Del Centro al Territorio: Análisis de la Implementación de las RAP como Instrumentos de Descentralización y Gobernanza Multinivel en Colombia

Abstract

For decades, public administration in Colombia has been framed within a search to decentralize, to reach the territories in a comprehensive and efficient manner, despite geographical, cultural, economic and access difficulties. So far, this has been the theoretical and normative approach. This article seeks to analyze the narrative that has been built from the institutional framework, which insists on the decentralized and multilevel governance of public administration. However, there is evidence of little coordination between territorial levels (sub-national), lack of confidence in mechanisms for the articulation of territories for common purposes, territorial associative schemes such as the RAPs are not conceived as autonomous instruments of complementarity in the provision of services provided by the Nation, but have been subject to the supervision and guidance of the National Planning Department in their field of action, in addition to receiving structural reforms much more regularly than they should by the governments in office.

The article is approached from a qualitative approach with an exploratory, descriptive scope, based on secondary documentary and normative sources to obtain information related to the legislative context of the RAP and its implementation, financing methods, forms of articulation between levels of government, in order to identify the challenges in the effective implementation of the RAP as an instrument of decentralization of public management in the territory, taking as a conceptual framework the OECD's Multilevel Governance model.