Introduction

The end of the 20th century was chaotic for Colombian political parties. The 1991 Constitution inaugurated a period of transition from a bipartisan towards a multiparty system, but after that milestone, several electoral and political reforms were required to organize the political landscape and to strengthen the role of political parties as critical democratic institutions. In that process, political parties’ use of policy analysis could play a role in helping these consistently discredited organizations (Caicedo Ortiz, 2015; Latinobarometro, 2017; Cifras and Conceptos, 2018) to gain some of the elusive trust from the public and to support their role in public policy decision making. In that sense, this chapter aims to answer the following question: what are the factors that either exhort or prevent 21st-century Colombian political parties from utilizing policy analysis to transform their links with their voters and support their role in the policymaking process?

Comprehending politicians’ and political parties’ behavior, in this case that associated with the use of evidence-based analysis to support their activities, demands an understanding of the nature of political parties, their goals and forms of organization, the main political parties in the country, and the historical and institutional context framing their actions. In doing so, this chapter focuses on two of the fundamental activities or components of political parties: the “party in the electorate” and the “party as an organization”, which are largely conditioned by their corresponding party and electoral systems (Aldrich, 2011). Thus, the chapter observes Colombian political parties in one of their two main arenas of work, namely out of the legislature; their role in the second main arena of party action, that is, the “party in the legislature” (Aldrich, 2011), is further explored in Chapter 5 by Mónica Pachón and Manuela Muñoz, although some relevant aspects are also mentioned here.

To address the aforementioned question, then, this chapter is organized in four sections. The first section presents theoretical underpinnings that locate the role of policy analysis as a congruent practice with programmatic party structuration. The second section describes the historical trajectory of the Colombian party system, its make-up in the 21st century, and key institutional features affecting parties’ use of policy analysis.