Academic Publications
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The long-term electoral viability of rebel parties depends, in part, on acceptance of them as legitimate political actors. Yet civilians often punish perpetrators of past violence at the ballot box and conflict generates long-term antipathies that can impede democratic integration of former rebels. This paper offers a theoretical conceptualization of rebel party stigmatization and uses an experimental approach in Colombia, informed by interviews on the ground, to clarify the conditions under which stigmatization can be a relevant barrier for rebel parties. First, in semi-structured interviews, rebel party leaders and members uniformly claim that civilian \textit{stigmatization} of the party is pervasive. Second, we design an endorsement experiment to measure rebel party stigmatization, whether the penalty is distinct from assessments based on ideology or platform, and for whom stigma is strongest. Civilians penalize policies and statements endorsed by the rebel party even when compared to endorsement by ideologically similar parties, indicative of stigmatization. Such rebel party stigmatization is especially strong among two types of citizens. First, citizens who otherwise share a similar ideology with the rebel party but rejected violence are the most stigmatizing, due to a political victimization effect. Second, citizens who did not live in communities with substantial FARC governance and presence are more stigmatizing - those who lived in rebelocracies do not penalize rebel parties but also do not support them strongly.
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We study the effects of a non-governmental civic inclusion campaign on the democratic integration of demobilized insurgents. Democratic participation ideally offers insurgents a peaceful channel for political expression and addressing grievances. However, existing work suggests that former combatant's ideological socialization and experiences of violence fuel hard-line commitments which may be contrary to democratic political engagement, threatening the effectiveness of postwar electoral transitions. We use a field experiment with demobilized FARC combatants in Colombia to study how a civic inclusion campaign affects trust in political institutions, democratic political participation, and preferences for strategic moderation versus ideological rigidity. We find the campaign increased trust in democracy and support for political compromise. Effects are driven by the most educated ex-combatants moving from their hard-line position to one that is in line with their more strategic peers, and by ex-combatants who had the most violent conflict experience similarly moderating their views.
Under Review
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Peace settlements ending civil wars often pursue political solutions that require violent actors to form political parties and engage with politics peacefully. Some settlements include provisions such as reservations, quotas or other types of political affirmative action to safeguard electoral transitions. What are the consequences of these institutional safeguards on rebel parties' grassroots? Scholarship on political affirmative action generally concludes that reservations benefit targeted groups. However, I posit that these safeguards may hinder the consolidation of rebel parties by generating counterproductive incentives that demobilize the party base. I study the case of the former FARC-EP party Comunes, who were granted 10 legislative seats in the 2016 peace agreement. I implement a priming experiment with this crucial but difficult to reach population to assess the consequences of this provision. On average, primed participants reported less interest in a range of party-building activities. Heterogeneity suggests these safeguards may come at the cost of civilian grassroots specifically, further concentrating rebel party activism among ex-combatants.
[Link to current draft]
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This article focuses on the dissolution of political party formed by the demobilized FARC guerrilla (Comunes), exploring the causes of their political failure and what it means for the capacity of democracy to absorb violent extremists. Comunes’ reserved congressional guaranteed by the 2016 peace agreements seats will expire on March 8th and they are almost certainly going to lose all congressional representation and their official status as a political party. This piece argues that this is an instance of a consolidated democracy successfully “digesting” a violent group, despite the widespread disillusionment with the outcomes of the 2016 peace agreement. There are two main drivers of this outcome: the consolidation and plurality of Colombian democracy and organizational-level challenges associated with competing in an established democracy.
Public Writing
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The Democracy Action Lab's "The Case for Democracy" series, curates academic scholarship on democracy’s impacts across various domains of governance and development. Drawing from an exhaustive review of the literature, this analysis presents selected works that encompass significant findings and illustrate how the academic conversation has unfolded.
The Influence of Democracy on Gender Equality
The Influence of Democracy on Health Outcomes
The Influence of Democracy on Inequality
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In this note, we draw on our experience to explain how one can conduct experimental research with former combatants and in settings affected by violence in ways that are scientifically rigorous while also respecting ethical and security imperatives. We draw on our own research in Colombia, which we began during the peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC - a unique opportunity to study combatants as they transitioned into becoming ex-combatants.
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Deportations, even rights-violating deportations, are not new in the United States. Neither are protests against them. What is new is an entire administration embracing a far-fetched narrative that immigrants, and protests against their deportation, constitute a foreign invasion.
Link to the full article here
Academic Work In Progress
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In this project, co-authored with Cyrus Samii (NYU) and Mateo Vásquez-Cortés (UCSD), we evaluate a strategy designed to promote the political efficacy and post-conflict mobilization of local women’s organizations that emerged during the war in Colombia. These interventions were based on informational and deliberation-centered strategies designed to minimize costs of collective action and information-sharing on risks associated to participation. This project is currently in the data cleaning and analysis phase, as all workshops have been conducted with nearly 400 participants from over 35 local organizations across the Colombian territory. This work is supported by the Folke Bernadotte Academy.
[Draft available upon request]
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The long-term political engagement of rebel parties is fundamental to whether electoral transitions succeed in transforming conflict. In this paper, I offer a new conceptualization of rebel parties’ trajectories, clarify unexamined cross-party variation, and assess the role of electoral success. Scholars have focused on investigating the initial transition of rebel groups into parties, their re-militarization and their electoral popularity. Although these are important outcomes, they mischaracterize the strength of rebel parties’ political engagement. I examine the durability of their integration into democracy, which I define as the recurrence of rebel parties’ participation in elections since disarmament. After rebel groups’ initial decision to become a party, their actual engagement in electoral competition is constantly tested. To analyze durability, I collect data on all elections with rebel parties from 1947 - 2021, covering 117 parties across 667 elections. First, the data show that while the political integration of groups with violent origins is possible, early commitment does not ensure future participation. While nearly 50% of all rebel parties participate in almost all possible elections, some exist only nominally, and still others cease to exist or return to war. In particular, 10% of parties participate once and never again. Second, descriptive findings suggest that rebel party electoral success does not strictly determine perseverance, despite often being theorized as one and the same. To illustrate, 45% of low support parties participate in at least 8 out of 10 of elections and 38% of low support parties participate in all elections.
[Draft available upon request]
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This paper examines the relationship between organized crime turf wars and gender-based violence (GBV) in Mexico. We argue that turf wars not only intensify lethal violence against women but also reshape the nature and context of gendered harm. Using a unique event-based measure of turf wars and difference-in-differences designs applied to homicide data, we find that turf wars lead to a 123\% increase in public-space homicides of women and a 189\% increase in domestic female homicides. Young women are disproportionately targeted in public spaces, while domestic violence affects a wider age range. Areas experiencing greater fragmentation in cartel contestation exhibit the highest levels of lethal violence, with municipalities where four or more cartels compete experiencing a fourfold increase in lethal violence against women compared to baseline levels. Complementary analysis of survey data reveals that turf wars substantially increase public non-lethal violence against women by 40\%, particularly physical abuse by strangers. Although no average increase in intimate partner violence (IPV) is observed, poorer women experience disproportionate increases in public and IPV during turf wars. Our findings highlight how cartel turf wars operate as a catalyst for strategic, non-strategic, and multidimensional GBV.
[Draft available upon request]
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An influential school of thought in scholarship and practice suggests that the best way to end civil wars is by encouraging rebel groups to transform into political parties. By this logic, rebel-party transitions forge lasting peace by allowing insurgents to pursue their political goals through democratic means rather than through violence. In this paper, we offer an alternative theory and provide the first empirical test of this thesis. Does democratic participation enable rebel parties to successfully achieve their goals? Examining the universe of rebel-party transitions from 1992 to 2020, we evaluate the effects of rebel electoral participation on a core demand of many insurgents: increased state investment and economic opportunity for their constituents. Across specifications and measurement strategies, we find no evidence that rebel political participation succeeds in spurring economic growth for rebel constituencies. Group-level analysis suggests that neither political context nor group characteristics meaningfully condition this result. Rebel-party transitions may offer a means to peace, but not because democratic participation allows insurgents to achieve the programmatic goals they profess to seek.
[Draft available upon request]