Politics & Governance / Domestic Politics / Corruption & Anti-corruption
The Deadly Cost of High-Powered Incentives: Colombia's False Positives Scandal
In 2002, Colombia's President Uribe introduced aggressive military incentives to crush guerrilla groups. The result? Thousands of innocent civilians—homeless, disabled, unemployed—were lured, killed, and staged as enemy combatants. This is the 'False Positives' scandal. Economist Daron Acemoglu and his team reveal how performance bonuses, promotions, and vacation rewards for 'kills' backfired catastrophically in weak institutional settings. Using data from 2000-2010, they show that colonels, desperate for promotion to general, were the worst offenders. The study proves that without strong judicial oversight, such incentives don't just fail—they destroy trust, erode institutions, and make security worse. Discover how a well-intentioned policy turned into a systematic murder machine, and why building justice alongside military force is non-negotiable.
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