Introduction Reflections on the Colombian State: in Search of a Modern Role

Abstract

‘Latin America’ — Moises Nairn has observed — ‘which has spent the last ten years demolishing the state, will spend the next ten rebuilding it’.¹ Nairn was writing from his own experience. As a minister of industry in Venezuela, he was part of a government embarked on a drastic programme of reform geared at increasing the role of market forces in the economy. Popular reaction against the reforms took the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1989–93) by surprise. As serious as the riots in Caracas were the frustrated coups d’état led by army officers. At the root of these signs of political instability was ‘the institutional devastation of the state’. In a critical self-assessment of the reforms undertaken by the Pérez administration, Nairn concluded that ‘market reforms require an effective state’.²