Popular Consultations in Colombia: Empowerment, Reaction, and Resistance*

Nicolás Figueroa García-Herreros

Universidad del Rosario (Colombia)

RECEIVED: July 7, 2022

ACCEPTED: October 28, 2022

MODIFIED: December 1, 2022

https://doi.org/10.7440/colombiaint114.2023.02

abstract. Objective/context: This article reconstructs the history of popular consultations against extractive activities in Colombia. It aims to illustrate how constitutional law affects the repertoires of democratic participation available to social movements and resistances. Methodology: The article describes and critically analyzes the ways in which Colombian constitutional law has approached the use of popular consultations against extractive activities. This analysis focuses on three moments: citizen empowerment, institutional reaction, and informal resistance. Conclusions: The history of popular consultations in Colombia shows three types of relationships between constitutional law and the democratic participation of social movements and resistances: it can function as an instrument for the political empowerment of citizens, as an obstacle that restrains democratic participation and contributes to political and social exclusion, or as a referent that guides informal resistance practices before the closure of formal participation mechanisms by state institutions. Originality: This article contributes to a more detailed description of the uses of popular consultations in Colombia and the impact of constitutional law upon the participation repertoires of social movements and resistances opposed to extractive activities.

keywords: Colombia; constitutional law; participatory democracy; popular consultations; social movements; social resistance; socio-environmental conflicts.

Las consultas populares en Colombia: empoderamiento, reacción y resistencia

resumen. Objetivo/contexto: este artículo reconstruye la historia de las consultas populares contra las actividades extractivas en Colombia. Su objetivo es ilustrar las formas en las que el derecho constitucional incide sobre los repertorios de participación democrática disponibles para los movimientos y las resistencias sociales. Metodología: el artículo describe y analiza críticamente las formas en las que el derecho constitucional colombiano se ha aproximado al uso de las consultas populares contra las actividades extractivas. Este análisis se enfoca en tres momentos: empoderamiento ciudadano, reacción institucional y resistencia informal. Conclusiones: la historia de las consultas populares en Colombia muestra tres tipos de relación entre el derecho constitucional y la participación democrática de los movimientos y las resistencias sociales: puede funcionar como un instrumento para el empoderamiento político de la ciudadanía, como un obstáculo que contiene la participación democrática y contribuye a la exclusión política y social, o como un referente que guía las prácticas de resistencia informal ante el cierre de los mecanismos formales de participación por parte de las instituciones estatales. Originalidad: este artículo contribuye a una descripción más completa de los usos de las consultas populares en Colombia, y de las formas en las que el derecho constitucional incide sobre los repertorios de participación de los movimientos y las resistencias sociales opuestas a las actividades extractivas.

palabras clave: consultas populares; derecho constitucional; democracia participativa; movimientos sociales; resistencias sociales; conflictos socioambientales; Colombia.

As consultas públicas na Colômbia: empoderamento, reação e resistência

RESUMO. Objetivo/contexto: neste artigo, a história das consultas públicas contra as atividades extrativistas na Colômbia é reconstruída. Seu objetivo é ilustrar as formas nas quais o direito constitucional incide sobre os repertórios de participação democrática disponíveis para os movimentos e resistências sociais. Metodologia: neste artigo, são descritas e analisadas criticamente as formas nas quais o direito constitucional colombiano vem se aproximando do uso das consultas públicas contra as atividades extrativistas. Esta análise está focada em três momentos: empoderamento cidadão, reação institucional e resistência informal. Conclusões: a história das consultas populares na Colômbia mostra três tipos de relação entre o direito constitucional e a participação democrática dos movimentos e resistências sociais: pode funcionar como um instrumento para o empoderamento político da cidadania, como um obstáculo que a participação democrática contém e contribui para a exclusão política e social ou como um guia para as práticas de resistência informal ante o fechamento dos mecanismos formais de participação por parte das instituições estatais. Originalidade: este artigo contribui para ter uma descrição mais completa dos usos das consultas populares na Colômbia e das formas nas quais o direito constitucional incide sobre os repertórios de participação dos movimentos e resistências sociais opostas às atividades extrativas.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE: consultas públicas; direito constitucional; democracia participativa; movimentos sociais; resistências sociais; conflitos socioambientais; Colômbia.

Introduction

In Colombia, popular consultations against the exploitation of subsoil resources offer an opportunity to study the complex relationships between constitutional law and participatory democracy, mainly from the perspective of social movements and resistances.1 As a result of the participatory turn generated by the 1991 Constitution, popular consultations expanded the mobilization repertoires available to citizens within the Colombian political regime.2 However, the use of this mechanism turned constitutional law in this country into a battlefield in which different sectors of the citizenry, multiple institutions, and extractive companies face each other to define the scope of participatory democracy.

During the last two decades, Latin America experienced an evident intensification of extractive activities. The magnitude of the resources derived from mining and oil extraction contributed to the imposition of a centralizing despotism that excludes the communities affected by these activities from the discussion about the development models that best suit their ways of life.3 The result has been the explosion of socio-environmental conflicts in the region (Bebbington, Fash, and Rogan 2019; Svampa 2019) and the use of the law by the actors involved to advance their objectives (Sieder, Montoya, and Bravo-Espinosa 2022).

The emergence of popular consultations in Latin America is a phenomenon parallel to the intensification of extractive activities, and it exemplifies the prominence that the law has acquired in socio-environmental conflicts in the region. Social movements and resistances use popular consultations to prohibit, through legislation, extractive activities in their territories. They also go to court to defend their right to influence public affairs through popular consultations. For their part, governments and extractive companies use the law in their legislative and judicial spheres to prevent citizen participation mechanisms from hindering the exploitation of non-renewable natural resources. Thus, through the law, popular consultations have become an institution in dispute (Walter and Urkidi 2017), as the Colombian case particularly demonstrates (Dietz 2018; McNeish 2017; Muñoz and Peña 2019).

The functioning of constitutional law as an instrument or obstacle to the deepening of democracy has been analyzed by different academic disciplines. For critical constitutional theory, constitutional law functions as a barrier of containment that suppresses the democratic expressions of the citizens. In this sense, it is seen as a tool of domination that domesticates democracy, allowing political and economic elites to defuse popular demands for change.4 However, political science and legal sociology highlight the politically ambiguous nature of constitutional law in its relationship with the struggles of social movements and resistances. Although constitutional law can function as an instrument at the service of political and social exclusion, on other occasions, it is used to construct discourses and design practices conducive to the disruption of the established order and the procurement of institutional spaces in which citizens can effectively participate.5

The political ambiguity of constitutional law is evident in the legal battle waged in Colombia around popular consultations. At first, constitutional law contributed to citizen empowerment. For a brief period, popular consultations were used to prevent extractive activities from taking place in multiple Colombian municipalities. This efficient use of popular consultations even obtained the support of the Constitutional Court, and it strengthened in the citizenry an idea of constitutional law as a tool at the service of participatory democracy. However, this period of empowerment was followed by a second moment of institutional reaction, during which the use of popular consultations as an effective mechanism of democratic participation ended. The Constitutional Court gave a radical turn to its jurisprudence by ruling that popular consultations could not be used to decide on the exploitation of subsoil resources in the country’s municipalities. In this way, constitutional law ceased to be useful for the objectives of social movements and resistances, and it became an instrument through which the national government and extractive companies hinder citizen participation in decisions about the development model applicable to their territories.

Even so, the relationship between constitutional law and participatory democracy is not exhausted in the previously mentioned ambiguity. The history of popular consultations in Colombia allows us to observe a third moment in this relationship: informal resistance.6 Once the institutional reaction ends citizen empowerment, the social movements and resistances opposed to the extractive development model are forced to challenge the authoritative interpretations of constitutional law by means other than those legally accepted. Outside of state law but imitating its forms, social movements and resistances maintain their opposition to extractive projects through the so-called legitimate popular consultations. Although these informal consultations do not produce legal effects that can be opposed to the Colombian state, they have earned a place within the resistance repertoires of institutionally silenced political actors.7 Their promoters use them to produce political and symbolic effects that contribute to maintaining citizen mobilization and protecting their territories and ways of life.

The dispute over popular consultations in Colombia is just one instance of a problem common to modern democracies: the tension between the stability that the law must generate to enable the political action of citizens and the tendency of legal forms to restrict political freedom and deactivate democratic participation (Arendt 2006). As long as this tension is not resolved in a manner that includes the aspirations of social movements and resistances to effective participation, the goal of channeling the exercise of citizen power through the formal institutions of constitutional law will remain unattainable (Neumann 1957). Constitutional theory, political science, and legal sociology cannot lose sight of this tension and of the practices to which citizens resort if they expect to respond to the eventual democratic closure of constitutional law. A detailed description of the complex relationships between constitutional law and the participation of social movements and resistances is essential to identify the problems of legitimation of contemporary democracies and offer alternatives.

This article describes the history of popular consultations against extractive activities in Colombia. It aims to illustrate how constitutional law affects the democratic participation repertoires available to social movements and resistances. The first part briefly explains the participatory turn in Colombian constitutional law from 1991 onwards. The second part describes the history of popular consultations against extractive activities. This description is developed in a sequence of three moments: citizen empowerment, institutional reaction, and informal resistance. The reconstruction of this history is based on the academic literature on popular consultations and the intensification of extractive activities in Colombia and Latin America, as well as on the review of primary sources in which the points of view of the main actors involved are collected: social movements and resistances, on the one hand, and state institutions, on the other. The third part critically analyzes how public institutions have faced the tension between constitutional law and participatory democracy. Finally, some conclusions are offered.

1. The Participatory Turn in Colombian Constitutional Law

The 1991 Constitution sought to respond to the crisis of the representative democracy established in Colombia by the 1886 Constitution. The representative model, a structural constant of Colombian constitutionalism, gave rise to a tyranny of the representatives that suppressed democracy (Valencia Villa 2010). This crisis initiated a process of constitutional change that, among other objectives, aimed to overcome the restrictions that this system imposed on the political participation of broad sectors of the citizenry. The popular mandate that the Constituent Assembly received through the Seventh Ballot was clear: to commit to participatory democracy and adopt the necessary mechanisms so that citizens could effectively influence political decision-making (Figueroa 2020; Lemaitre 2009).

Colombia’s turn toward participatory democracy was not exceptional. The dissatisfaction generated by the inadequate functioning of representative democracy has driven this type of change in multiple contemporary political regimes (Altman 2019). The adoption of participatory institutions and practices is seen as a way to break the monopoly imposed by representatives on fundamental political decisions, empower citizens, and close the gap between governors and the governed (Bobbio 1986; Della Porta 2013; Macpherson 1977). However, participatory democracy can also contribute to legitimizing a discredited political class, as illustrated by the Colombian case. The participatory turn of the 1991 Constitution was accepted by the traditional elites in a context that demanded compromises, given that their control over the political regime was openly challenged by emerging forces that presented themselves in the Constituent Assembly to demand the deepening of democracy in the country (Barczak 2001).

Thus, participatory democracy came to be considered “the key and the common thread of the Constitutional Charter” (Uribe 2002, 194). The preamble announced the commitment of Colombians to a “democratic and participatory” legal framework. Article 1 established that Colombia is a social state of law organized in a “democratic, participatory, and pluralistic” manner. Similarly, Article 3 stated that “sovereignty resides exclusively in the people,” who may exercise it directly or through their representatives. This declaration of principles was reflected in concrete institutional terms. While Article 40 established the fundamental right to political participation, Article 103 stipulated that voting, plebiscite, referendum, popular consultation, open town hall, legislative initiative, and mandate revocation are “mechanisms for the participation of the people in the exercise of their sovereignty.” In this way, the 1991 Constitution inaugurated a new type of participatory constitutionalism in Latin America that profoundly influenced the constitutions later adopted in countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia (Noguera and Navas 2016).

The 1991 Constitution, compared to the 1886 Constitution, expanded the forms of political expression accepted by the regime. However, the promise of a vigorous participatory democracy was not fulfilled during the first two decades of its validity. Although this modified the structures of opportunity for the political mobilization of citizens, the truth is that the new mechanisms of participation soon proved ineffective in a political context dominated by violence, clientelism, and corruption (Uribe 2002). Therefore, Colombian participatory democracy was relegated to informal scenarios, as exemplified by the experiences of peace communities (Uribe 2004) and territorial constituent assemblies (Hincapié 2008; Santamaría n.d.). It was not until 2013 that formal participation mechanisms began to show signs of their political efficacy, when popular consultations emerged as an instrument at the service of communities opposed to the mining-energy development model promoted by the national government.8

2. Three Moments in the History of Popular Consultations Against Extractive Activities
   1. Citizen Empowerment

The emergence of popular consultations as an effective participation mechanism cannot be explained by appealing solely to the opportunities offered by the participatory turn in the 1991 Constitution. By 2013, it was already evident that the advance of the mining-energy policy had taken place without rigorous compliance with the rules that required the participation of communities in the environmental licensing processes of extractive projects (Negrete 2013). It was impossible to observe a direct link between the exploitation of subsoil resources and the satisfaction of the general interest or protection of the rights of local communities (Coronado and Beltrán 2012). Thus, social movements and resistances found it necessary to look for alternatives to respond to this participation deficit. Consequently, popular consultations previously carried out in countries such as Peru, Argentina, and Guatemala, and the dissemination strategies through which social movements share their experiences and export their practices, influenced the sudden use of an institution ignored for more than two decades in Colombia (Dietz 2018; Walter and Urkidi 2017).

The successful use of consultations in these countries opened the door for sectors of the citizenry opposed to the exploitation of subsoil resources to explore the alternatives available in Colombian law, mainly in the statutory law on political participation (Congreso de la República de Colombia 1994a, Title V). This law establishes that municipalities, at the initiative of their mayor, can resort to popular consultations to make binding decisions on their affairs. As long as the text of the consultation receives the favorable opinion of the municipal council and approves the control of constitutionality carried out by the competent court, and as long as voters exceed a third of the electoral census and the support of half plus one of the votes is obtained, the decision of the citizens must be implemented by the authorities.

The popular consultation held on July 28, 2013, in the municipality of Piedras, Tolima, was the first of its kind in Colombia. Multiple sectors of the citizenry, including large rice farmers, local politicians, students linked to environmental movements, and community groups, organized around a politics of anticipation (McNeish 2017). They agreed on the need to protect water sources and the agricultural vocation of the municipality against the possible negative impacts of the mega-mining project of La Colosa, of the multinational AngloGold Ashanti (Comité Ambiental de Piedras 2017; Figueroa and Winograd 2022). With the support of the mayor and the Municipal Council, 98 % of the citizens of Piedras expressed at the polls their willingness to prevent extractive activities from taking place in their territory, which set a precedent that influenced the mobilization strategies of other social resistances in the country. In the municipality of Tauramena, Casanare, citizens also went to the polls overwhelmingly on December 15, 2013, to limit oil exploitation in their territory and protect their water sources (Comité por la Defensa del Agua 2017).

However, the initial success of Piedras and Tauramena could not be easily replicated in other municipalities.9 The case of Pijao, Quindío, illustrates the difficulties of social movements and resistances in empowering themselves through popular consultations (Amar Es Más 2017). Although this municipality began the process of convening a popular consultation in 2014, this could only be carried out in 2017. The opposition to the use of popular consultations by extractive companies and the national government through institutions such as the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Mines, the National Mining Agency, or the National Hydrocarbons Agency gave rise to a legal battle over the legality of municipal prohibitions on extractive activities.

The national government insisted that the municipalities, even by the mechanism of popular consultation, did not have legal powers to prohibit the exploitation of subsoil resources in their territories. Articles 332 and 334 of the 1991 Constitution establish that the state “is the owner of the subsoil and non-renewable natural resources” and that, as general director of the economy, it is incumbent upon it to intervene in the exploitation of natural resources. Articles 360 and 361 indicate that the exploitation of non-renewable natural resources generates economic compensation in the form of royalties, which must be used to improve the social conditions of the population and which, according to the government, cannot be dispensed with. In contrast, the legal experts who supported social movements and resistances insisted on the autonomy that Article 287 grants to territorial entities and on the competencies attributed to the municipalities by Articles 311 and 313 to order territorial development and regulate land use. They also appealed to Article 79 of the Constitution, which enshrines the right of citizens to participate in decisions that may affect the environment, and to Article 33 of Law 136 of 1994 (Congreso de la República de Colombia 1994b), which establishes the obligation to hold consultations when mining or other projects affect land use or threaten to transform traditional economic activities in the municipality. Thus, the use of popular consultations to oppose extractive activities was conditioned to the outcome of a legal dispute over the competencies of the municipalities and the national government.

While Pijao’s case was being debated in the courts, the Congress of the Republic issued a new statutory law on political participation that significantly modified the mechanism of popular consultations (Congreso de la República de Colombia 2015). It provided that this participation mechanism could only be used for issues “that are within the competence of the respective corporation or territorial entity” and explicitly prohibited its use to decide on matters of “exclusive initiative of the government.” However, despite this clearly restrictive modification of the scope of popular consultations, Congress also adopted some provisions that facilitated the use of this mechanism by social movements and resistances, mainly by allowing consultations to be called by citizen initiative, provided that 10 % of the electoral roll so wishes.10 These legislative modifications would significantly impact the possibilities of Colombian citizens in the future to oppose extractive activities through popular consultation.

Finally, the legal dispute over Pijao’s consultation reached the Constitutional Court (Sentencia T-445 de 2016). The Court wondered whether municipalities could prohibit or exclude mining activities from their territories in exercise of their powers to regulate land uses. According to the Court, the problem to be resolved revolved around the conflict between the competencies of municipalities and the national government. Popular consultations, as far as they are used within the scope of municipal powers, would be valid to oppose extractive activities. However, to reach this conclusion, the Court had to determine whether the powers of the municipality of Pijao were exercised under the terms of Article 288 of the Constitution, respecting the principles of concurrence, coordination, and subsidiarity. The principles of concurrence and coordination refer to the fact that decisions on the exploitation of subsoil resources must be made with the participation of all bodies related to the matter, whether at the national or local level, and they must result from a collaborative effort that contributes to materializing the purposes of the state. Likewise, the principle of subsidiarity refers to the fact that the exercise of state functions must be carried out from the level closest to the citizenry and that the central level can only enter into the affairs of the lower instances when these are unable to carry out their functions.

In the absence of agreement between the national and local levels, the Court decided that the political will of municipalities would prevail since it is there where the negative impacts of extractive activities are directly experienced, such as the contamination of soil and water sources, their effects on the health of the population, or the impact on the agricultural vocation of the municipalities. In this sense, the participation of citizens through the mechanism of popular consultation is of special constitutional importance, given that it prevents decisions at the central level from imposing excessive costs on the communities in which extractive activities are carried out. For the Court, it is impossible to clearly fragment a territory between a subsoil owned by the state and a soil whose regulation is the responsibility of municipalities. The life of the communities on the territory does not admit a fictitious separation between soil and subsoil, as evidenced by the negative impact that mining sometimes has on water and air. Therefore, the principle of subsidiarity prevails on this occasion and empowers citizens to follow different paths from those prescribed by the development model defended by the national government (Olarte 2021).

Thanks to this decision, the citizens of Pijao went to the polls on July 9, 2017, to oppose the implementation of extractive projects with 98 % of the votes. On the same day, the objectives of the citizens of Arbeláez, Cundinamarca, materialized, where opposition to extractive activities also reached 98 % of the votes (Colectivo Socio-Ambiental de Arbeláez Guacaná 2017). This ruling also allowed for a popular consultation in the municipality of Cajamarca, Tolima, where citizens opposed the mining exploitation of the territory on March 26, 2017 (Conciencia Campesina 2017). In the remainder of the year, popular consultations were held successfully in Cumaral, Meta; Cabrera, Cundinamarca; and the municipalities of Sucre and Jesús María in the department of Santander. The same happened in 2018 in Fusagasugá, Cundinamarca. With the Constitutional Court’s support for the principle of participatory democracy, citizens added the popular consultation mechanism to their repertoire of strategies for environmental protection and the promotion of alternative development models (Montenegro 2017). During this brief moment of citizen empowerment, Colombian social movements and resistances imprinted a “constituent” character to their participatory rights, as they used popular consultations to effectively influence the forms of organization and the distribution of political and economic power in their territories.11

2. Institutional Reaction

The empowerment of citizens through popular consultations did not come easily. Some institutions, such as the Attorney General’s Office and the National Registry of Civil Status, quickly aligned themselves with the position of the national government and the extractive companies to hinder the use of popular consultations. This gave rise to a constellation of shared interests among different institutions at the national level to defend the extractive development model in the face of the demands of social movements and resistances. The Attorney General’s Office, for example, frequently used its disciplinary powers to intimidate mayors and councilors who promoted consultations under the argument that they lacked the competence to intervene in the exploitation of the subsoil. This strategy did not work in Piedras, but it did manage to delay the consultation in Cajamarca and hinder the process that was also starting in Ibagué, in the department of Tolima (Dietz 2018; McNeish 2017). This intervention by the Attorney General’s Office helps explain the “silence of consultations” between 2014 and 2015. After the initial success of Piedras and Tauramena, where the initiative for consultations was of government origin by law, few local officials were willing to face possible disciplinary sanctions. However, this changed with the new citizen participation law of 2015. The inclusion of citizen-initiated consultations allowed social movements and resistances to reactivate these processes in their respective municipalities, several of which culminated successfully in 2017 and 2018 (Muñoz and Peña 2019, 38).12

The Registry also played an obstructive role. Multiple consultation processes did not go to the polls because this institution claimed a lack of money to finance them. The Registry excused itself by pointing out that the resources came from the Ministry of Finance, and it was indicated that consultations should be paid for by the municipalities, not by the national government. These institutions also hid behind the legal uncertainty surrounding popular consultations and denied disbursements until there was clarity about the validity of this mechanism against extractive activities. Thus, by 2018, at least eleven popular consultations were suspended due to the impossibility of financing them (Muñoz and Peña 2019, 39). Social movements and resistances saw these strategies as a clear violation of the right to political participation by the state, to which they would eventually respond by resorting to informal practices.

However, the definitive blow to popular consultations against extractive activities was dealt by the Constitutional Court, the same institution that supported the use of this participation mechanism in 2016. In 2018, the Court turned its jurisprudence around. In a ruling that decided the lawsuit filed by the multinational Mansarovar Energy against the popular consultation that prohibited oil exploitation in Cumaral, it established that municipalities do not have the competence to prohibit the exploration and exploitation of subsoil resources, not even through a popular consultation (Sentencia SU-095 de 2018). In the opinion of the majority of the Justices, the tension between the competencies constitutionally assigned to municipalities and the national government cannot be resolved by giving the municipalities the last word. These decisions, said the Court, must be made in a “coordinated and concurrent” manner between the central and local authorities, without giving precedence to the position of either. With this argument, the Court concluded that popular consultations are not an adequate participation mechanism to resolve this type of conflict since they grant veto power to municipalities, which ignores the competencies of the national government.

The Court’s decision recognizes that there is a “deficit of constitutional protection in terms of citizen participation mechanisms,” especially regarding the exploitation of non-renewable natural resources, as warned about by social movements and resistances in the country, the legal experts supporting them, and the Constitutional Court itself in its 2016 decision. However, its way of dealing with this deficit ended up deepening it, firstly, because the Court returned to the legal fiction that allows understanding soil and subsoil as separate elements of the territory. In this way, it concluded that the competence assigned to municipalities to regulate land uses finds its limit when decisions are made that prevent the exploitation of subsoil resources. According to the Court, decisions of this type disregard the powers of the national government and the state’s ownership of non-renewable natural resources. For this reason, the veto power derived from the binding nature of popular consultations is inadmissible. Citizen participation cannot disregard the principles of coordination and concurrence applicable to state decisions. In this sense, the Court insisted on channeling citizen participation through the spaces provided for it in the processes of granting titles for extractive activities and in environmental licensing procedures, which have proven to be insufficient to ensure that such participation is effective (Olarte 2021, 110).

Secondly, the Court reinforced this weak conception of citizen participation by emphasizing the public utility or social interest the national government must pursue by constitutional mandate. From its perspective, the royalties generated by the exploitation of subsoil resources are fundamental to guarantee the purposes of the state, mainly the improvement of the social conditions of the population. Allowing municipalities to prohibit extractive activities in their territories would go against the majority interests of the national population since the resources necessary to guarantee their rights would be reduced by the unilateral decisions of the municipalities. Through this line of argument, the Court found a justification that allowed it to exclude completely the principle of subsidiarity from its analysis. While this was used by the same institution in 2016 to give the municipalities the last word when the instances of concurrence and coordination fail, on this occasion, the Court eliminated it from its analysis (Olarte 2021, 111). The damages caused by extractive activities to local populations thus became a burden that they must accept in the name of the general interest or the rights of the majorities.13 In this way, the Court ended up ignoring the two dimensions of the fair exercise of sovereignty over natural resources: on the one hand, the dimension of political legitimacy, which can only be obtained by guaranteeing the political rights of citizens to effectively influence these decisions; and, on the other, the dimension of equitable distribution of benefits, given that it imposes a disproportionate burden on local communities to satisfy the interests of the majorities (Gümplová 2020).

Finally, the Court sought to remedy the participation deficit deepened by itself by urging the Congress of the Republic to design a participation mechanism that did not disregard the principles of concurrence and coordination. However, four years after the ruling, this did not happen. Although two bills were presented in 2021 before the First Commission of the House of Representatives that sought to fill the void generated by the Constitutional Court, one of them authored by the National Environmental Movement,14 they were quickly shelved.15 While this was happening, the same Court finished burying the mechanism of popular consultations against extractive activities with a new ruling that declared the unconstitutionality of Article 33 of Law 136 of 1994 (Congreso de la República de Colombia 1994b), which provided that municipalities should hold popular consultations when the development of mining projects threatened to generate significant changes in land use (Sentencia C-053 de 2019). With these decisions, the Constitutional Court ceased to be perceived as an ally of social movements and resistances against extractive activities, as evidenced by the feeling of impotence of some of their leaders in the face of the disregard of popular decisions (Figueroa and Winograd 2022).

3. Informal Resistance

Despite the legal defeat experienced during the moment of institutional reaction, social movements and resistances continue to demand their right to participate in decisions regarding the exploitation of natural resources in their territories. In several Latin American countries, the hegemony of the extractive development model has been challenged by “unthinkable social resistances” (Svampa 2019, 17). Colombia is no exception. Sectors of the Colombian citizenry opposed to the implementation of extractive activities have developed multiple resistance practices to “contain, block or keep at bay everything that does not allow a community to develop its ways of life and culture.” Their resistance, however, is not purely reactive. It is also put into practice as “a utopian way of dreaming the future, while at the same time making visible and generating initiatives and ways of life that had been under the cloak of marginality and neglect” (Roa 2012, 400-402).

Popular consultations represent only one facet of the resistance against a development model perceived as imposed in many parts of Colombia. This participation mechanism empowered social movements and resistances for a short period, during which it functioned as an effective advocacy tool. However, the reaction of institutions such as the General Attorney’s Office, the Registry, the national government, and the Constitutional Court, together with the inaction of the Congress of the Republic, generated the need to think of alternative forms of mobilization outside the channels established by state law. This is the case of the municipalities of the Colombian Massif, on the border of the departments of Cauca and Nariño. There, legitimate popular consultations have been incorporated into the political repertoire of communities as an informal practice against the silence imposed by state institutions.

Legitimate popular consultations differ from their formal counterpart in that they cannot generate binding orders for the state. Although they are implemented outside the channels authorized by the legal system, they meticulously follow the forms provided by the official law. Through them, the legitimacy of local political decisions is insisted upon, conceived as “expressions of popular sovereignty that must be heard despite what institutions such as the Constitutional Court may say.” The communities that turn to them prefer that socio-environmental conflicts be resolved through institutional channels and that their decisions have legal backing. However, the imposition of the extractive model and the political silencing resulting from Constitutional Court rulings have led social movements and resistances in the Colombian Massif to perceive the central powers “more as a threat than as guarantors of their rights.” Even without being legally binding, legitimate popular consultations demonstrate the absence of community support for extractive projects and send a political message that neither the state nor the extractive companies can easily ignore (Figueroa and Winograd 2022).

These consultations originated in San Lorenzo, Nariño, as a response to different forms of institutional reaction. On the one hand, the initiative sought to evade the obstacles of the Registry and the Ministry of Finance, which refused to finance the popular consultation process in the municipality. On the other hand, it sought to generate a political and symbolic event to question the ending of the constitutional right to democratic participation following the decision of the Constitutional Court that invalidated the use of popular consultations. With these objectives in mind, the community decided to organize the consultation autonomously. To this end, they deployed a variety of actions: securing resources, organizing the voting process, educational campaigns to publicly discuss the environmental and cultural implications of extractive activities, as well as inviting external guarantors to supervise the process, including the Electoral Observation Mission (MOE, for its initials in Spanish) and the Ombudsman’s Office. Finally, citizens went to the polls on November 25, 2018, and 98 % of voters said no to extractive activities in the territory (Muñoz and Peña 2019, 40).

The same happened on August 3, 2019, in Mercaderes, Cauca. Between 2013 and 2014, the Gran Tierra Energy Colombia Limited company advanced hydrocarbon exploration activities in the municipality. This intervention led to the disappearance of multiple bodies of water, as indicated by social organizations present in the community. Illegal mining activities were also carried out, severely impacting the Sambingo River, which triggered alarms about the need to protect the municipality’s water sources. With the help of local authorities, this led the citizens to schedule a formal popular consultation for February 4, 2018. However, as in San Lorenzo, the Registry claimed a lack of resources; thus, the consultation was suspended. The citizens then resorted to the precedent of the legitimate popular consultation held in San Lorenzo to affirm their rejection of extractive activities and their will to protect Mercaderes’ peasant tradition (Rojas 2020).

Legitimate popular consultations thus became a practice of informal resistance, widely spread among the municipalities of the Colombian Massif. The peasant communities of this region have a solid associative tradition through which they mobilize to promote more sustainable relationships with nature and its resources. For this, they turned to the organizational figure of agri-food peasant territories: fourteen municipalities in the north of Nariño and three municipalities in the south of Cauca decided to found the Territorio Campesino Agroalimentario del Macizo [Agri-Food Peasant Territory of the Massif] (TCAM) (Echeverri 2017). Through this platform, the experiences of San Lorenzo and Mercaderes were discussed and adopted by six other municipalities: San Pablo, Colón, La Cruz, Belén, Cartago, and Florencia. On December 19, 2021, more than 30,000 inhabitants of these municipalities went to the polls to express their rejection of extractive activities in their territories (Redacción Colombia 2021).

These informal practices in the communities of the Colombian Massif show that constitutional law continues to be a central reference for citizen mobilization. First, because these practices are a form of protest in light of the official weakening of popular consultations and the right to political participation. Second, because they are carried out following the forms provided for by constitutional law. Third, because they are political strategies implemented in the name of the materialization of constitutional principles, such as popular sovereignty, territorial autonomy, and environmental protection. Finally, because despite their informal nature, the communities that resort to these practices still expect that their message will be received as a binding order for local authorities, such as mayors and municipal councils. Despite the formally authorized interpretations of the Constitutional Court on the scope of participatory democracy in the context of the conflicts generated by extractive activities, the communities of the Colombian Massif continue the debate from the margins that official law seeks to outline.

Informality, in a case like this, allows us to draw attention to the unfulfilled promises of the 1991 Constitution and to the need to look for alternatives so that citizen participation is no longer uncomfortable for state institutions. Paradoxically, after the decision of the Constitutional Court in 2018, participatory democracy returned to the place it was in during the first two decades of the Colombian Constitution. Relegated to spaces of informality, the discovery of popular consultations by social movements and resistances opposed to the extractive development model illuminated the possibility of vigorous and effective democratic participation within institutional channels. However, after a brief period of citizen empowerment, state institutions once again pushed citizen participation to the margins of informality. From there, the peasant communities of the Colombian Massif display their resistance to the imposition of an official political and economic order that ignores and delegitimizes the vernacular and alternative ways of life of the peasant communities.16

3. Tension between constitutional law and participatory democracy

Although the history of popular consultations against extractive activities in Colombia demonstrates the politically ambiguous nature of constitutional law, it also seems to confirm skepticism regarding its potential to empower citizens definitively. Despite the participatory turn experienced in this country in 1991 and the momentary support of the Constitutional Court for the effective use of popular consultations, Colombian constitutional law ended up excluding a sector of citizens from decisions that impact their territories. From the formal perspective of constitutional law, social movements and resistances opposed to the extractive development model have been relegated to a passive role, powerless in the face of the control of state institutions over multiple social spheres (Wolin 2016). As the Colombian case shows, the perspective of a people in action or a citizenry mobilized to exercise popular sovereignty directly is deeply uncomfortable for constitutional law (Canovan 2005). The promise of vigorous participation, in which state institutions contribute to bringing power closer to citizens where they need it most, is, for now, far from being fulfilled.

This story shows a “hollowing out” of citizen participation rights, similar to what has occurred in other countries such as Ecuador (Noguera and Navas 2016, 213). This consists in the loss of efficacy of the political rights of local communities under the prevalence of a centralist logic that subjects participation mechanisms to a problematic conception of the general interest. In the context of socio-environmental conflicts related to extractive activities, Colombian constitutional law gave rise to a democratic closure that limits the political action repertoires of social movements and resistances and pushes them to act outside the margins defined by the legal system. Thus, the tension indicated by Arendt (2006) as inherent to modern democracies is evident in Colombia. When state institutions privilege a conception of constitutional law that restricts political freedom and deactivates participation, the sectors of citizens affected by this democratic closure are forced to fight for their rights through extralegal means that are insufficient to guarantee them and that instill in them perceptions of exclusion. In this sense, Colombian constitutional law needs to reconsider its approach to participatory democracy.

The Congress of the Republic can still respond to the call of the Constitutional Court to design a participation mechanism that responds to the tensions between the exploitation of subsoil resources and the environmental protection of the territories. However, whatever mechanism is adopted, it will only empower citizens if social movements and resistance participate in its design (Falleti and Riofrancos 2018). For its part, the Constitutional Court would have to explore its own jurisprudence to enhance the scope of participatory democracy. In the absence of legislative changes in this direction, it would be worth resorting to judicial channels to initiate an in-depth debate on the implications of the “universal and expansive character” of participatory democracy ( Sentencias C-180 de 1994 and C-150 de 2015). The Court has understood that political participation is universal because it involves various scenarios, processes, and places, both public and private. Likewise, its expansive nature implies that it has to be progressively expanded into new areas to deepen its validity. In this sense, informal practices of citizen participation, such as legitimate popular consultations, should not necessarily be conceived as lacking state recognition. They demonstrate the plurality of practices that citizens resort to when seeking to materialize the promises of the 1991 Constitution. In developing these principles, The Constitutional Court itself has granted legal protection to informal participation.17 Taking seriously the universal and expansive nature of participatory democracy would be a first step to re-legitimize Colombian constitutional law in the face of the social movements and resistances that it has relegated to the borders of the legal system.

Conclusion

The history of popular consultations against extractive activities in Colombia illustrates a broad constellation of relationships between constitutional law and the democratic participation of social movements and resistances. The Colombian case shows that these relationships go beyond the political ambiguity indicated by political science and legal sociology, according to which, in some cases, constitutional law functions as a containment barrier that suppresses the democratic expressions of citizens and prevents political and social change and, in others, it contributes to citizen empowerment. These two types of relationships are essential to describing the role of constitutional law in the context of Colombian socio-environmental conflicts. However, citizen empowerment and institutional reaction do not exhaust the spectrum of relationships between constitutional law and citizen participation. The emergence of legitimate popular consultations shows that the legal battle over the scope of participatory democracy remains open under the pressure that social movements and resistances exert through informal practices.

In Colombia, popular consultations continue to be a disputed institution, even after the elimination of participation rights through constitutional jurisprudence. Democratic participation at the local level has not been suppressed by the centralizing excesses of the national government and the Constitutional Court, nor by the absence of political will in Congress to remedy the participation deficit in Colombian constitutional law. From the margins of the official legal system, the political mobilization of social movements and resistances remains uncomfortable for the institutions that are competent to define the constitutional scope of participatory democracy. Not only for demanding their right to live under development models close to their culture, traditions, and interests, but also because from there they exert pressure so that the promises of greater participation of the 1991 Constitution do not remain on paper.

References

1. Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. London: Profile Books.
2. Altman, David. 2005. “Democracia directa en el continente americano: ¿autolegitimación gubernamental o censura ciudadana?” Política y Gobierno 12 (2): 203-232.
3. Altman, David. 2019. Citizenship and Contemporary Direct Democracy. Cambridge: CUP.
4. Amar Es Más. 2017. “Pijao, montañas que respiran Libertad.” Semillas 69/70: 76-78.
5. Arendt, Hannah. 2006. On Revolution. New York: Penguin.
6. Arias, Jaime. 2016. “La minería y los territorios en Colombia. Tensiones entre las visiones de desarrollo nacional, local y sectorial.” In Minería y desarrollo, vol. V: Historia y gobierno del territorio minero, edited by Juan Carlos Henao and Sebastián Díaz, 269-313. Bogotá: Universidad Externado de Colombia.
7. Barczak, Monica. 2001. “Representation by Consultation? The Rise of Direct Democracy in Latin America.” Latin American Politics and Society 43 (3): 37-59.https://doi.org/10.2307/3177143
8. Bebbington, Anthony, Benjamin Fash, and John Rogan. 2019. “Socio-Environmental Conflict, Political Settlements, and Mining Governance: A Cross-Border Comparison, El Salvador and Honduras.” Latin American Perspectives 46 (2): 84-106. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X18813567
9. Bobbio, Norberto. 1986. El futuro de la democracia. Ciudad de México: FCE.
10. Canovan, Margaret. 2005. The People. Cambridge: Polity Press.
11. Christel, Lucas. 2020. “Resistencias sociales y legislaciones mineras en las provincias argentinas.” Política y Gobierno 27 (1): 1-22.
12. Colectivo Socio-Ambiental de Arbeláez Guacaná. 2017. “La consulta popular de Arbeláez dijo NO.” Semillas 69/70: 79-81.
13. Comité Ambiental de Piedras. 2017. “Nuestra consulta popular en Piedras, Tolima.” Semillas 69/70: 66-68.
14. Comité por la Defensa del Agua. 2017. “La odisea que originó la consulta popular de Tauramena, Casanare.” Semillas 69/70: 69-71.
15. Conciencia Campesina. 2017. “Cajamarca: Tolima votó NO en la consulta popular.” Semillas 69/70: 72-75.
16. Congreso de la República de Colombia. 1994a. Ley 134. Diario Oficial CXXX (41373), May 31, 1994. https://www.suin-juriscol.gov.co/viewDocument.asp?id=1648559
17. Congreso de la República de Colombia. 1994b. Ley 136. Diario Oficial CXXX (41377), June 2, 1994. https://www.suin-juriscol.gov.co/viewDocument.asp?ruta=Leyes/1648916
18. Congreso de la República de Colombia. 2015. Ley 1757. Diario Oficial CL (49565), June 6, 2015. https://www.suin-juriscol.gov.co/viewDocument.asp?ruta=Leyes/30019924
19. Congreso de la República de Colombia, Cámara de Representantes. 2021a. Proyecto de Ley 107. https://www.camara.gov.co/participacion-en-contextosextractivos
20. Congreso de la República de Colombia, Cámara de Representantes. 2021b. Proyecto de Ley 121 de 2021. https://www.camara.gov.co/participacion-encontextos-extractivos
21. Coronado, Sergio, and Adriana Beltrán. 2012. “Minería, instituciones jurídicas y acción comunitaria local.” In Minería, territorio y conflicto en Colombia, edited by Catalina Toro, Julio Fierro, Sergio Coronado, and Tatiana Roa, 263-282. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
22. Corte Constitucional de Colombia. 1994. Sentencia C-180 (Magistrado ponente: Hernando Herrera Vergara). https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/1994/C-180-94.htm
23. Corte Constitucional de Colombia. 2001. Sentencia T-637 (Magistrado ponente: Manuel José Cepeda Espinosa). https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/2001/T-637-01.htm
24. Corte Constitucional de Colombia. 2015. Sentencia C-150 (Magistrado ponente: Mauricio González Cuervo). https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/2015/C-150-15.htm
25. Corte Constitucional de Colombia. 2016. Sentencia T-445 (Magistrado ponente: Jorge Iván Palacio Palacio). https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/2016/T-445-16.htm
26. Corte Constitucional de Colombia. 2018. Sentencia SU-095 (Magistrada ponente: Cristina Pardo Schlesinger). https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/2018/SU095-18.htm
27. Corte Constitucional de Colombia. 2019. Sentencia C-053 (Magistrada ponente: Cristina Pardo Schlesinger). https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/2019/C-053-19.htm
28. Della Porta, Donatella. 2013. Can Democracy Be Saved? Participation, Deliberation, and Social Movements. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
29. Dietz, Kristina. 2018. “Consultas populares mineras en Colombia: condiciones de su realización y significados políticos. El caso de La Colosa.” Colombia Internacional 93: 93-117. https://doi.org/10.7440/colombiaint93.2018.04
30. Echeverri, Juan Alejandro. 2017. “Territorios campesinos agroalimentarios: reforma agraria a pequeña escala”. Coordinador Nacional Agrario, December 5, 2017. https://www.cna-colombia.org/territorios-campesinos-agroalimentariosreforma-agraria-a-pequena-escala/
31. Epp, Charles. 1998. The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
32. Escobar, Arturo. 2012. Encountering Development. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press.
33. Falleti, Tulia, and Thea N. Riofrancos. 2018. “Endogenous Participation: Strengthening Prior Consultation in Extractive Economies.” World Politics 70 (1): 86-121. http://doi.org/10.1017/S004388711700020X
34. Figueroa, Nicolás. 2020. “El pueblo como poder constituido: democracia participativa y separación de poderes en Colombia.” In Poder constituyente a debate: perspectivas desde América Latina, edited by Antonio Barreto, Nicolás Figueroa, and Jorge González, 117-168. Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes.
35. Figueroa, Nicolás, and Miguel Winograd. 2022. “La democracia ambiental: los colombianos que se organizaron contra el extractivismo.” El País, May 20, 2022. https://elpais.com/america-colombia/2022-05-20/la-democracia-ambiental-loscolombianos-que-se-organizaron-contra-el-extractivismo.html
36. Garay, Luis Jorge. 2013. “Globalización/glocalización, soberanía y gobernanza: a propósito del cambio climático y el extractivismo minero.” In Minería en Colombia: fundamentos para superar el modelo extractivista, edited by Luis Jorge Garay, 9-22. Bogotá: Contraloría General de la República.
37. González, Jorge. 2011. “¿El poder para la gente? Una introducción a los debates sobre el constitucionalismo popular.” In Constitucionalismo popular, edited by Jorge González, 13-60. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre.
38. Gümplová, Petra. 2020. “Sovereignty over Natural Resources – A Normative Interpretation.” Global Constitutionalism 9 (1): 7-37. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2045381719000224
39. Hincapié, Sandra. 2008. Democracia y poder constituyente. Movimiento constituyente en Antioquia. Medellín: IPC.
40. Lemaitre, Julieta. 2009. El derecho como conjuro. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre.
41. Macpherson, C. B. 1977. The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
42. McCann, Michael. 2006. “Law and Social Movements: Contemporary Perspectives.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2: 17-38. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.2.081805.105917
43. McNeish, John-Andrew. 2017. “A Vote to Derail Extraction: Popular Consultation and Resource Sovereignty in Tolima, Colombia.” Third World Quarterly 38 (5): 1128-1145. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1283980
44. Miller, Kenneth P. 2009. Direct Democracy and the Courts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
45. Montenegro, Luis Carlos. 2017. “Participación comunitaria en la protección del territorio: de las consultas populares a la toma de decisiones comunitarias.” Semillas 69/70: 61-65.
46. Movimiento Nacional Ambiental. n.d. Tejiendo resistencia por la defensa de nuestros territorios. https://co.boell.org/sites/default/files/cartilla_movimiento_nacional_ambiental.pdf
47. Muñoz, María Teresa, and Juliana Peña. 2019. Estudio de caso: auge y decadencia de las consultas populares como mecanismo de participación y refrendación de la voz ciudadana en el sector extractivo en Colombia. Bogotá: Foro Nacional por Colombia.
48. Negrete, Rodrigo. 2013. “Derechos, minería y conflictos. Aspectos normativos.” In Minería en Colombia: fundamentos para superar el modelo extractivista, edited by Luis Jorge Garay, 23-54. Bogotá: Contraloría General de la República.
49. Neumann, Franz. 1957. The Democratic and the Authoritarian State. Glencoe: The Free Press.
50. Noguera, Albert, and Marco Navas. 2016. Los nuevos derechos de participación en Ecuador: ¿derechos constituyentes o derechos constitucionales? Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch.
51. Olarte, María Carolina. 2021. “Entre la fragmentación y el entrelazamiento: una agenda para la investigación de la propiedad pública a partir de la distinción entre subsuelo y suelo.” In Propiedad sobre la tierra en Colombia: viejos y nuevos dilemas sobre la distribución, edited by Helena Alviar and Tatiana Alfonso, 95-130. Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes.
52. Pardo, Cristina. 2011. “Reflexiones sobre el carácter participativo de nuestra democracia.” In Retos de la democracia y de la participación ciudadana, edited by Rocío Araújo and María Lucía Torres, 55-81. Bogotá: Universidad del Rosario.
53. Parker, Richard D. 1993. “‘Here, the People Rule’: A Constitutional Populist Manifesto.” Valparaiso University Law Review 27 (3): 531-584. https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol27/iss3/1
54. Ramírez, Gonzalo y Floralba Padrón. 2016. “La consulta popular frente a proyectos de exploración y explotación minera.” In Minería y desarrollo, vol. IV: Minería y comunidades: impactos, conflictos y participación ciudadana, edited by Juan Carlos Henao and Ana Carolina González, 415-463. Bogotá: Universidad Externado de Colombia.
55. Redacción Colombia. 2021. “Comunidades del Macizo Colombiano le dicen No a la extracción minera.” El Espectador, December 20, 2021. https://www.elespectador.com/colombia/mas-regiones/comunidades-del-macizo-colombiano-le-dicen-no-a-la-extraccion-minera/
56. Roa, Tatiana. 2012. “Palabras para narrar la resistencia: las luchas por el agua y el territorio.” In Minería, territorio y conflicto en Colombia, edited by Catalina Toro, Julio Fierro, Sergio Coronado, and Tatiana Roa, 399-412. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
57. Rojas, Ángela Daniela. 2020. Expresiones de la gestión comunitaria del agua. Bogotá: Censat Agua Viva.
58. Rojas, Héctor. 2019. “¿Por qué no un poder de veto sobre la explotación del subsuelo?” Revista Digital de Derecho Administrativo 22: 203-218. https://doi.org/10.18601/21452946.n22.09
59. Sanín, Ricardo. 2012. Teoría crítica constitucional II. Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.
60. Santamaría, Camila. n.d. “Las asambleas constituyentes territoriales en Colombia: una construcción de democracia desde abajo”. IRG. http://www.institutgouvernance.org/es/analyse/fiche-analyse-402.html
61. Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, NH: Yale University Press.
62. Scott, James C. 2012. Two Cheers for Anarchism. Princeton Princeton University Press.
63. Sen, Amartya. 2000. Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
64. Sieder, Rachel, Ainhoa Montoya, and Yacotzin Bravo-Espinosa. 2022. “Extractivismo minero en América Latina: la juridificación de los conflictos socioambientales.” Íconos 72 (26): 7-12.
65. Svampa, Maristella. 2019. Las fronteras del neoextractivismo en América Latina. Bielefeld: Calas. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839445266
66. Tilly, Charles. 2008. Contentious Performances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
67. Tocqueville, Alexis. 1990. Democracy in America. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage Books.
68. Toro, Catalina. 2012. “Geopolítica energética: minería, territorio y resistencias sociales.” In Minería, territorio y conflicto en Colombia, edited by Catalina Toro, Julio Fierro, Sergio Coronado, and Tatiana Roa, 17-34. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
69. Uribe, Christian, Mónica Pachón, and Laura Wills-Otero. 2016. “La participación ciudadana y el sistema de representación democrática.” In Constitución y democracia en movimiento, edited by Helena Alviar, Julieta Lemaitre, and Betsy Perafán, 165-185. Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes.
70. Uribe, María Teresa. 2002. “Las promesas incumplidas de la democracia participativa.” In El debate a la constitución, 191-208. Bogotá: ILSA.
71. Uribe, María Teresa. 2004. “Emancipación social en un contexto de guerra prolongada: el caso de la comunidad de paz de San José de Apartadó, Colombia.” In Democratizar la democracia: los caminos de la democracia participativa, edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, 186-217. Ciudad de México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
72. Valencia Villa, Hernando. 2010. Cartas de batalla. Una crítica del constitucionalismo colombiano. Bogotá: Panamericana.
73. Walter, Mariana, and Leire Urkidi. 2017. “Community Mining Consultations in Latin America (2002-2012): The Contested Emergence of a Hybrid Institution of participation.” Geoforum 84: 265-279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.09.007
74. Welp, Yanina. 2010. “El referendo en América Latina: diseños institucionales y equilibrios de poder.” Nueva Sociedad 228: 26-42.
75. Wolin, Sheldon. 2016. Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

---