Estudios Políticos

Perception of Corruption in Colombia over the Past Two Decades (2001-2020)

Luis Fernando Restrepo Betancur — 2025-09-30

This article answers the question of how the perception of corruption in Colombia has been configured over the last two decades. The thesis associated with this study argues that corruption, far from decreasing, remains a structural phenomenon linked to institutional deficiencies and citizen distrust toward Congress, the government, and local administrations. Using a longitudinal, exploratory, descriptive theoretical-methodological approach, information was compiled from Transparency International, Our World in Data, Latinobarómetro, and The Global Economy. The analysis shows that Colombia persistently ranks among the countries with the most negative perceptions associated with corruption, which undermines the legitimacy of the political system and limits social development. It can be concluded that corruption impacts citizen trust, weakens democracy, hinders economic development, exacerbates inequality, increases poverty and social divisions, among other factors. Unlike previous studies, this work emphasizes the connection between international indicators and national public opinion to understand the magnitude of the problem.

The Agony of the Decade. The Economy of Race and Statistical Invisibility in Colombia

Raúl Cortés Landázury — 2025-09-30

Due to the relative novelty of the link between “race” and material deprivation in Latin American development economics, the issue has become the biological incarnation of social inequality and an endemic problem for countries questioned by distributive asymmetries, allocative imbalances and defects of the growth. The difference in social preferences shaped by institutions such as those of pigmentocratic colonial anchoring, tend to exacerbate these problems by encouraging perverse incentives towards distinction by status, deepening the invisibilization and anonymity of subjects considered as outsiders. This document reviews the scope of this hypothesis based on a brief review of the economic literature on the subject produced during the so-called “decade of Afro-descendants,” emphasizing the differential statistical information policies in Colombia and the intraregional repercussions on the department. del Cauca. The conclusions show the disorder in the agenda of anti-discriminatory policies against the Afro-descendant population linked to the thematic trends and theoretical assumptions of economic orthodoxy rooted in statistical abstraction in fields sensitive to economic well-being such as the labor market.

An Approach to the State of the Art on Youth Political Subjectivities Regarding Democracy and Peace from a Gender and Inclusion Perspective

Claudia García Muñoz — 2025-09-30

This article starts from the question: ¿What visions of democracy and peace are configured around the political subjectivities of young students of the Law and Social Work programs, at the Universidad Libre-Pereira, from a differential perspective of gender and inclusion? From this question, the relevant theoretical keys consulted in research registered in scientific databases are reconstructed around youth political subjectivity as a sociological category in its relationship with peace and democracy, gender and inclusion, concluding that the youthful meanings that emerge around these categories are determined by the positions of young political subjects based on their life trajectories and their places of enunciation, through which they reconfigure public space through emotions, corporality and resistance, strengthening their democratic participation and contributing to sustainable peace.

Candidate Selection in Cartagena (2007-2019), an Uneven Labyrinth

Sofía Carrerá-Martínez — 2025-09-30

What factors structure access to mayoral candidacies in the subnational level in Colombia? Do women face particular barriers and, if so, which ones? The goal of this article is to analyze the conditions of access to the electoral contest at the local level, based on a case study of four mayoral elections in Cartagena (2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019). The methodology was qualitative, drawing on 33 semi-structured interviews with women and men candidates and actors close to the campaigns and to local politics. The findings show three factors that structure candidacies: i) the degree of parties’ centralization and their informality, which opens the door ajar for influence of local political clans; ii) nonpartisan alternatives, running supported by citizen petition signatures; and iii) prior electoral success of those interested in running, more specifically, experience in the municipal council. These factors affect women in a differentiated way, who face barriers in all possible scenarios.

Gender Gaps in Local Power. An Analysis of Women’s Political Representation in Urabá, Antioquia

Juan Carlos Escobar Escobar — 2025-09-30

Women’s political participation and representation has been an object of recent interest in Political Science, especially at the national level. However, there are still gaps to describe and explain the factors associated with women’s participation in positions of power at the subnational level. In this sense, this paper seeks to analyze the political representation of women in the eleven municipalities of the Urabá sub-region in the department of Antioquia. To this end, first, the levels of descriptive representation of women in council elections between 2003 and 2023 are presented. Secondly, some factors are proposed to explain this phenomenon. Through a panel data regression model, it is concluded that the economic dimension, the urban population and the armed conflict have an impact on women’s political representation. This work is relevant because it contributes to the strengthening of subnational political studies, especially on issues associated with the reduction of gender gaps in local democracy.

Space, Hegemony and Radical Critique

Chantal Mouffe — 2025-09-30

What kind of radical critique is still possible in our post-political world where we are constantly told that there is no alternative to the current mode of neoliberal globalisation? To approach this question we first need to ask how critique should be envisaged. Indeed there are many different understandings of the nature of critique, and the forms that correspond to them are very diverse. Should we envisage the activity of critique in terms of judgement or in terms of practice? Is it, as it is often claimed, a self-conscious activity linked to the Enlightenment and characteristic of modernity?

Disputes in Mexico’s Political-Digital Space During the Reform Cycle, 2018-2024

Ernesto Treviño Ronzon — 2025-09-30

This article addresses some of the implications that recent developments in digital technology have had on the configuration of the digital political space through an analysis of the reform cycle that occurred in Mexico between 2018 and 2024. The article outlines some of the general features of the contemporary digital environment, emphasizing their implications for political life, the conceptual and methodological coordinates that support the exposition are presented, emphasis is placed on the concept of digital political space and the discursive construction and analysis of the documentary referent, presents a characterization of Mexico’s digital political environment after 2018, and addresses three reforms that allow us to outline the dynamics of recent political interaction: the security reform, the health system reform, and the education reform. The article concludes with a discussion about the configuration of the contemporary digital political space, which involves interactions between human and digital beings, new dynamics of polarization, and new challenges for constructing the common.

Thought, Subject, and Governance in Epochal Change. Aporias in the Digitalization of Life

Fabio Fuentes Navarro — 2025-09-30

This article discusses how the “satisfied subject” becomes a subjectivity inherent to the knowledge economy. The central concern questions how transhumanism and artificial intelligence operate in the process of subjectivation. The thesis supported affirms that the “satisfied subject” is a form of subjectivity characterized by the precariousness of critical thinking, the limited capacity for autonomous choice, and the deficient political participation of the subject in the knowledge economy. Political Discourse Analysis was chosen as the horizon of understanding, which allowed us to address the central concern through four analytical registers: epochal crisis, automated education, algorithmization of politics, and digital public deliberation. It is concluded that the “satisfied subject” reveals the convergence between educational automation, algorithmization of decision-making, and mutations in public deliberation.

Social Networks, Significance Process and Neoliberalism. Conjectures from Charles Sanders Peirce

Daniel Guillermo Saur — 2025-09-30

In this essay we recover conceptual resources from Peircean Semiotics, Political Discourse Analysis and Psychoanalysis to make a reflection on the subjective and political implications of what we have called “network logic” and its connection with Neoliberalism. Starting from a hermeneutic work, under a semiotic investigation and from recognizing the multiplicity of possible functionings of technological mediatization, we will try to identify a dominant operating logic of critical interest due to its effects at a subjective level. We try to show, at first, how social networks function with a precarious signifying modality, in structuring terms, generating a labile relationship with the user at a symbolic level; and, how the type of link established between interface and user is, eminently, of a constative natura, or phatic. In a second moment, we try to show how this logic of functioning and consumption of networks, which we identify with Lacanian category of “surplus enjoyment”, has strong parallels with the logic of capitalist accumulation, being a particularly expressive area of itself, responding to a similar type of jouissance, characterized by speed, circularity and an excess difficult to stop. Faced with this dynamic, the question always remains open about what is inappropriability of subjectivity in capitalism, as well as the existence and possible deepening of vanishing points.

Populism and Democracy in Mexico. Leadership, Empty Signifier and Popular Identification

Silvia Fuentes Amaya — 2025-09-30

The democratic project remains a desirable alternative for addressing major contemporary problems: poverty, global warming, migration, and armed conflicts, among others. Populism, both theoretically and historically, has resurfaced. In Mexico, the triumph of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party in the 2018 and 2024 presidential elections has been conceived as the emergence and development of a populist regime with unprecedented features. In this context, how have “Las Mañaneras” (Morning Talks) operated as a space for interpellation led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador toward the development of populist identification models and the formation of equivalential chains? From an onto-epistemic perspective toward anti-essentialism, based on the political logic proposed by Ernesto Laclau (2005), I develop a political-discursive analysis of “Las Mañaneras” using a qualitative methodological approach. Conclusions: “Las Mañaneras” constituted a central element of the discursive-populist construction in Mexico (2018-2024) of the signifier AMLO/4T, as an empty signifier, within the framework of an oscillation between a charismatic-integrative/pragmatic and charismatic-dominant leadership (Navarrete, 2023) of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Educational Research and Social Justice. Analysis of the Matrix of Scientific Reason in Mexico and its Effects on the Administration of Justice

Octavio C. Juárez Némer — 2025-09-30

The article focuses on displacements and substitutions of educational research on the properties of social justice during Mexico’s political transition. It asks: on what conceptual, normative, ethical, onto-epistemic and affective references does educational research circulates to social justice? It is established that educational research associates social justice with knowledge and epistemic recognition, rather than with political operation. The matrix of reason for the educational research is studied from a political-discursive onto-epistemic logic, with a corpus of legal and scientific-educational discourses on the provision of social justice, between 1993 and 2024. It is concluded that the educational research points to the sufficiency and effectiveness to translate the pact on social justice into learning content, but does not analyze indicators of effects, nor attributes and parameters to recognize it. His notion of social justice expresses political properties, but does not problematize the hegemonic practices that legitimize interactions transformed into Rights. The study warns of the risk that values and practices of market justice circulate without change in Latin American transition processes.

Notas para comprender al populismo

Deiman Cuartas Celis — 2025-09-30

Governability and Governance: A Scientometric Review

William Retamozo Chávez — 2025-09-30

Currently, important efforts are being made to improve governability and governance by combining the monopoly of state decisions with the collaboration of diverse actors in public practice. Based on the above, the purpose of this article is to analyze the evolution of conceptual approaches to both terms over the last 23 years, examining scientific production by author authors, journals, and countries. The methodology was based on a bibliometric analysis: First, the WoS and Scopus databases were searched. Subsequently, scientometric techniques and the Science Tree methodology were used to identify patterns, structures, and trends, to understand the progress and behavior of scientific production, and to measure the quantity and quality of research that has addressed these issues from different perspectives. This study examined governability and governance publications and their annual citations to assess their impact and analyzed the total output of both datasets to identify similarities and differences in governability and governance research. The findings reveal that the number of publications and citations in this field is increasing, with the United States being the most academically influential country and the journal Marine Policy being the most prominent in ranking. These data provide key information for decision-makers, researchers, and academics for future debate and discussion toward operationalizing the concepts at the practical level of action, management, and the functioning of government structures.

Cartografías políticas de las transiciones. Espacios, sujetos y hegemonía en el pensamiento crítico contemporáneo latinoamericano

Alejandro Pimienta Betancur — 2025-09-30

This article serves as an introductory text to the dossier on political transitions published in the journal Estudios Políticos in its 74th issue. It recognizes that, at the present time, both Latin America and the world are experiencing a time of crisis, making it necessary to draw on the various analyses carried out on this epochal moment of transition from contemporary critical thought. Based on six texts presented at the viii Meeting “Theoretical Turns, Testimony of the Vitality and Diversity of Critical Theory in Latin America.” This presentation presents a cartography of political transitions in contemporary Latin American critical thought. Within this polyphony, spaces, subjects, and power are identified, the unifying axis of which is the theoretical perspective of Chantal Mouffe.