eprintid: 35844
rev_number: 15
eprint_status: archive
userid: 8663
dir: disk0/00/03/58/44
datestamp: 2024-12-20 10:35:00
lastmod: 2025-01-07 09:28:46
status_changed: 2024-12-20 10:35:00
type: doctoralThesis
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Jaramillo Gabanzo, Nicolás Javier
title: Corruption and Democracy. Distinctions between appropriate and inappropriate interferences of the public and the private in Colombia: 1992-2011
subjects: ddc-300
divisions: i-180600
adv_faculty: af-18
keywords: Latin America, Colombia, Congress
cterms_swd: Democracy
cterms_swd: Corruption
abstract: The academic literature has highlighted the tensions between democracy and anti-corruption efforts, 
considering their changing meanings over time. These debates have been traversed by understandings 
of how to ensure appropriate connections between the public and the private, bearing in mind some 
of their alternative meanings (e.g., for the public as the state, the commons, manifest or impersonal-
reasonable interests). Colombia faced these debates at two critical junctures, which led Congress to 
pass party and anti-corruption laws in both time periods. To contribute to the understanding of these 
puzzling tensions, the research aimed to solve the following question: Why did Colombian legislators 
understand some public-private relations as adequate for Colombian democracy, while others as 
corrupt in the approval of the 1992-1995 and 2010-2011 party and anti-corruption laws, and why did 
these understandings change? Solving this question required consulting the literature that has 
addressed the discussion points on democratization, corruption and the public-private. This, in order 
to guide the diachronic comparison. The sampling material was composed by the transcription of the 
debates in Congress that ended in the approval of the mentioned laws, following a qualitative content 
analysis. It was observed that the congresspeople tended to understand as democratic the investment 
of state and non-state organizational resources that were in accordance to the protection of common 
aspirations and impersonal-reasonable interests. Otherwise, they were labeled as corrupt. The 
changes were explained by modifications in the conceptions of democracy and corruption, which 
changed the emphasis on the protection of interests to be protected. While in the 1990s efforts 
focused on protecting common aspirations, in the 2010s it was placed on securing impersonal-
reasonable interests guided by the principle of equality. However, due to institutional frictions 
between the cognitive, normative and regulative pillars, some behaviors remained in a gray zone; that 
is, they could not be declared illegal or suitably regulated to avoid some practices labelled as corrupt 
by some actors.
date: 2024
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00035844
ppn_swb: 1913626962
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-358445
date_accepted: 2024-10-10
advisor: HASH(0x559de76063b8)
language: eng
bibsort: JARAMILLOGCORRUPTION
full_text_status: public
place_of_pub: Heidelberg
citation:   Jaramillo Gabanzo, Nicolás Javier  (2024) Corruption and Democracy. Distinctions between appropriate and inappropriate interferences of the public and the private in Colombia: 1992-2011.  [Dissertation]     
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/35844/1/Jaramillo_Dissertation.pdf