Contemporary social contracts in transition: policy analysis of a fuel subsidy reform in Colombia
Böhl Gutierrez, Mauricio / Daniele Malerba
(2026)
in: Society & Natural Resources, first published 22.10.2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2026.2738541
Open access
This paper examines the renegotiation of social contracts, using the example of Colombia’s phase-out process for fossil fuel subsidies that provides empirical evidence for broad reforms of state–society agreements. While calls for new social contracts increasingly highlight the need to integrate ecological sustainability and address systemic inequalities, few studies explore how such transitions unfold in practice. Drawing on interviews with 43 experts from government, academia, civil society, and the private sector, the paper analyses Colombia’s efforts to remove gasoline and diesel subsidies under President Petro’s reform agenda. The findings reveal four central obstacles: the political cost of reform, structural dependencies in the transport sector, limited state capacity, and the absence of long-term policy continuity. We find that creating a new social contract requires broad support by a range of stakeholders and a clear vision for the new agreement, which is supported across ideological camps. The Colombian government offered an incoherentversion of a green growth social contract, which relied on reforming the existing structures with novel technologies. In contrast to government participants, the interviewees from society, academia and the private sector in Colombia seem to dismiss the plans of the government as unrealistic, as they do not address the deep-rooted challenges within the transport sector and lacks a clear pathway. The Colombian reform process highlights the contested nature of renegotiating social contracts, illustrating the challenges of aligning societal expectations with government visions.
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