Introduction

Colombia is often neglected in general theories and comparative studies of Latin America in part because its political economy in the twentieth century was so anomalous. Colombia enjoyed greater political and economic stability than most of the rest of the region while also suffering lasting civil violence and the corrosive effects of a booming underground drug economy. Colombia is also an intriguing outlier on several empirical dimensions of business politics. For most of the twentieth century, relations between government and business were very close and congenial, consistently more so than in any of the other large countries of Latin America. For sectoral governance, the strongest and most entrepreneurial association in all Latin America was the coffee growers' association, Federacafe (Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia). Government officials later extended the Federacafe governance model to rice and other agricultural sectors, and the flower association, Asocoflores, recently contributed to making Colombia the world's second largest exporter of cut flowers.

In Colombian politics, contestation by organized business against particular governments and in favor of democracy was remarkable by the standards common in Latin America.