Elections in the Shadow of Violence: Democratic Resilience in Colombia
Elections in the Shadow of Violence: Democratic Resilience in Colombia
Reflecting on a Democracy Action Lab fieldwork mission to Bogotá and the Caribbean coast in the run-up to Colombia's 2026 electoral cycle.
In Brief
- Democracy Action Lab (DAL) researchers traveled to Colombia ahead of the country’s 2026 elections to assess threats to democratic participation.
- Civil society organizations warned that armed groups, coercion, and political violence continue to threaten vulnerable communities and electoral integrity.
- DAL and partner organizations are supporting election monitoring, community journalism, and local democratic resilience efforts in high-risk regions.
Colombian democracy faces challenges that are unique to the history of a country still settling the legacies of a 61-year internal armed conflict, as well as features in common with the other democracies in Latin America. At the end of January, a team of researchers from the Democracy Action Lab (DAL) at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), led by Prof. Beatriz Magaloni and Prof. Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, visited Colombia to engage with civil society organizations and practitioners about their principal concerns and the strategies they are pursuing to safeguard democratic practices during the upcoming electoral cycle. This includes congressional elections, a consultation process for party primaries scheduled for March 8, and the first round of the presidential election on May 31.
Perhaps the main concern regarding the election, as the team learned from various organizations, including Centro de Estudios Socio Jurídicos Latinoamericanos (CESJUL), Fundación Paz y Reconciliación (PARES), DeJusticia, Justicia Racial, and Fundación Gabo, is the possibility that irregular armed groups will undermine the process, effectively disenfranchising groups of voters through fear, intimidation, and coercion. This occurs in addition to the persistence of clientelistic practices and other forms of electoral manipulation. Both before and during the election period, these dynamics are likely to disproportionately affect poor Afro-descendant communities along the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, as well as other vulnerable populations in regions such as Antioquia, the Plains, and border departments. Many of these areas were among the most severely affected by displacement and violence during the internal armed conflict, leaving communities with weaker institutional protections and greater exposure to coercion and political capture.
Armed Groups and Electoral Coercion
The election will use facial recognition technologies and biometric fingerprints in around half of the 125 thousand voting booths (mesas), and the certificates of the electoral counts of each of those booths (form E-14) will be digitized and transmitted electronically so that citizens are able to consult the results of the official actas of the electoral process. This means the process is likely to be conducted professionally by the National Registry (Registraduría), an independent body responsible for organizing elections. However, given that many areas of Colombia are still dominated by armed groups, the Defense Ministry has already warned that it cannot guarantee the safety of voters.
Indeed, in about 300 of Colombia's 1103 municipalities, the presence of armed groups is well documented. Those include guerrillas like the ELN that did not accept the 2016 peace agreement, dissident splinter groups from the FARC, cartels, and other criminal organizations like El Cartel del Golfo, but most prominently, around 60 paramilitary organizations with varying levels of discipline and internal cohesion.
Many civil society organizations, including those engaged by the DAL team, have already begun developing electoral observation strategies that extend beyond protecting polling stations on election day. Given the levels of violence faced by candidates, political organizers, and social activists, the central concern is not only what will occur during the congressional elections next month or the presidential vote at the end of May, but rather the broader interaction between electoral administration and democratic institutions, on the one hand, and the diverse actors and specialists in violence that continue to operate across Colombia on the other, particularly in the post-2016 Peace Agreement context.
Civil Society Responses and Local Partnerships
In Bogotá, DAL’s team met with several organizations working on issues relevant to democratic governance in Colombia, including CESJUL, Justicia Racial, DeJusticia, and PARES. The main concerns expressed by the organizations center on the integrity and safety of the 2026 electoral process, particularly in vulnerable territories. They are worried about rising risks of political and electoral violence, especially in regions with a strong presence of armed actors, as well as barriers to voter access and participation affecting Afro-descendant communities. There is also a clear need for stronger data analysis and monitoring capacities to identify risks, support early warning efforts, and inform advocacy. Finally, the organizations are concerned with ensuring the legitimacy and visibility of democratic processes in conflict-affected areas, including the transparency of peace-related representation mechanisms such as the special congressional seats (curules de paz).
The team was particularly impacted by the work of the Victims Unit, led by Gloria Cuartas, in its efforts to secure reparations for victims of the conflict. The Victims Unit (Unidad para las Víctimas) is the Colombian government agency responsible for implementing policies for the comprehensive reparation of victims of the armed conflict, adopting a territorial and victim-centered approach. Its mandate focuses on overcoming conditions of vulnerability, restoring rights, and supporting victims’ active role in rebuilding their life projects and contributing to sustainable peace.
DAL will continue to engage with Colombian organizations through its Democracy Garage, a new model for interacting with democracy practitioners. The Garage seeks to bridge the gap between practitioners and scholars by identifying specific challenges that organizations face in their day-to-day work in support of democracy, which may require the use of political science analytic tools to support their efforts to defend democracy. The coming election in Colombia exhibits some of the most complex challenges the Garage wants to address, related to political polarization, the need to facilitate dialogues across the political spectrum, and the threat posed by violent actors and criminal organizations to the power of citizens to use their voice, vote, and organization in the defense of democracy.
Journalism and Democratic Resilience
DAL is closely following developments in Colombia’s upcoming electoral process and their implications for the resilience of democracy in Latin America. In this context, our team recognizes the value of community journalism on two levels. First, it serves to strengthen journalism itself, advancing freedom of expression, access to information, and the capacity of local actors to document and report on their realities. Second, it functions as a critical tool for enriching research and deepening understanding of social phenomena, particularly in environments marked by violence, territorial inequality, and institutional fragility. Strengthening locally grounded information ecosystems is therefore not only a democratic objective in its own right, but also central to understanding how democratic practices are sustained under conditions of pressure and uncertainty.
To advance this objective, and in line with the Democracy Garage methodology, DAL will support the analysis of media coverage of Colombia’s elections through Terra 360, a bilingual digital communications platform focused on dialogue, democracy, human rights, Buen Vivir (collective well-being), and international cooperation. Terra 360 is an initiative co-developed by DAL, POY Latam, and Social Focus, and in alliance with media organizations, academic institutions, and community-based organizations, including Fundación Gabo. Together, DAL, Terra 360, Fundación Gabo, and Justicia Racial will provide support to enable reporting by journalists working in high-risk regions such as Montes de María, Cauca, and Chocó, where access to reliable information is both most constrained and most consequential for democratic participation.
A Critical Test for Colombia’s Democracy
The convergence of violent actors and deep polarization already presents formidable challenges to the Colombian political process. Yet the politics of the upcoming presidential race add an additional layer of complexity. With many candidates prepared to enter the first round, the election is poised to be highly uncertain and competitive — two conditions that amplify existing vulnerabilities and concerns. It remains to be seen whether Colombia will see continuity in the executive or instead follow the pendular swing exhibited in other parts of the region. In this context of existing vulnerabilities and heightened uncertainty, the work of civil society organizations is critical to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process and to contain the potential incidence of bad actors. These elections are yet another test of the resilience of Colombia’s democratic institutions and the strength of its powerful civil society.