Browsing by Autor "Angelika Rettberg"

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Administrando la adversidad: respuestas empresariales al conflicto colombiano
(Universidad de Los Andes, 2002) Angelika Rettberg
Analyses of Colombia's internal conflict have focused upon armed actors, the state, the political and economic implications ofthe war, and its international projection, while prívate actors and non-combatants have received scant attention. This article not only refers to the behavior ofthe prívate sector and the ways in which it has been affected by the conflict, but also discusses this sector as a definitive agent of conflict resolution. However, the author also highlights the heterogeneity of both the prívate sector and its reactions to conflict, leading her to discuss the dijficulties of conceptualizing il as a unitary, proactive participant in the construction of peace.
Building peace, building states? Examining the Humanitarian – Development – Peace Nexus in Colombia’s PDET regions
(Taylor & Francis, 2025) Angelika Rettberg; Federico Dupont
Colombia años 50: Industriales, política y diplomacia
(Duke University Press, 2005) Angelika Rettberg
This book is a thorough and resourceful contribution for scholars interested in Latin American, and particularly Colombian, economic history. Sáenz offers a detailed, well-supported, and richly documented account of the years from 1950 to 1957, a crucial period in Colombia’s recent history. Beginning with the presidency of Conservative Laureano Gómez and ending with the ousting of Colombia’s only twentieth-century military ruler—Gustavo Rojas Pinilla—the book describes the evolution of the relation-ship between the powerful industrial association ANDI (Asociación Nacional de Empresarios de Colombia) and successive Colombian governments. It highlights key moments in the economic history of that decade, such as the first World Bank exploratory visit (under the leadership of economist Lauchlin Currie) to Latin America and the creation of the national oil company, ECOPETROL. It also emphasizes key issues that have consistently marked not only Colombian but also Latin American political debate, such as the extent and nature of state intervention in the domestic economy. As the author suggests in the epilogue, the book is not only a description of the dealings between a powerful lobbying group and the Colombian state. It also provides a background on how liberalism—political and economic—survived state intervention, partisan confrontation, and institutional breakdown.Sáenz’s rigorous archival work, complemented by a review of newspaper sources and academic literature on the period, allow him to shed light on the influence of business interests on domestic and external policy making, by the virtue of their power to produce, invest, divest, hire, and fire. The book fills an important void in the Latin American literature on business and politics and, like the author’s earlier Ofensiva empresarial: Industriales, politicos y violencia en los años 40 en Colombia (Tercer Mundo Editores / Ediciones Uniandes, 1992), integrates the underexplored perspective of private sector interests and political capacity into our understanding of Colombian economic history. While the focus of the book is the manufacturing agenda of ANDI, Sáenz also pays attention to other sectoral interests. Chapter 9, for example, describes splits within the business community over trade liberalization and the management of the exchange rate, setting retail and coffee interests against industrialists. This helps counterbalance the book’s occasional overemphasis on business autonomy versus, and complete control over, the policy-making process. In fact, business sectors experience varying degrees of success in gaining access to the policy-making process and getting their interests represented. More importantly, business occasionally loses, as demonstrated by the state’s ability to impose taxes. One such example is the controversial fiscal reform during Rojas Pinilla’s rule, which taxed stock dividends. In the end, this measure helped alienate business from Rojas Pinilla’s government and, as Sáenz accurately points out, partially explains the leading role of business in ousting the general. However, had Rojas better withstood the temptation of corruption and negotiated his populist agenda (both of which fueled business discontent), he might well have gotten away with the tax increase. The book will be useful to students of U.S.-Colombia relations, as most of the domestic debates between business and the state described in Sáenz’s book were shaped by U.S. foreign policy mandates. This is neatly reflected in the description of the debate over the transfer of oil exploitation from Tropical Oil to ECOPETROL and in the negotiations over the degree of national ownership of the company. Remarkably, Sáenz manages to illustrate how these debates were shaped by the interaction of commercial and political interests on both sides, providing a needed domestic perspective to the formation of U.S. interests in Latin America.Readers may find that Sáenz’s attention to detail occasionally obscures the thread of his argument. Exhaustive biographical descriptions of major and minor figures, for example—while important from a historiographic perspective—distract from the central points. In addition, Sáenz’s emphasis on the executive as the main source of policy making neglects the role of the legislature in shaping the policy process, even in a presidentialist system such as Colombia. In fact, the legislature provides a crucial space for negotiations and highlights one aspect that an executive focus will fail to grasp: the extent and nature of regional variations and negotiations, which have historically marked Colombian political processes and business-politics relations. Finally, for a book dealing with the 1950s in Colombia, surprisingly little is said about La Violencia, the widespread bipartisan violence that not only cost thousands of lives but also helped spark the mutual understanding among political and economic elites that set the stage for the National Front, which curtailed political competition in exchange for a stable investment environment.Despite these minor flaws, Sáenz’s book represents a milestone in the documentation not only of a key historical period but also of a crucial and understudied social actor and provides a solid foundation for future work.
Colombia's Farewell to Civil War: Reaching Closure in a Divided Society
(2016) Carlo Nasi; Angelika Rettberg
The paper examines the endgame of the Colombian peace process. Since 2012, the Colombian national government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) have negotiated the conditions of the end of the armed conflict. In this paper we trace the most important issues and milestones leading up to the current situation. The paper is part of a larger book project examining how negotiations end in different realms of social life, edited by William Zartman.
Conflicto Crudo: Petrrleo Y Conflicto Armado En Colombia (Crude Conflict: Oil and Armed Conflict in Colombia)
(RELX Group (Netherlands), 2016) Angelika Rettberg; Juan Diego Prieto
CONSTRUYENDO LA HISTORIA DEL EMPRESARIADO COLOMBIANO. UN ANÁLISIS DE "EMPRESARIADO ANTIOQUEÑO Y SOCIEDAD, 1940-2004. INFLUENCIA DE LAS ÉLITES PATRONALES DE ANTIOQUIA EN LAS POLÍTICAS SOCIOECONÓMICAS COLOMBIANAS" de Nicanor Restrepo Santamaría
(LA Referencia, 2012) Angelika Rettberg
El libro que lleva por título “Empresariado antioqueño y sociedad, 1940-2004. Influencia de las élites patronales de Antioquia en las políticas socioeconómicas colombianas” de autoría de Nicanor Restrepo Santamaría es un trabajo seminal, por varias razones que procederé a detallar en dos grandes partes: primero se describirá su contenido a grandes rasgos y luego se resaltarán algunos aspectos, sabiendo que no se podrá hacer justicia a todos los contenidos de este texto de más de 330 páginas.
Cuantificando los efectos económicos del conflicto: una exploración de los costos y los estudios sobre los costos del conflicto armado colombiano
(Universidad de Los Andes, 2008) Stéphanie Alvarez; Angelika Rettberg
It is common for both the practitioner and academic communities to consider the economic, political and social costs faced by combatant and non-combatant actors in the contexts of internal armed conflicts to identify the probability of a peace negotiation to occur. However, we know little about the dimensions of these costs. this article reviews both the official and the academic production on the different costs incurred by the colombian society and economy in the course of the country’s prolonged internal armed conflict. It identifies how these costs have been quantified by different authors and institutions and discusses some of the limitations of these studies. The article suggests that it would be convenient to specify the affected social sectors or productive activities at risk in order to fine tune our ability to identify, enlist, and mobilize crucial peacebuilding partners.
DISEÑAR EL FUTURO: UNA REVISIÓN DE LOS DILEMAS DE LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DE PAZ PARA EL POSTCONFLICTO
(Universidad de Los Andes, 2003) Angelika Rettberg
The article describes the main debates and identifies some of the difficult questions emerging from the academic and policy literature on postconflict peacebuilding. It also finds there is little consensus on the content of peacebuilding activity. This reflects tensions betweenminimalist and maximalist visions of peacebuilding. While minimalists suggest that peacebuilding activity should be concerned with removing the sequels of conflict, maximalists focus on ending the violence and enerating the conditions for full-fledged development. It suggests an intermediate path represents a compromise between the need for a stable and a viable peace. In addition to the normative discussion, the article suggests the content of peacebuilding activity is also a result of the nature of the conflict, the manner in which it ends, and the role played by the international community in peacebuilding. As to the Colombian case, the article concludes that debate about peacebuilding in the midst of conflict makes sense because it identifies goals and challenges and proposes an agenda for national and international actors interested in contributing to peace in Colombia.
Do apologies promote the reintegration of former combatants? Lessons from a video experiment in Colombia
(SAGE Publishing, 2024) Gustav Agneman; Lisa Strömbom; Angelika Rettberg
Abstract Transitional justice practices frequently involve public apologies where former combatants confess their wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness, with the underlying assumption that such displays facilitate the reintegration of ex-combatants into society. However, little is known about the public response to ex-combatant apologies. In this article, we investigate the causal effect of an armed group apology on attitudes toward ex-combatant reintegration in Colombia. Our study builds on a novel experiment implemented in Meta, a conflict-ridden department of Colombia. The experiment entailed exposing a subset of participants to a video in which a former rebel group leader apologizes for violent acts committed by their armed group during the civil war. To examine the extent to which external actors influence the effectiveness of apologies, we incorporated third-party ‘encouragements to forgive’ (endorsements) in two additional treatment conditions. Our analysis demonstrates that, on average, participants do not exhibit higher reintegration attitudes when exposed to the apology, regardless of third-party endorsements. However, the absence of a treatment effect is not due to an indifference to the apology. In an exploratory heterogeneity analysis, we show that the apology induces negative effects on some indicators of reintegration attitudes among participants that did not support the peace agreement. This finding aligns with qualitative data gathered in a follow-up survey, which indicates that opponents of the peace agreement generally describe negative emotional responses to the FARC-EP apology. The results call for a reconsideration of unchallenged prescriptions of public apologies after conflict.
Editorial
(Universidad de Los Andes, 2012) Catalina Arreaza; Angelika Rettberg
Editorial
(Universidad de Los Andes, 2012) Catalina Arreaza; Angelika Rettberg
Editorial
(Universidad de Los Andes, 2008) Ralf J. Leiteritz; Carlo Nasi; Angelika Rettberg
Editorial
(Universidad de Los Andes, 2009) Ralf J. Leiteritz; Carlo Nasi; Angelika Rettberg
EMPRESARIOS Y POLÍTICA EN COLOMBIA: UN ESTUDIO DE CASO DEL GOBIERNO SAMPER (1994-1998)
(Universidad de Los Andes, 2002) Angelika Rettberg
This article analyzes the failure of Colombian business to maintain an effective collective response to the crisis unleashed by the drug-scandal surrounding the administration of President Ernesto Samper (1994-1998). The article suggests that the failure can be explained by the behavior of the country’s four largest diversified business groups (grupos)—a form of business organization prevalent throughout Latin America—who supported the administration. This undermined the attempt by organized business to respond to crisis collectively. Instead of an isolated phenomenon, the article suggests this organizational contradiction is common in Colombia's modern corporate landscape and has important implications for other policy areas. The article also analyzes why the grupos supported Samper. In part, the answer draws from explanations centered on rent-seeking (grupos benefited from the privatization process) and on sunk costs (grupos had contributed generously to Samper’s campaign). However, this article suggests that an unexplored explanation is their unique dependence on the state. By the nature of their main economic activities and their size, grupos depend on the state for credit, contracts, and regulation like few other business actors in Colombia. This shapes their preferences in favor of protecting their access to the state to the detriment of collective business endeavors.
En busca de socios: Canadá, iniciativas empresariales y la construcción de paz en Colombia
(LA Referencia, 2010) Angelika Rettberg
Este artículo pregunta de qué manera el creciente interés canadiense en promover la construcción de paz en Colombia puede ser vinculado a una forma particular en la que una fracción de la sociedad civil colombiana—el sector privado—se ha comprometido con la construcción de paz. En efecto, muchas empresas y grupos de empresas han comenzado a invertir en proyectos productivos en zonas de conflicto con el fin expreso de superar el conflicto, con base en esfuerzos desde lo local. El diagnóstico en el que se basan estas iniciativas plantea que los costos económicos que impone el conflicto son demasiado altos, que la paz duradera va de la mano del desarrollo y que los intereses empresariales de largo plazo dependen de la solución del conflicto. Un factor importante que promueve el surgimiento de estas iniciativas empresariales es la disponibilidad de recursos externos, que permiten traspasar el umbral entre la voluntad y la acción efectiva. Ello apunta al importante papel que la ayuda externa canadiense puede cumplir en la promoción de estas formas innovadoras de construcción de paz en Colombia.
Examining the interplay of transnational and domestic dimensions in Colombia’s post-agreement period
(Taylor & Francis, 2025) Angelika Rettberg
Global Markets, Local Conflict
(SAGE Publishing, 2010) Angelika Rettberg
After the breakdown of the International Coffee Agreement, armed conflict intensified in the Colombian coffee region. The decline of international coffee prices after the agreement was abandoned increased local poverty and made it difficult for the National Coffee Federation to compensate for the state’s failure to provide economic stability and social services. Poverty and a weakened Federation in turn opened windows of opportunity for illegal armed actors, cultivators of illegal crops, and drug traffickers. The link between change in international coffee markets and local violence is shaped by domestic processes of resource extraction such as land distribution, joint crop techniques, the periodic employment of a temporary workforce, and the nature of institutional regulation. Study of this link exposes the vulnerability of underdeveloped economies to economic and political decision-making processes beyond national borders.
La construcción de paz bajo la lupa: una revisión de la actividad y de la literatura académica internacional
(Universidad de Antioquia, 2013) Angelika Rettberg
Aunque no parece que el mundo es hoy un lugar más pacífico que hace varios años, es un hecho que tanto las guerras internacionales como los conflictos armados internos han disminuido. A la luz de este contexto, este artículo describe y analiza críticamente la vasta actividad que han desarrollado por más de veinte años organizaciones internacionales y domésticas bajo el rótulo de construcción de paz, acuñada en la post-Guerra Fría como “acciones dirigidas a identificar y apoyar estructuras tendientes a fortalecer y solidificar la paz para evitar una recaída al conflicto” (Boutros-Ghali, 1992). Con base en una extensa revisión de la literatura, las investigaciones que subyacen a este artículo encuentran que la construcción de paz es un campo heterogéneo y multiforme, atravesado por diferentes maneras de entender los conflictos armados internos, la paz y su promoción; compuesto por múltiples actores con agendas diversas y que se debate entre preguntas fundamentales sobre el grado de separación necesario y deseable entre lo doméstico y lo internacional, sobre el grado de centralización de las decisiones e instituciones involucradas, y sobre el rol y la responsabilidad del Estado en los países transicionales.
Los estudios sobre conflicto armado y paz: un campo en evolución permanente
(Universidad de Los Andes, 2005) Carlo Nasi; Angelika Rettberg
The pervasive effect of armed conflicts on affected societies has kept scholars busy around the world. Since the end of the Cold War in particular, the number of explanatory efforts attributing armed conflict not only to the bipolar confrontation among the world’s super powers but to complex internal and external political, economic, and social dynamics of conflict-ridden countries has increased. In Colombia, decades of armed conflict have nurtured a prolific academic production. This article identifies some of the main lines of research on the topic of armed conflicts and peace studies. It suggests that with the passage of time, the literature has gained in complexity, diversity, and sophistication, displaying a notorious capacity to adapt and transform in the face of new conceptual and empirical challenges.
Para desvincular los recursos naturales del conflicto armado en Colombia. Recomendaciones para formuladores de política y activistas
(Universidad de Los Andes, 2009) Ralf J. Leiteritz; Carlo Nasi; Angelika Rettberg
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