When Effective Implementation Meets Paradigmatic Failure: Evaluating Colombia’s Medical Cannabis Policy
This article evaluates Colombia’s medical cannabis reform by distinguishing paradigmatic failure from implementation failure and policy design failure. While most studies of policy evaluation focus on the performance of instruments and outcomes, it integrates insights from the literature on policy p...
Gardado en:
| Publicado en: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/irpp, |
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| Autor Principal: | |
| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
| Publicado: |
International Review of Public Policy
2026
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| Acceso en liña: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | This article evaluates Colombia’s medical cannabis reform by distinguishing paradigmatic failure from implementation failure and policy design failure. While most studies of policy evaluation focus on the performance of instruments and outcomes, it integrates insights from the literature on policy paradigms to assess whether the ideas underpinning a policy remain aligned with evolving social, economic, and political realities. Drawing on 25 semi-structured interviews with public officials, entrepreneurs, and civil society actors, the analysis shows that Colombia’s pharmaceutical model of medical cannabis was largely successful at the level of implementation: regulations were adopted swiftly, a licensing system was established, and a small export-oriented industry emerged. However, overregulation, the exclusion of small producers, and limited domestic access reveal a growing misalignment between the policy’s underlying assumptions and the social, therapeutic, and market realities it seeks to govern. To capture this dynamic, the article distinguishes between evaluation within a policy paradigm – assessing performance according to a paradigm’s own logic – and evaluation of a policy paradigm – examining the continued relevance of its foundational assumptions. It shows that governments can implement reforms effectively while remaining constrained by outdated ways of conceptualizing policy problems. |
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