How and why do armed actors intervene in democratic politics? In a CDDRL seminar series talk, postdoctoral fellow Andres Uribe presented a multifaceted theory explaining the strategies violent groups adopt to influence democratic processes. The talk drew on Uribe’s research on Colombia and Peru.

Uribe shows that armed groups face a choice between co-opting or undermining democracy. More specifically, groups pursuing co-optation try to influence the existing political process through either “corruption” or “capture.” Corruption entails the use of positive inducement to shape the behavior of elected officials or voters, whereas capture entails the use of the threat of force to achieve similar goals.

Those groups seeking to attack democracy do so through two different strategies. The first is “delegitimization,” which could involve attacks on elections and voting sites. The second is “displacement” or the violent removal of the democratic system and its replacement with an entirely different political order.

What determines a given armed group’s choice of strategies (i.e., corruption, capture, delegitimization, or displacement)? The answer, according to Uribe, is determined by the group’s ideological compatibility with democracy and its coercive capacity. Among groups professing ideologies compatible with democracy, they are likely to engage in corruption under low levels of coercive capacity, and capture under higher levels. As for groups whose aims are incompatible with the democratic process, they tend to pursue delegitimization when their coercive capacity is low, and displacement at higher levels of coercive capacity.

Uribe tested his theory based on a paired comparison of Peru’s Sendero Luminioso (SL) and Colombia’s FARC. To characterize each group’s relative ideological compatibility with democratic politics, he drew on a corpus of 7500 documents spanning 21 Latin American countries. He found FARC to be more compatible with democracy than the average armed actor, while SL was less compatible.

To measure coercive capacity, Uribe used data on coca production and cocaine retail pricing in the US as reflective of SL’s and FARC’s military finances. Using casualties in attacks against democracy as an indicator, he found that when FARC possessed a high coercive capacity, there was a slight increase in the number of victims, whereas a similar increase in Sendero’s capacity yielded a 15-fold increase in the number of deaths.

Uribe’s analysis shows that during electoral contests, FARC attempted to reduce the conservative vote share, whereas SL attempted to reduce overall turnout. These outcomes are consistent with Uribe’s theory — FARC’s compatibility with democracy pushes them to work within the system, focusing their attacks on the other party. Sendero, conversely, attempts to prevent all participation in the democratic process.

Uribe’s findings suggest the importance of ideology in understanding how armed actors behave and emphasizes that they do not all share the same motivations. His work also highlights the way some groups play the democratic game using violence, a choice previously seen as mutually exclusive.

In a CDDRL research seminar, postdoctoral fellow María Ignacia Curiel presented her research findings on the impact of institutional safeguards on rebel party mobilization. Commonly found in post-civil war contexts, institutional safeguards, such as guaranteed seats in elected bodies, are often employed to placate rebel groups and integrate them into peaceful politics. They are often viewed as essential to a peaceful democratic transition and preventing future recidivism. But how do these safeguards impact rebel party mobilization? Based on extensive research on Colombia’s “Comunes,” a party established by the rebel group the FARC in 2016, Curiel finds that guaranteed parliamentary representation disincentivized the participation of the party’s civilian base.

Curiel’s study surveyed 251 members of Comunes’ base from 74 municipalities. Of those surveyed, 46 percent were ex-combatants, and the rest were civilians. Participants were asked questions measuring their support for the party, as well as their plans to engage in activities related to the upcoming regional elections, such as voting, campaigning, etc. A randomly assigned audio recording “primed” the subjects by reminding them of the terms of the peace agreement, specifically the stipulation that ten seats of the national legislature would be reserved for Comunes lawmakers. 

Among civilians, those treated with the prime were less likely to invest time in party-building activities relative to the control group. According to Curiel, this is attributed to the fact that those reminded of the seat reservations are more aware that their individual efforts matter less for party survival.

Among ex-combatants, however, there was no distinguishable difference in commitment to party building across primed and non-primed groups. The lack of an observed effect, Curiel argues, is not surprising, considering that ex-combatants were once willing to pursue violence on behalf of the party’s founding movement, hence their commitment to contribute to the party regardless of institutional safeguards. They may also hold closer ties to rebel commanders who now hold political positions in Congress. 

Curiel’s findings show that institutional safeguards meant to guarantee the representation of parties formed by former rebel groups may actually weaken such parties’ grassroots support.

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is pleased to announce the release of the fourth module of mini-lectures in our Solving Public Policy Problems massive open online course (MOOC).

Serious Business: Diminishing the Size of the Informal Sector in Medellin, Colombia

The new mayor of Medellin, Sergio Fajardo, arrived in office in 2004, pledging to remake the social contract between society and the state. He campaigned to introduce innovative social programs designed to lessen the high levels of poverty and violence in the city. But, the mayor needed money to finance these programs. The Minister of Planning, Federico Restrepo Posada, was charged with engaging the private sector, increasing tax revenue and promoting job creation. To do this, Restrepo needed to address the high levels of informal economic activity hindering economic dynamism and depressing the tax base. The state could not provide the necessary services because it did not collect enough taxes, but businesses refused to pay taxes because they did not believe the state was capable of delivering the services that they required. The case looks at how Restrepo addressed this dilemma.

Through this case study, students will learn why informality is a problem in developing countries and how they can employ a causal map to develop a set of theories of change for addressing policy problems.

You can read the case study here, access the full series on our YouTube page, and watch Module 4 below:

During an April 18 address at Stanford University, Colombian President Gustavo Petro delivered a dire warning about the climate crisis and urged the world’s nations to transition to cleaner and greener energy.

“We are living in times that are the beginning of the extinction of humankind,” said President Petro, noting that the changes in climate are already visible and have greatly accelerated since the dawn of the Industrial Age a few centuries ago.

"The logical and coherent answer, like the one given at the end of the 19th century, is that humanity would have to organize itself to undertake a world revolution against capital," said Petro, who was elected in 2022 on a democratic reformist agenda. 

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), in partnership with the Center for Latin American Studies, Stanford in Government, and the Stanford Society for Latin American Politics, sponsored and hosted the event, which was largely organized by students. 

Following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain, the effectiveness of policing and police reform have reemerged as a prominent topic of debate both in the United States and in communities around the world. One popular method of police reform is community policing, defined generally as law enforcement systems where officers build and maintain active, reinforcing relationships with local stakeholders, including citizens and community leaders.

The principle underpinning this philosophy is simple; when law enforcement officers create a personal, responsive presence in a community, they are better able to do their job, benefit from citizens’ cooperation, and overall safety improves. But gauging the actual effectiveness of these practices has proven challenging to study in a controlled and rigorous way.

In a first-of-its-kind study led by Graeme Blair (Dept. of Political Science, University of California–Los Angeles), Jeremy Weinstein (Dept. of Political Science, Stanford and FSI Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law) and Fotini Christia (Dept. of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), a group of intercollegiate researchers have published new research examining the effectiveness of community policing in the Global South.

To mark the publication of the new findings in the journal Science this week, Blair, Christia and Weinstein spoke to us about what their findings reveal about the usefulness of community policing practices in a global context, and what more needs to be done to implement police reform in diverse systems.