Bureaucratic activism and Colombian community mothers: The daily construction of the rule of law

Abstract

Whereas mainstream literature affirms that the rule of law is an abstract concept that comes from democracy and liberal institutional systems, people in the local Global South do not experience this certainty. In some ways, the rule of law is a product of the daily life transactions and bargains of social actors. This article analyzes the case of community mothers as street-level bureaucrats who produce the rule of law in their local spaces, within an institutional or democratic mechanism. This case study of community mothers, carried out between June 2012 and February 2013, shows how street-level bureaucrats use the rule of law as a tool of empowerment. The fieldwork for this study uses ethnographic techniques such as observations of the functioning of CWHs, interviews with community mothers, Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF) personnel, and program beneficiary mother, as well as an analysis of the documents that deal with the social program.