1. Producer associations is an approximate translation of the term employed in Colombia, gremios de producción, to refer to business associations or organizations. In referring to activities of firms or businessmen, either alone or in conjunction with the associations, I will employ the term producer groups.

2. I have found it useful to employ the distinction between the state (a basic “pact of domination” among ruling classes) and political regime (the formal rules that link the major political institutions and the nature of the ties between citizens and rulers), as elaborated in Fernando Henrique Cardoso, “On the Characterization of Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America,” in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, edited by David Collier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 33-57; see especially 38-40. Government will be used to refer to a particular ruler or presidential period. A brief, but useful, discussion on issues of state autonomy and state power is Peter S. Cleaves and Henry Pease García, “State Autonomy and Military Policy Making,” in The Peruvian Experiment Reconsidered, edited by Cynthia McClintock and Abraham Lowenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 209-44. One measure of the growing importance of the public sector in the economy is public investment as a percentage of gross investment. For Colombia (at current prices), this indicator grew substantially between 1960-61 and 1969-70, from 18.7 percent to 30.6 percent, yet it has not increased in percentage terms since then. The average for all of Latin America was 31.7 percent in 1960-61 and 35.0 percent in 1969-70. Figures from Indicadores de desarrollo económico y social en América Latina (Santiago, Chile: CEPAL, 1976), 55. See also Richard M. Bird et al., Finanzas intergubernamentales en Colombia (Bogotá: Departamento Nacional de Planeación, 1981), 44-47, 54-55, 294-302.

3. La violencia began in 1946, intensified between 1948 and 1953, and did not fully taper off until the 1960s. Two hundred thousand deaths have been attributed to la violencia. A useful analysis is Paul Oquist, Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia (New York: Academic Press, 1980).

4. A 1968 constitutional reform programmed a gradual, but not total, dismantling of this agreement. It reinstituted passage by simple majority, rather than by two-thirds vote in congress. It also opened elections to all parties and eliminated parity in the legislative branch at the municipal and departmental level in 1970 and at the national level in 1974. Competitive presidential elections were first held in 1974, although parity in public employment was extended until 1978. From 1978 on, the majority party was required to offer adequate representation to the party receiving the second-highest number of votes. Thus since 1958, all governments in Colombia have been bipartisan, although different party factions have been in opposition during different periods.

5. Arend Lijphart introduced the term “consociational democracy” to describe a pattern of democratic politics in countries marked by actual or potential violent conflict across the major segments of their societies. This conflict is avoided within an open political regime by means of overarching elite cooperation. One central means by which this cooperation is implemented is government by a grand coalition of political leaders of the country's major conflict groups. See Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). On applications of the concept to Colombia, see Robert H. Dix, “Consociational Democracy: The Case of Colombia,” Comparative Politics 12 (Apr. 1980):303-21; Jonathan Hartlyn, “Consociational Politics in Colombia: Confrontation and Accommodation in Comparative Perspective,” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1981; and Alexander Wilde, “Conversations among Gentlemen: Oligarchical Democracy in Colombia,” in The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Latin America, edited by Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 28-81.

6. The role of the state in Colombia began to grow during the 1930s and 1940s, although it did not play as significant a role in manufacturing, mining, or transportation as in other Latin American countries. See Bird et al., Finanzas intergubernamentales, 294-98. In addition, particular private groups have been affected by the political party that formally controlled state power.

7. See Robert D. Bond, “Business Associations and Interest Politics in Venezuela: The Fedecámaras and the Determination of National Economic Policies,” Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1975, 58-59.

8. Thus democracy has been circumscribed in Colombia, not only by the limits imposed by the consociational agreement, but also by other restrictions. I consider it analytically more useful, however, to consider Colombia a limited democratic consociational regime rather than an authoritarian regime. Respect for political and civil liberties has been greater and repression has been qualitatively less severe than in the authoritarian military governments of Latin America during this period. The establishment of the Venezuelan democratic regime shares certain consociational elements with the Colombian case. For an analysis of the process in Venezuela that stresses the conservative bias of the consociational agreement, see Terry Karl, “Petroleum and Political Pacts: The Transition to Democracy in Venezuela,” Wilson Center Latin American Program Working Papers no. 107, 1981. See also Daniel H. Levine, “Venezuela since 1958: The Consolidation of Democratic Politics,” in Linz and Stepán, Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, 82-109. The mix of pluralism and authoritarianism of the current Colombian regime also shares some similarities with the authoritarian Mexican regime, although the legitimacy of the Colombian regime is based on the historical strength of the two traditional parties and elements of interparty and intraparty competition, rather than on a revolutionary myth built around a single dominant party. For a nuanced view of the authoritarian and pluralist elements of the Mexican regime, see Daniel Levy and Gabriel Székely, Mexico: Paradoxes of Stability and Change (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983), 113-18.

9. Certainly, many additional factors could enter into an explanation of the establishment and relative longevity of a political regime. The consociational literature is useful in the Colombian context due to its focus on “pact making” among crucial elites, particularly party leaders, in helping create civilian regimes in certain instances. Its politically voluntaristic emphasis, however, downplays the crucial role of economic groups, the focus of this article, and other actors such as the church and the military. A complete analysis that would examine these other actors, attempt to understand how the regime has channeled or constrained the demands of the peasantry, the working class, the lower middle class, and other popular sector groups, or examine the constraints imposed upon the political regime by the interaction of the national political economy with the world capitalist system is beyond the scope of this article.

10. These case studies are not intended to be a fully representative sample. Much of the activity between government and business remains invisible, and some conclusions are necessarily more tentative than others. Nevertheless, this article is cumulative in the sense that it builds upon case studies by others on policy processes in Colombia as well as on cases that I have pursued through interviews and supplemented with newspaper and document collection.

11. Thus it is common for major firms to be members of both more specialized producer associations and ANDI. Major coffee exporters, however, do not appear to be members of ANDI, judging from an examination of its 1977 list of member firms.

12. Much remains to be known about the economic and political influence of these groups. A preliminary, but incomplete, attempt by the government to analyze them is found in Conglomerados de sociedades en Colombia (Bogotá: Superintendencia de Sociedades, 1978). See also Julio Silva Colmenares, Los verdaderos dueños del país: oligarquía y monopolios en Colombia (Bogotá: Fondo Editorial Suramérica, 1977).

13. In the 1980s, this situation was beginning to change when SAC appointed a competent economist associated with one of the country's major economic research institutes as its manager. This individual then became the first Minister of Agriculture in Belisario Betancur's government in 1982.

14. Most of the so-called decentralized sector was formed since 1940. Many major agencies and firms were created during the presidency of Carlos Lleras (1966-70). Currently, about 70 percent of public investment is carried out through this sector. See the discussion in Bird et al., Finanzas intergubernamentales, 287-308.

15. Industrial growth rates from Gabriel Poveda Ramos, Políticas económicas, desarrollo industrial y tecnología en Colombia, 1925-1975 (Bogotá: Colciencias, 1976). See also the discussion in Alvaro Tirado Mejía, “Colombia: siglo y medio de bipartidismo,” in Colombia hoy (Bogotá: Siglo XXI, 1978).

16. For a description of these events, see John D. Martz, Colombia: A Contemporary Political Survey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962), 173-245.

17. Based on interviews during July 1982 with the president of ANDI at the time, the president of FENALCO at the time, a leading Medellin industrialist from that period, and the first Minister of Finance of the interim military junta. See also Jonathan Hartlyn, “Military Governments and the Transition to Civilian Rule: The Colombian Experience of 1957-58,” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 26, no. 2 (May 1984):245-81.

18. Review of El Tiempo newspaper (1957-58) and my July 1982 interview with a leading industrialist during that period.

19. This tendency is chronicled in a number of the case studies examined in Linz and Stepan, Breakdown of Democratic Regimes.

20. One prominent industrialist told me during a July 1982 interview that he had been offered a cabinet post in a potential new government. For a brief discussion of initial patterns of labor incorporation in Colombia, see Jonathan Hartlyn, “The Impact of Patterns of Industrialization and of Popular Sector Incorporation on Political Regime Type: A Case Study of Colombia,” Studies in Comparative International Development 19 (Spring 1984):38-42; see also Miguel Urrutia Montoya, The Development of the Colombian Labor Movement (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1969).

21. Interviews with a number of the major actors, including the Conservative president of ANDI at the time and the Liberal president of ANDI's board of directors (in July 1977, February 1978, and July 1982). Other members of ANDI's board as well as those on the boards of SAC, FENALCO, and ASOBANCARIA were also interviewed in 1977 and 1978.

22. Once the crisis was resolved, policy differences reemerged within the private sector. Within ANDI an intense debate ensued between those who argued that excessive government intervention necessitated a stronger defense of the business sector and a more reformist group, who argued that the state needed a sounder fiscal base upon which to build a stronger public investment program, including social reforms. Interviews with high ANDI officials and members of ANDI's board during July 1977 and April 1978. The reformists' point of view is reflected in the commission's report drafted essentially by ANDI's technical staff. See Comisión Especial de Estudios Económicos y Sociales, Aspectos económicos y sociales (Bogotá: Talleres Gráficos del Banco de la República, 1965); and Comisión Especial de Estudios Económicos y Sociales, Conclusiones (Bogotá: Talleres Gráficos del Banco de la República, 1965).

23. A useful overview of ANAPO is found in Robert H. Dix, “Political Oppositions under the National Front,” in Politics of Compromise: Coalition Government in Colombia, edited by R. Albert Berry, Ronald G. Hellman, and Mauricio Solaún (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1980).

24. ANDI also feared that its public endorsement could negatively affect the chances of any of the non-Rojista candidacies because of ANDI's image as an elite organization. Interviews with high ANDI officials and leaders of agricultural associations of that period, July 1977, November 1977, and May 1978. Ironically, the dissident candidacies of Betancur and particularly Sourdís, which mobilized voters who otherwise might not have cast ballots and siphoned some votes away from Rojas, may well have saved the Frente Nacional from being overwhelmingly defeated by Rojas.

25. See Gustavo Gallón Giraldo, Quince años de estado de sitio en Colombia: 1958-1978 (Bogotá: Editorial América Latina, 1979), 82-85.

26. July 1977 interview with a high ANDI official of that period. Confirmed in interviews with other industrialists, July 1977 and July 1978.

27. The two traditional labor confederations, the UTC and the CTC, represented about 65 percent of all union affiliates in 1974, down from 70-75 percent in 1967. From 1969 to 1976, however, these two confederations together never accounted for more than 28 percent of all strikes in any one year. See Jaime Tenjo, “Aspectos cuantitativos del movimiento sindical colombiano,” Cuadernos Colombianos 5 (1975):22-23; Hernando Gómez and Rodrigo Losada, “La actividad huelguística en Colombia, 1962-1976,” Coyuntura Económica 7 (May 1977):129; and José Antonio Ocampo and Nohra Rey de Marulanda, “La recesión de 1981 y la situación laboral,” Desarrollo y Sociedad 3 (May 1982):14.

28. See Alvaro Delgado, “El paro cívico nacional,” Estudios Marxistas 15 (1978):58-115.

29. The López and Turbay governments confronted the country's most severe guerrilla threat since the late 1950s and early 1960s. For a brief overview of these two governments and the first months of the Betancur administration, see Jonathan Hartlyn, “Colombia: Old Problems, New Opportunities,” Current History 82 (Feb. 1983):62-65, 83-84. The UTC and CGT also feared a potential military intervention if they went ahead with the strike in 1981. See “La encrucijada del movimiento sindical,” Colombia Hoy (Apr. 1982):19, 50-51. On wages and employment during this period, see Ocampo and Marulanda, “La recesión de 1981.”

30. See Miguel Urrutia Montoya, Gremios, política económica y democracia (Bogotá: Fundación para la Educación Superior y el Desarrollo, 1981), 211-18. This outcome contrasts sharply with the Peruvian military government's outright abolition of the landowners' association in 1972. See Cynthia McClintock, “Velasco, Officers, and Citizens: The Politics of Stealth,” in McClintock and Lowenthal, The Peruvian Experiment Reconsidered, 287. Urrutia's scholarly book is a thoughtful and informed account by the author of several books on the Colombian labor movement, income distribution, and other topics as well as the occupant of many government positions (including Director of National Planning and Minister of Mines under López). Urrutia's book has been my source of much useful information regarding the Frente Gremial and the 1974 tax reform (in which he played an important role). I have not always agreed with his interpretation of events, however, because I believe that he underestimates the capacity for influence of producer associations in focusing on them in isolation from the groups they represent.

31. Eventually an agreement was reached to increase the minimum wage at a level somewhat higher in relation to inflation than in previous years. See Urrutia, Gremios, 224-25, and the discussion, 219-25.

32. Interviews with the members of the boards of directors of ANDI, FENALCO, FEDEGAN, SAC, and FEDERACAFE during July 1977 through April 1978.

33. The most comprehensive study of minister recruitment is John I. Laun, “El reclutamiento político en Colombia: los ministros de estado, 1900-1975,” manuscript, Bogotá, Universidad de los Andes, Departamento de Ciencia Política, August 1976. Laun concludes that ministers have not been career bureaucrats, having had instead extensive experience outside of government. My observation regarding recent high government officials is based upon information collected from nineteen interviews with a sample of them in 1977 and 1978.

34. This tendency has led many associations to complain about a lack of continuity in government policies that actually reflects limited state autonomy and its penetration by private interests.

35. For an excellent brief discussion, see Marco Palacios, Coffee in Colombia, 1850-1970: An Economic, Social, and Political History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

36. See Bird et al., Finanzas intergubernamentales, 95, 292.

37. The number of private directors of the Coffee Federation was increased from five to six in 1958 in order to assure partisan balance. Between 1968 and 1978, four of the six principal directors (each of whom also has an alternate or suplente) had served the entire period (one had served his first two years as a suplente). Based on interviews with several high government officials and members of the board of the coffee federation, October 1977 through February 1978.

38. One examination of this issue is found in John J. Bailey, “Pluralist and Corporatist Dimensions of Interest Representation in Colombia,” in Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America, edited by James M. Malloy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977). Constraints imposed by an underpaid, inefficient work force and terrible relations between the political regime and public sector unions also have played a role. Examples described to me in interviews (in January and July 1978) included the national telecommunications agency (the Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones, or TELECOM), the national railroads, and the agricultural marketing agency (the Instituto de Mercadeo Agropecuario, or IDEMA).

39. Based on interviews with ANDI or private sector representatives and high government officials in January and February 1978.

40. Based on interviews with former ANDI technical staff and high government officials and industrialists in July 1977 and July 1978. One successful agreement was reached during the López government in the paper sector. According to one of the participants, this agreement was facilitated by these factors: paper is not a basic necessity whose price the government believes must be carefully controlled; because the sector is heavily oligopolized and its consumers are few in number, the parties to the negotiations were limited.

41. Landowners subject to expropriation have been accused of hiring groups to attack peasant tenants, sharecroppers, or squatters; the same landlords simultaneously might be attempting to bribe land reform officials not to expropriate their land and suing in the courts under the claim that legal procedures or definitions were not adequately followed.

42. Most of the land acquired by INCORA for redistribution occurred under the Lleras presidency. Yet after sixteen years of agrarian reform, only 2.7 percent of the total land in production had been acquired by the agency for redistribution, and much of that land was unfit for cultivation. See INCORA's “Informe de actividades, 1977” (Bogotá: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1978). For discussions of agrarian reform in Colombia, see Albert O. Hirschman, “Land Use and Land Reform in Colombia,” in Journeys toward Progress (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963); and Bruce Bagley, “Political Power, Public Policy, and the State in Colombia: Case Studies of the Urban and Agrarian Reforms during the National Front, 1958-1974,” Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1979. On ANUC, see Bruce Bagley and Fernando Botero, “Organizaciones campesinas contemporáneas en Colombia: un estudio de la Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (ANUC),” Estudios Rurales Latinoamericanos 1 (Jan.-Apr. 1978):59-96.

43. Industrial, commercial, and financial associations rarely have placed their own candidates in congress. For example, Fabio Echeverri, elected to congress in April 1974, assumed the presidency of ANDI in July 1974 and rarely attended congressional sessions, eventually turning his seat over to a substitute (suplente). He did not seek reelection in 1978 or 1982, although he retained his position in ANDI. At the same time, some agricultural associations have believed that the relationship they have with congressmen is more beneficial to the legislators, who employ these linkages for electoral purposes. Interviews with members of the board of ANDI and leaders of agricultural associations in October and November of 1977 and February 1978.

44. President Alfonso López made this point in an interview printed in Revista Causa Común 1 (Mar.-Apr. 1977):20. See also Bagley, “Political Power,” 227-57.

45. Upon the suggestion of then Senator Alfonso López, the 1968 constitutional reform created a “state of national economic and social emergency,” whereby the president and his cabinet are empowered to legislate by executive decree for a period of up to ninety days if the social or economic order of the country is threatened (Article 122). The bipartisan nature of such reform was maintained in 1974 by the stipulation that the executive decree had to be approved by the entire cabinet.

46. Among those favored by concessions at this time were the coffee growers. See Guillermo Perry, “Las reformas tributarias de 1974 y 1975 en Colombia,” Coyuntura Económica 7 (Nov. 1977):128-29.

47. Urrutia, Gremios, 294.

48. Based on interviews in July 1982 with economists who were high government officials during the López government. See also the interview with Guillermo Perry in Estrategia 7 (Dec. 1977-Jan. 1978):23-25; and Urrutia, Gremios, 196-98. Urrutia argues that the tax reform survived, “although somewhat weakened.” This incident highlights the importance retained by former presidents in Colombian politics.

49. Soon after taking office, Belisario Betancur (1982-86) declared a state of national economic emergency to decree a new tax reform in an effort to further discourage evasion and increase public revenues because of growing fiscal deficits. His measures, however, were declared unconstitutional by the Colombian supreme court, and the congress finally passed new legislation in 1983.

50. On ANDI and agrarian reform, see Bagley, “Political Power,” 238-39; on ANDI and Decision 24, see Miguel Urrutia, Colombia and the Andean Group: Two Essays, Wilson Center Latin American Program Working Papers no. 65, 1980.

51. Based on interviews with presidents of major textile firms and managers of leading cotton federations, as well as with high government officials, in July 1982.

52. As evidence of this fact, one government official told me that from 1977-78 to 1978-79, 60 percent of the land in cotton cultivation on the coast was listed by the cotton federations as being new affiliations (July 1982). Cotton federation officials agreed that this tactic was a problem but insisted it was a relatively minor one. From interviews conducted in June and July 1982.

53. President López's first Minister of Agriculture had been the manager of the Federación Nacional de Algodoneros (FEDERALGODON) for many years. Two subsequent Ministers of Agriculture were cotton growers who had founded or were active in other cotton federations. Thus it was difficult for these ministers to pressure the sector to unite into a single organization. In addition, the courts protected the right of the multiple organizations to form, according to the former manager of a cotton federation whom I interviewed in May 1978.

54. An internal memorandum prepared in June 1981 for the monetary board (the Junta Monetaria) asserted that the economics of cotton cultivation in Colombia were acceptable and that the government should withdraw from its current active role in fomenting and aiding the sector. The memorandum was leaked to the cotton growers, causing a major uproar. I have a copy of this memorandum. This second example of former President López's importance in Turbay's government not only reflects their political intimacy but reinforces the general point regarding the continuing importance of former presidents in policy-making in Colombia.

55. Based on interviews with government and cotton federation officials in June and July 1982; memoranda by the cotton federations to the government (copies in my possession).

56. Urrutia makes a similar point in Gremios, 279-80.

57. An identical point is made about business in relation to other groups in Mexican society in John F. H. Purcell and Susan Kaufman Purcell, “Mexican Business and Public Policy,” in Malloy, Authoritarianism and Corporatism, 195. The Mexican state they describe is more powerful and more autonomous than the Colombian state.

58. Urrutia, in Gremios, considers it essential that the associations be able to criticize the government through the press. Although the producer groups have utilized the judiciary to their advantage, the labyrinth of legal codes has provided protection for the more organized elements of the working class. The courts' extreme inefficiency and slowness at times have worked against the interests of business groups.