carried
off and intermarried with Circassian women, many of whose
customs, habits, and part of whose language and national costume
they have adopted; still the semi-relationship between the two
races, has in nowise softened the unutterable hatred they bear each
other. Nothing but the fierce hostility of the Cossacks could preserve
all the Russian establishments on the northern bank of the Kouban,
from utter destruction, by the inroads of the mountaineers, whose
fleet and vigorous horses, bear them vast distances with
inconceivable rapidity. Even now, guarded as it is, they sometimes

force the passage, and mark their track with fire and blood,
retaliating on the flat lands the injustice which the Russian columns
have inflicted on their own hills and dales.
The Circassians are not tall in stature, but exquisitely
proportioned, and of a strength and agility, which constant exercise
has wonderfully developed. The costume of these brave
mountaineers is such as to set off the nervous, though delicate,
symmetry of their make. It consists of a close-fitting frock coat, with
rows of cartridge pockets sewn upon the breast, and tight trowsers,
both vestments being generally of some subdued and sober hue. All
the magnificence displayed is in the arms and the trappings of the
steed. The headdress worn in peace, is a round cap, surrounded by
a thick border of black or white sheepskin fur. The war garb,
however, in which the Circassian is oftenest seen, is remarkable by
the addition of an iron helm, surmounted by a spike, in lieu of a
plume; a shirt of exquisitely finished mail, falling from the helmet
over his shoulders, like a lady’s lace veil; and steel armlets, which
seem to form part of the forgotten gauntlet, worn by the knights of
old.
Such is the outward appearance of that hardy and intrepid race of
warriors, who have, for fifty years, maintained inviolate the freedom
of their mountain land, withstood the continuous efforts of Russia,
and baffled all the force and cunning of that gigantic empire. Their
small but beautiful horses, which are thoroughbred (that is, derived
in almost uncontaminated purity from the Arab), are so accustomed
to their rugged mountains as to carry the rider over places where he
could not scramble on foot. Sure-footed and agile as the chamois,
they gallop down the most precipitous descents, springing from rock
to rock in a manner incredible to those who have not witnessed with
their own eyes how the nature of the horse adapts itself to the
localities in which he is bred.
As the tribes of the Caucasus are often at war with each other,
Russia succeeds occasionally in procuring a hollow show of
submission from some of them. The Emperor has even a regiment of

Circassian cavalry, all the members of which are princes or nobles,
and may be considered in the light of hostages. Even under the yoke
of foreign service, these men retain their fiery independent spirit,
and the imperial despot himself finds it necessary to treat them with
much indulgence; for there is an indomitable obstinacy about them,
with which it is considered most politic not to meddle. They mix very
little with the Russians, but live exclusively in their own circle,
exciting an amusing degree of awe on the tame population which
surrounds them. The Russian, in all his pride of uniform, whether he
be officer, soldier, or policeman, has a salutary dread of interfering
with this fierce race, so sensitive to insult, and so prompt to revenge
it. In the street, whenever you see the crowd carefully making way,
you may be sure there is either a general, a policeman, or a
Circassian coming.
Every shot from the rifles of these wild riders tells; and though
their pistols are but indifferent, yet at full gallop they seldom miss
their aim at a piece of paper lying on the ground. Some of the more
dextrous hit with equal certainty a silver ruble piece, or strike the
earth so close to it as to make it fly into the air. With the rifle they
practise the Parthian mode of warfare, shooting behind them as they
fly; and, in order to be able to turn round more readily, and place
themselves in the only position in which it is possible to acquire any
accuracy of aim from the back of a galloping horse, they ride with
one stirrup longer than the other. They also ride with a loose rein,
which is found to be indispensable to secure the safe footing of their
steeds over the precipitous ground which they traverse, because it
leaves the animal to trust entirely to his own judgment and exertion.
But on the plain this habit greatly impairs its speed, as the natural
tendency of the horse is to take short rapid steps instead of long
sweeping strides, which he can only venture on when accustomed,
by the assisting hand of his rider, to gather himself together like the
bent bow, ready for fresh distention.
The warfare waged by the Russians against the mountaineers of
the Caucasus is one of blockade merely; the invading armies have
never felt strong enough to advance beyond the protection of their

forts in the low grounds, or to make any decisive inroads into the
territory of the natives. Death or captivity is the invariable fate of
every Russian bold enough to separate two hundred yards from his
column, even if no enemy should have previously been in sight.
Often, when a Russian force is on the march, the Circassians dash
through the lines and kill or carry off the officers, who consider all
resistance so hopeless that, on such occasions, they seldom offer
any. The mountaineers, penetrating their line of skirmishers, have
been seen thus to pull them from their horses, and dash away with
them as a cat carries off a mouse.
The famous Mamelukes of Egypt, the last of whom were
treacherously entrapped and murdered by the present viceroy,
Mehemet Ali, were all of them natives of the Caucasus, who had
been sold as slaves in their youth. Having been trained to arms, and
emancipated, they continued to serve their patron, the Bey, as
children of his house; and such was the singular constitution of this
militia, that no man was admissible into it except as a purchased
slave. Living in luxury, upon the wealth wrung from an oppressed
people, they were as insolent, turbulent, prodigal, and rapacious as
any soldiery that ever existed; but, at least, they were brave, and
excellently skilled in the use of their weapons, which constituted the
sole business of their lives. Their martial exercises are thus described
by Volney:—“Every day, early in the morning, the greater part of
them resort to a plain, outside of Cairo, and there, riding full speed,
exercise themselves in drawing out their carbine expeditiously from
the bandalier, discharging it with good aim, and then throwing it
under their thigh, to seize a pistol, which they fire and throw over
their shoulder, immediately firing a second and throwing it in the
same manner, trusting to the string by which they are fastened,
without losing time to return them to their place. The Beys, who are
present, encourage them; and whoever breaks the earthen vessel,
which serves by way of butt, receives great commendations, and a
reward in money. They practice also the use of the sabre, and
especially the coup de revers, which cuts upwards, and is the most
difficult to parry. Their blades are so keen, and they handle them so

well, that many of them can cut a clew of wet cotton like a piece of
butter. They likewise shoot with bows and arrows, though they no
longer use them in battle. But their favourite exercise is throwing the
djereed. This word, which properly means a reed, is generally used
to signify any staff thrown by the hand, after the manner of the
Roman pilum. Instead of a staff, the Mamelukes make use of
branches of the palm tree, fresh stripped; they are in form like the
stalk of an artichoke, are four feet long, and weigh five or six
pounds. Armed with these, the cavaliers enter the lists, and, riding
full speed, throw them at each other from a considerable distance.
The assailant, as soon as he has thrown, turns his horse, and his
antagonist pursues and throws in his turn. The horses, accustomed
to this exercise, second their masters so well that, they seem also to
share in the pleasure. But the pleasure is attended with danger; for
some can dart the djereed with so much force as frequently to
wound, and sometimes mortally. Ill-fated was the man who could
not escape the djereed of Ali Bey!”
Baumgarten, an early traveller in the East, gives the following
account of Mameluke exercises performed in presence of the Sultan,
who sat in a balcony of the palace overlooking the field: “On the side
of the castle, there was a large and plain field, which had been
before prepared for this purpose; about the middle of which, on one
side, there were three artificial hillocks of sand, about fifty paces
distant from one another; and on the top of each of them there was
fixed a spear, bearing the mark which the archers were to shoot at;
and the like was on the other side; so that in the middle betwixt
them there was as much room left as might serve for six horses to
run abreast. In this plain a great number of young men clad in
richly-embroidered silk, with their usual light arms, mounted their
sprightly horses, and began their games in this manner:—
First: They ran at full career betwixt the first two of these hillocks,
and dextrously shot their arrows at the marks that were fixed to the
tops of the spears, both on the right and left hand.

Next they rode in the same manner out between the other two,
and filled the marks with their arrows.
Just so with the same speed they ran through the rest, and shot
their arrows so artfully, that not one of them missed his aim.
After these young men had performed their parts, and had left
none of the marks untouched, every one took his little spear that
hung behind his back (as if they minded to act, not at a distance,
but hand to hand), and retired a little out of the way, till the rest of
the youth had performed as they had done. After which all of them,
in the same order as they began, marched through the same way
they had ridden, but now at a slow pace, with their standards before
them, as in triumph, till they came to the place from which they had
set out, and after they had prepared themselves for another kind of
exercise, came out again in a little time.
Some of them, while their horses were running with loose reins,
rode up and down, shooting their arrows at the marks before and
behind, some one, others two, and some three.

EQUESTRIAN EXPLOITS OF THE CIRCASSIANS.
Others, while their horses were at their full speed, would leap off
three times, and (the horse still running) mount again, and in the
meantime be shooting their arrows, and never any of them miss his
aim: others, not sitting in their saddles, but standing up, while the
horse seemed to fly, would hit the mark exactly: others while their
horses were at their full gallop, would thrice unbend their bows, and
toss them about their heads like a whip, and again bend them, and
shoot without ever missing the mark. Some of the riders would
throw themselves three times backwards off their horses, and would
vault into the saddle again, let the horse run as fast as he would,
and in the meantime let fly their arrows and hit the mark as oft as
they shot. Some would spring out of their saddles, that were fast
tied to the horses, and would untie them, and then shoot: thrice
they would tie on their saddles, and as oft pierce the mark, the
horse all the while running at his full speed. Sitting after their usual
manner, they would jump behind their saddles, and let their heads
hang down, then raise themselves up, and get into their saddles.
Thrice they would do this, and as oft let fly their arrows without ever
missing the mark. Or sitting in their saddles, they would lay their
heads backwards on their horse’s croup, and taking his tail, hold it in
their teeth, then raise themselves up, and shoot as sure as ever they
did.
Others would sit between drawn sharp pointed swords, three on
either side, and in very thin clothes, so that if they had but budged,
ever so little, to one side or the other, they must have been
wounded; yet so dextrously did they move backwards and forwards,
that (as if there had been danger on either side) they were always
sure to pierce the mark.
Among all the young men who performed these exercises, there
was only one found, who, with his feet loose, could stand upon the
backs of two of the swiftest horses at their full speed, and let fly
three arrows forwards and backwards. There was another, who could

sit on a horse without a saddle or bridle, and at every mark spring
up on his legs, and hit the marks, both on his right and left hand,
and then sit down again, repeating the same at the second and third
marks, and thereby discovering an incredible agility and skilfulness
at shooting. There was a third, who was the only one among them
that could, while he was sitting on a bare-backed horse, so soon as
ever he came to the marks, lay his back close to the horse’s, then
stretching his feet up in the air, start upon his feet in a moment, and
fix his arrow in the mark.
At last, when the marks were quite loaded with arrows, the
master of the youths, who was an aged, and grey haired man,
taking the marks in his hand, first held them up as high as he could,
then threw them down to the ground. Upon which his scholars
showered down their lances and arrows upon them, as if they had
been putting an end to the lives of their wounded enemies, and then
went prancing up and down by way of triumph. Among these young
men there were three, who fell from their horses; one of whom
expiring as soon as he fell, lest a formal funeral might disorder the
rest, was immediately carried off and buried. The other two being
almost dead, were likewise carried off for fear of marring the show.
The rest of these horsemen, that they might put an end to the
games, taking their lances in their hands, and putting spurs to their
horses, rode up to the marks that were still remaining, and pierced
them with their points like trophies. It was a fine sight to behold
these tall young men, handsomely clothed and armed, with a
wonderful address, performing those exercises on the back of a
horse at his full speed, which others could hardly do standing on
firm ground; and which were equally strange to see, and hard to be
believed.”

CHAPTER VIII

BELA—A STORY OF THE CAUCASUS.
AVING followed the Circassians in their transformed
appearance as Egyptian Mamelukes, we now return
from this digression, to their mountain homes. There is
a tale by Lermontof, a young Russian author, who died
prematurely about four years ago, in which the
character and habit of the mountaineers are illustrated
with great dramatic force. As the story, which is full of human
interest, turns also in a great degree on the fortunes of a horse, it
comes fairly within the scope of the present work; we shall therefore
present it here in a condensed form. In the original it takes the
shape of a conversation between the author, and the commandant
of a Russian fort, on the Terek, a rough unlettered soldier, but a man
of excellent heart. We shall distinguish the two speakers in the
dialogue, by their initials L. and M.

THE CAPTAIN’S STORY.
M.—I was quartered, you see, with my company in the fort
beyond the Terek—this was about five years ago. One autumn a
party arrived with provisions, and accompanied by an officer, a
young man of about five-and-twenty, who reported that he was
ordered to remain with me in the fort. I could see at once from his
appearance, and the freshness of his accoutrements, that he had not
been long in the Caucasus; so I took him by the hand, and said ‘Very
glad to see you; you will find your quarters here rather dull;
however, we will be as sociable with each other as possible; so call
me if you please by my plain name, Maxim Maximitch.’ His own, by
the by, was Gregorii Alexandrovitch Petchorin. He was a very fine
young fellow, I assure you, only a little odd. For instance, he would
hunt the whole day long in rain and cold; every body else would be
half frozen, and knocked up, but he not a bit. Another time he would
sit in his room, and if a breath of air was stirring, he would declare
he was chilled to the bones; if the window-shutter flapped to, he
would start and turn pale, and yet I have seen him dash at a wild
boar all alone. Ay, he had very odd ways, surely, and he must have
been very rich, for you never saw such a lot of costly things as he
had with him. He stayed with me a full year, and good reason I have
to remember that year, for it caused me a great deal of anxiety and
sorrow; but I will not think of that now.
There was a friendly prince residing about six versts from the fort,
whose son, a lad about fifteen, was in the habit of visiting us every
day, for one thing or another. Petchorin and I took a great liking to
him. What a smart, nimble chap he was! There was nothing he could
not do. He could pick up his cap from the ground, or load and fire
off his gun at full gallop. But there was one bad thing in him; he had
a desperate hankering after money. Gregorii Alexandrovitch once
promised in joke, that he would give him a ducat, if he would steal
him the best ram out of his father’s flock—and what do you think?

the young scamp dragged him in to us the very next night by the
horns. But if ever, as happened now and then, we took it into our
heads to make fun of him, his eyes would flash fire, and his hand
was on his dagger in an instant. O Asamat, I used to say to him, you
will never wear a grey head on your shoulders, your unruly temper
will be the ruin of you.
Once the old prince came in person to invite us to the wedding of
his eldest daughter, and of course we could not civilly refuse. When
we entered the hamlet, a pack of dogs ran at us barking furiously.
The women hid themselves as soon as they saw us, and those
whose faces we did get a glimpse of, were any thing but beauties. ‘I
had a much higher idea of the Circassian women,’ said Petchorin to
me. ‘Have a little patience’, said I, smiling, and keeping my thoughts
to myself.
There was a great concourse already assembled in the prince’s
house. It is the custom, you are aware, among the Asiatics to keep
open house for all comers on these occasions. They received us with
all possible marks of respect, and led us into the guest chamber; but
first I took care to notice privately where they put our horses, in
case any thing should happen, you know.
L.—What are their marriage ceremonies?
M.—Nothing very remarkable. First, the mollah reads something
out of the Koran, then presents are made to the young couple, and
to all their relations; they eat, they drink busa; the zhighitofka
begins; and there is always some greasy rogue mounted on a lame
old rip of a horse, to amuse the worshipful company with his
grotesque capers, and his jokes. By and by, when it grows dark, the
ball, as we should call it, begins. An old beggar strums upon a three
stringed instrument—I forget what they call it; the lads and lasses
stand up in two rows opposite each other, clap hands and sing. A girl
and a young man then step into the middle space, and sing alternate
verses, just whatever comes into their heads, and the rest join in
chorus. Petchorin and I were seated in the place of honour, and all
of a sudden, our host’s youngest daughter, a girl about sixteen,

stepped up to my friend, and sang to him—what shall I call it?—a
sort of compliment.
L.—But the words, the words,—do you happen to remember
them?
M.—Well I believe they were something to this effect: ‘Beautiful, in
truth, are our young zhighit dancers, and their caftans are richly
adorned with silver; but the young Russian officer is more beautiful
than they, and his laces are of gold. He towers among them like a
poplar, but it is not his destiny to grow and flourish in our garden.’
Petchorin rose and bowed, laying his hand on his forehead and his
breast, and requested me to reply for him. I knew their language
very well, and translated his answer.
When the girl had left us, I whispered my comrade, Well what say
you now? What do you think of that girl? ‘Charming!’ he exclaimed;
‘what is her name?’ ‘Her name is Bela,’ I answered. And beautiful
indeed she was! tall, slender, with eyes as black as the gazelle’s, that
seemed to look into your very soul. Petchorin, completely captivated,
never took his eyes off her, and she frequently shot a stolen glance
upon him from beneath her jetty eyelashes. But Petchorin was not
the only one whose gaze was riveted on the lovely princess: there
was another pair of eyes in the corner of the room, that glared upon
her incessantly, with passionate fire. I looked sharply that way, and
recognized my old acquaintance, Kasbitch. Now things were in such
a position, you must know, with respect to this man, that he could
neither be regarded as decidedly friendly to the Russians, nor be
pronounced decidedly the reverse. There were many suspicious
against him, though nothing definite could ever be brought home to
him. It often occurred, that he brought us sheep into the fort, and
offered them at a low price; but he would never higgle: whatever
price he asked first, we had always to give him, for he would sooner
have let his head be chopped off, than bate a kopeck. It was
whispered that he was fond of knocking about with the Abreks
beyond the Kuban, and to say the truth of him, he had very much
the cut of a robber: rather small, well knit, broad shouldered, and as

nimble as any wild cat! His Tartar frock, beshmet they call it, was
always torn and patched, but his weapons were bright, and adorned
with silver. And then his horse, it was renowned throughout all
Kabarda, and a better it would certainly be impossible to conceive. It
was not without reason, all the marauders envied him the
possession of such an animal, and more than one attempt was made
to steal it from him, but never with success. I can see that horse
now, as plainly as if it stood before me, black as pitch, its limbs
slender and strong as steel, its eyes a match for Bela’s; and then for
bottom! it would clear its full fifty versts at full speed; and so
tractable, that it would follow its master like a dog, ay! it knew even
what he said. Very often he did not even tether it. Take it for all in
all, it was the very model of a robber’s horse.
Kasbitch was more sullen that evening than usual, and I noticed
that he had on a shirt of mail under his beshmet. It is not for
nothing, thinks I, he wears that shirt of mail; he has something in
his head, I’m sure.
The guest room was very close, and I went out of doors to
breathe the fresh air. Night had now settled on the mountains, and
the mists were creeping forth from the glens. The thought struck me
I would go into the shed where our horses stood, and see if they
had fodder. I had an excellent horse with me, and more than one
Kabardan had already looked at him with an approving eye; so I
thought a little caution could do no harm at all events.
Groping along the boarded wall, I suddenly heard voices. One of
them I recognized instantly for that scamp Asamat’s, our host’s son;
the other person spoke less, and in a lower tone. What are they
coshering about? thought I; not about my horse, is it? With that I
squatted down by the wall, determined not to lose a word; but the
noise of the singing, and the din within doors now and then drowned
a part of the conversation in which I was so much interested.
‘You have a splendid horse,’ said Asamat. ‘Were I master here, and
had a herd of three hundred mares, I would freely give the half of
them for your courser, Kasbitch.’

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Policy Analysis In Colombia Pablo Sanabriapulido Editor Nadia Rubaii Editor

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