Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Achieving Post-War Peace: The Internal Politics of Colombia's Demilitarizing Rebel and Paramilitary Groups

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This project seeks to explain 1) why post-war armed organizations endure, go out of business or shift to a new sector (legal politics, crime) and 2) why ex-combatants either return to violence or successfully reintegrate into civilian life. 49% of civil wars, which ended between 1945-1999, erupted in subsequent war; 51% consolidated peace. To explain this variation, Political Science offers macro-level theories and micro-level empirics, but nothing in between. A major advance in the study of conflict and peace would come from filling this gap and theory building at the organizational level. This project attempts to construct such a theory. Additionally, it aims to develop a theory of post-war recruitment that treats post-conflict individuals not as independent agents, but as embedded in ex-combatant networks and groups which structure their decisions to demobilize. Last, it proposes to test this theory against hypotheses from the existing conflict literature that assumes semblance between pre and post war peace. To carry out this test, the study relies not on cross-national, but on original organizational, network, and individual level data.To build a theory of the post-war armed firm and its ex-combatant employees, this project analyzes the demilitarization of 48 paramilitary and rebel groups and 46,000 combatants in Colombia. It uses a multiple methods approach including in-depth interviews of experts on each armed group, ethnographic case studies of ex-combatant networks, and content analysis of armed organizations' records. Additionally, a large-scale individual-level survey of 500 demobilized individuals, 300 ex-combatants who have returned to arms, and 200 civilians will be conducted.This project affords social value in several ways. First, the project has the benefit of advancing knowledge of the causes of recurrent war, reintegration of ex-soldiers, and pacification of armed organizations and thus contributing to the development of demilitarization policy. Successful demilitarization of war-affected populations have proven vital to stabilizing post-conflict environments around the world, reducing the likelihood of renewed conflict, and facilitating countries' transitions from violence to peace, normalcy and reconstruction. Developing an understanding of how to achieve such success thus promises great benefits to society. Second, the study offers an additional benefit of developing intellectual collaboration and research partnerships between American and Colombian. Last, the results of this project will be disseminated broadly in the hope of informing policy in Colombia, the United States and other conflict zones.