La coordinación interagencial: el arma secreta de la seguridad democrática

Modern states resort to interagency coordination when they face complex situations such as warranting state legitimacy in territories militarily reclaimed. When two or more agencies decide to cooperate, they must establish certain mechanisms to coordinate their actions and to unite individual efforts towards the achievement of common goals. One of the main priorities of President Uribe’s Administration is the establishment of interagency coordination groups to complement the Democratic Security Policy with actions aimed at strengthening governance, legitimacy and citizens’ trust in the State, all this within the general framework of the territories’ overall social recovery.

This article (i) presents a first approach to interagency coordination theories and describes some relevant international and national experiences; (ii) defines the legal basis and policy framework behind the coordinated civil-military interagency work done in Colombia; (iii) presents the work being done by the Centro de Coordinación de Acción Integral de la Presidencia de la República (Comprehensive Action Coordination Center of the Colombian President’s Office, CCAI) for the social recovery of the national territory, highlighting some breakthroughs in this field; and (iv) concludes with the assertion that security issues and social investment should not be mutually exclusive, that they have to go hand in hand, and that it is necessary to consolidate and warrant the sustainability of the work done so far.