Competition Law Markets Governance And Legal Roles

"This thesis explores the way in which, in Colombian competition law, whereas some market agents have been empowered, others have been disempowered. Moreover, it delves into the reasons and mechanisms that may support and provoke an inversion of these dynamics of empowerment and disempowerment in order that those market agents that have resulted disempowered may become empowered. The main goal that this document aims to accomplish, then, is examining the rationale that compels law to create a sort of legal hierarchy among market agents and, consequently, to place some of these market agents in a better position with respect to other market agents when competition law is operated or enforced. In such an attempt, thus, and using a propositional logic structure to do so, this document tries to outline the reasoning under which these hierarchical structures that emerge in law and that produce such dynamics of empowerment and disempowerment are set in motion. This is what this thesis calls the classical approach, which is basically a propositional reasoning compounded by three premises, namely, (i) competition is a general value, (ii) market agents are formally equal, and (iii) winning competition must be on merits. Now, having done so, it is argued that, to invert hierarchies and legal dynamics, there is need for deconstructing the classical approach. With this in mind, a deconstructive approach is structured grounding it in three counter-premises (i) all market agents have the right to compete, (ii) market agents are different, and (iii) merits must consider possibilities. Subsequently, we explore the ways in which two market agents in particular may wind up benefited, i.e. victims of anticompetition and potential but excluded actors of the market. " --