Colombia Corruption Networks Show Men Control 85% of Ties, Women Recurrent in Only 12% of Cases

The study constructs co-participation networks from the Radiografía de Hechos de Corrupción dataset spanning 2016-2023, linking actors across procurement, permitting, and judicial protection events. Degree, betweenness, and recurrence metrics demonstrate that men form the overwhelming majority of high-centrality bridges connecting local governments to contractors. Women appear in 19% of nodes yet cluster in lower-degree roles, indicating incorporation occurs mainly through secondary patronage rather than primary exchange coordination.

This pattern aligns with broader findings from Latin American procurement studies showing similar male dominance in elite exchange networks, such as those documented in Mexico's PEMEX scandals and Brazil's Lava Jato operation where female actors rarely controlled resource allocation nodes. The Colombian data add granularity by quantifying recurrence: only 12% of women reappear across multiple cases compared with 41% of men, pointing to structural barriers in sustained access rather than episodic involvement.

Uneven exclusion implies policy interventions targeting formal quotas will miss the informal coordination layers where protection is brokered. Strengthening evidence requires longitudinal network panels that track actor entry and exit over election cycles and judicial interventions.

Future replication using Brazilian and Peruvian administrative datasets could test whether the 4:1 male-to-female tie ratio holds when controlling for sector and subnational autonomy levels.