Violence and Local Political Orders in the Post-Agreement

The core focus of the project is to explore how local social authority structures, which existed before the agreement, are sustained or weakened by the FARC’s laying down of arms. In particular, the project seeks to explore (quantitatively and qualitatively) how violence against social leaders is a manifestation of power struggles by local elites (political and/or criminal) and not just the result of disputes over illegal markets.

The assassination of social leaders is the clearest manifestation of the difficulty of building sustainable peace throughout Colombian territory after the peace agreement. What explains the violence against social leaders? While most explanations focus on the presence of economies and illegal armed groups, this project argues that the nature of local political structures is also an important variable in explaining the incidence and intensity of this violence. Thus, violence will escalate in municipalities with high electoral concentration and where the left is a credible contender for established elites.

Specific objectives:

• Through statistical analysis, determine variables that are associated with the incidence and intensity of the assassination of social leaders in Colombia.

• Through case studies based on intensive fieldwork (interviews, ethnography), identify the causal mechanisms that connect the characteristics of local structures with the use of violence against local leaders.

(Project in progress)