Introduction

In Colombia, in the 30 years that have passed since the constitutional change of 1991, a very high proportion of Colombians have gained access to policies such as health, primary and secondary education, and basic services. Moreover, over the past three decades of state growth, redistributive (equality) and identity (diversity) policies have become part of the government's agenda. In this context, the needs of an ever-increasing list of populations (young people, elderly people, people with disabilities, indigenous communities, Afro-descendants, victims of armed conflict and so on) began to be addressed through expanding target population-based policies. In policy studies terms, the Colombian state expanded its basic welfare and its policy targeting, as a substitute to a welfare state with universal coverage.

The increase of basic welfare policies and policy targeting helped to reduce the rate of poverty and to improve the quality of life to many millions of people, particularly so in large Colombian cities. However, the results of these policies have been very marginal in terms of the general reduction of income inequality. For example, in the context of Latin American states, the case of Colombia seems one of the most serious in terms of the lack of impact of income redistribution of fiscal and social policy. This implies that the one of the most pressing policy questions in Colombia is why, after such an important institutional change (a completely new Constitution) that doubled the size of the state, so little has changed terms of income distribution.

Addressing this puzzle, this chapter suggests that this can be explained through the concept of the truncated state (Holland, 2013). This notion refers to welfare regimes in countries where the construction of social security systems reflects the pre-existing social stratification and the capacity of powerful pressure groups to create their own protection schemes. This chapter suggests that one possible explanation for this “truncated” type of social policy that exists in Colombia could be the limited political power and representation (in Congress, the judiciary and the executive) of the marginalized populations that have been targeted.

All in all, this chapter has three main sections. The first section introduces the general changes to social policies, first looking into the expansion of basic welfare and then exploring the evolution of policy targeting.