When policy and rights collide : a case study ofright-to-health litigation in Colombia (1991-2002)

In this dissertation I provide an empirically based account of the trajectory of right-to-health litigation in Colombia during the past twenty years (1991-2012). Focusing on several critical junctures of this trajectory and drawing from the results of multi sited fieldwork, I reconstruct how a set of stakeholders (policymakers, judges, litigants, activists and pharmaceutical companies) spurred the surge of right-to-health litigation in Colombia, which according to recent estimates is the highest among middle-income countries. Additionally, I explore how a set of structural judicial remedies handed down by the Colombian Constitutional Court in 2008—ruling T-760/08—addressed the institutional determinants of the surge of right-to-health litigation and nudged policymakers in the direction of health-care reform.