Social Science Research Council

"The Creation of Local Order: Armed Groups’ Strategies and Civilians’ Collaboration in Civil Wars"

The type of relations between insurgent and paramilitary armed groups, on the one hand, and the civilians whom they attempt to rule, on the other hand, is subject to wide variation. Some groups try to approximate the behavior of organized states while others behave like predatory bandits, reneging from ruling civilian affairs. The range of variation is staggering in its scope yet our systematic knowledge about these issues is close to nil, as is our theorizing on their causes and effects. Furthermore, we ignore why locals react differently to armed groups’ ruling attempts, and we also lack any systematic data on the ways in which civilians’ lives change in the midst of war. Used to thinking of war as a force of destruction and violence, we tend to overlook the micro-orders that are established in different areas where armed groups strive to establish control.

In my dissertation, I approach armed groups as organizations engaged with a local process of state building by combining violence, indoctrination and different forms of “stateness.” These strategies—mediated by community and individual characteristics—shape civilians’ behavior by either triggering new motivations for action, or altering the payoffs locals associate with different alternatives. By delving into the ways in which combatants and civilians interact at the local level, and how this interaction shapes the behavior of both, I will investigate the different mechanisms through which these changes occur, deriving implications for phenomena like recruitment, displacement and resistance. I will test my theory with qualitative and quantitative evidence from the Colombian conflict, employing a variety of sources such as original survey data, semi-structured interviews and a database I will build using original data and existing sources.