The process of legitimization and consolidation of the neoliberal hegemony in Colombia. The role of economist and the think tanks

Abstract

This paper focuses on revealing the existence of a very efficient and simultaneous mechanism of legitimization and hegemony of a profession: economics and of an ideology, neoliberalism, which translate into profound reforms in the economic order, political institutions, and culture in Colombia. This objective is developed through a systematic literature review, applying the hermeneutic and genealogical methods of interpretation in the framework of a process tracing analysis strategy with a deductive input that seeks to arrive at causal inferences with the intention of identifying how the cadres that allowed the implementation of neoliberal reforms were structured, their academic and public trajectories; The way in which they structure a technocratic discourse with pretensions of truth, of technical knowledge, responsible, that recognizes itself as legitimate to design economic policy in Colombia. The results show how a group of economists graduated from the Universidad de los Andes have acted as organic intellectuals; generating the conditions of possibility to the accumulation regime that has prevailed in the country since the end of the 20th century.