Municipal stories of institutional weakness. The cases of Riohacha, Mocoa, and Arauca

This document complements, from a qualitative approach, the research contained in the book “The states of the country. Municipal institutions and local realities”. Here are the “life stories” of three municipalities -Riohacha, Mocoa, and Arauca- in which state power is not as strong as in other territories. In these stories we wanted to “contextualize” the hard data of the quantitative part and link some institutional indicators with a history and a specific social and political reality. We wanted, in short, to “tell a story of institutional weakness.”