Abstract

BOTERO-BERNAL, Andrés. BALANCE OF THE 25 YEARS OF THE COLOMBIAN CONSTITUTION OF 1991: THE CONSTITUTION OF GODS AND THE CONSTITUTION OF MEN. Vniversitas [online]. 2017, n.134, pp.59-92. ISSN 0041-9060.  https://doi.org/10.11144/Javeriana.yj134.bvac.

This paper explores the first 25 years of the Colombian Constitution of 1991. It marks the excessive optimism that the Constitution was received with by the people and the academy in general. However, over the years, although the Constitution changed the Colombian political reality significantly, it started to lose its charm. Among other reasons, (i) this Constitution could not satisfy the high expectations generated, (ii) the continuous reforms that the political class made to it, derailing the original model, and (iii) the way the political system managed to adapt to the new constitutional system so well that we could say “everything changed to stay the same”. Moreover, we present the risk implied by a judicial democracy for the Colombian political system. Finally, this paper invites not falling into extreme points (nihilism, on the one side, ingenuity, on the other), so a critical skepticism is suggested regarding what is presented today as Constitution and its immediate future, in post-conflict times.

Keywords : Political Constitution of 1991; Colombia; corruption; neoconstitutionalism; symbolic efficacy.

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