The objective of this paper is to determine the variables that explain the geographical expansion and armed activity of Colombian irregular groups since the mid seventies, taking into account the role of the political, fiscal and budgetary decentralization and its effects over local governance....

Powerful local elites are quite common in developing countries. Thus, whether decentralization reduces or not the level of corruption in the presence of these elites is a relevant issue for these economies. We motivate this paper with some empirical evidence. Using cross-country information we...