POLITICAL PARTICIPATION, STRUCTURES, AND LINKAGES IN A COLOMBIAN URBAN BARRIO.

摘要

The present study examines the behavioral, structural, and linkage components of the political system of a Colombian marginal barrio. It describes and analyzes the political participation of the residents of that barrio on two dimensions, voting behavior and membership in a political organization. It investigates those structures and institutions within the barrio used by the residents in an attempt to channel their demands to the municipal government. Finally, it examines the clientelistic and organizational linkages which exist between members of the barrio and also between the political systems of the barrio and the city of Cali.;The barrio political system was found to be a reflection of the factionalized nature of the larger political system. The former consisted of partisan-oriented voluntary associations imposed on the barrio by the latter. These associations were directed by members of the barrio power structure who were directly responsible, as representatives of their respective parties or factions, for the political mobilization of the barrio residents. These barrio leaders also acted as political brokers between those residents and the political authorities and party officials at the municipal level. But the major feature of the barrio's political system was the struggle for power within the barrio among these caciques, a struggle which created deep political cleavages among the barrio's residents and which detrimentally affected the demand-making ability of those residents as well as their overall participation in the barrio and municipal political systems.;In sum, the present study concludes that, because of specific contextual factors (i.e. regime type, the political party system, political culture, and land tenure instability), the residents of the barrio popular under investigation were severely limited in their political participation and consequently played little or no effective role in the political systems of the city and the nation. Furthermore, the structures and linkages which existed in the barrio served as cooptative mechanisms used by the larger political system to control the socio-economic mobility and political activities of the barrio residents.;It was found that contextual factors severely limited the meaningful participation of the residents of the marginal barrio in both the barrio and municipal political systems. The elitist, paternalistic political system of Colombia, dominated by the two traditional hierarchically-structured political parties (the Liberals and Conservatives), effectively controlled the political socialization, mobilization, and politicization of the barrio residents. This control was maintained through the de facto domination, at all three administrative levels of the government, of the executive authorities over the popularly-elected legislative bodies; through the extraordinary powers delegated to those authorities by the Constitution of the Republic; through the monopolistic nature of the Liberal and Conservative parties which impeded the emergence of viable political alternatives within the political system; through the vertically-linked cooptative structures of the party organizations which controlled the individual's access to the political system at all levels; through the skillful manipulation of the political beliefs, attitudes and values of the barrio residents; through the judicious use of the patron-client relationship which fostered social inequality; and generally through a governmental policy of exclusion and enforced alienation which perpetuated the marginality of a large percentage of the nation's lower socio-economic sectors as well as the control of the political system by a small, but active, elite sector of Colombian society.