Ideas, intereses e instituciones en el análisis de políticas públicas. Cambio en la política ambiental colombiana con la ley 99 de 1993

Abstract

There is little development of analytical frameworks to understand the relationship among State, society and environment in Colombia, as well as for the development of public policy analyses as a discipline. An initial analysis of the texts on the Colombian environmental policy allowed identifying this problem. This investigation contributes to the development of public policy analyses, studying the change in the Colombian environmental policy after law 99 of 1993. For this purpose the “Three I” approach is followed, which mobilizes simultaneously three dimensions of analyses: Ideas, interests and institutions; avoiding considering a priori, that any of them is more important than the others, as classical public policy analyses do. (Heclo, 1993; Hall, 1997; Surel, 1998; Palier and Surel, 2005). The hypothesis is stated that the application of an analytical framework from any dimension is enough to explain the policy change. The results of the analyses from each dimension are contrasted later to test the validity of the hypothesis; identifying the resulting relationship among the dimensions and the degree in which each one explains the change. A conclusion is drawn on the convenience of developing analytical tools for the environmental policy from the national context, using approaches that surpass the limits of classical analyses. For this purpose, the use of Bourdieu’s social action theory is proposed, indicating the theoretical cross.