ADMINISTRATIVE DECENTRALIZATION AND MUNICIPAL CATEGORIZATION IN COLOMBIA

Abstract

This article addresses the importance of territorial categorization as an instrument that would allow the deepening of administrative decentralization in Colombia, since it seeks that the differences of the municipalities in economic, social and environmental terms be recognized and reflected in the normative design that governs them. Given that the regulations that have been issued on this matter have not been able to respond to these challenges, this article proposed to advance in the extension of this analysis regarding the functional design. For this purpose, based on an extensive normative review, the first part of the document shows a classification of municipal functions within low and high complexity options. The former being those that can be carried out through the management of local officials and the latter those that require a significant investment of resources. In the second part, the categorization of the municipalities was carried out taking into account nine (9) variables related, on the one hand, to the criteria established in article 320 of the 1991 Constitution for the municipal categorization, and secondly to the functions of high complexity referred to previously, since they are the ones that in practice can significantly pressure the response capacity of the local administrations. As a result, four (4) clusters were obtained that grouped 403, 156, 378 and 164 municipalities with clearly differentiable characteristics in social, economic and environmental terms that served to describe the different functions that could correspond to them in a possible definition of differentiated regimes.