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

该项目试图解释：1)为什么战后武装组织经久不衰、停业或转向一个新的部门(法律、政治、犯罪)；2)为什么前战斗人员要么重返暴力生活，要么成功地重新融入平民生活。在1945-1999年间结束的内战中，有49%是在随后的战争中爆发的；51%的内战巩固了和平。为了解释这种差异，《政治学》提供了宏观层面的理论和微观层面的经验，但没有介于两者之间。填补这一空白和在组织一级建立理论将是冲突与和平研究的重大进展。本项目试图构建这样一个理论。此外，它的目的是发展一种战后招募理论，将冲突后个人不作为独立的代理人，而是嵌入到构成其复员决定的前战斗人员网络和团体中。最后，它建议用现有冲突文献中假设战前和战后和平相似的假设来检验这一理论。为了进行这项测试，这项研究不依赖于跨国，而是依赖于原始的组织、网络和个人层面的数据。为了建立一个关于战后武装公司及其前战斗员工的理论，该项目分析了哥伦比亚48个准军事和反叛组织以及4.6万名战斗人员的非军事化情况。它采用多种方法，包括对每个武装团体的专家进行深入访谈，对前战斗人员网络进行人种学案例研究，并对武装组织的记录进行内容分析。此外，还将对500名复员人员、300名重返武装的前战斗人员和200名平民进行大规模的个人调查。首先，该项目的好处是增进对反复发生战争的原因、退伍军人重返社会和武装组织安抚的了解，从而有助于制定非军事化政策。事实证明，受战争影响的人口成功实现非军事化对于稳定世界各地的冲突后环境、减少再次发生冲突的可能性以及促进各国从暴力过渡到和平、正常化和重建至关重要。因此，发展对如何实现这种成功的理解有望给社会带来巨大好处。其次，这项研究提供了发展美国和哥伦比亚之间的智力合作和研究伙伴关系的另一个好处。最后，该项目的成果将广泛传播，希望为哥伦比亚、美国和其他冲突地区的政策提供信息。

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.