El Conflicto Armado en Colombia: Análisis Regional de los Impactos de la Política de Seguridad Democrática

This dissertation examines the politics of political violence in contemporary Colombia. Levels of violent contestation declined significantly in Colombia after 2003, during the implementation of the so-called Democratic Security Policy (DSP). Notwithstanding this general diminution of violence, the results of the DSP varied significantly across the different regions of the country. While the level of violent contestation of state authority by non-state actors has decreased in some regions, in others violence actually increased or remained basically unchanged. What explains these variations in political violence? The argument explored in this dissertation is that distinctive regional configurations or combinations of economic, social, political, institutional, cultural and geographic factors crucially shape the effectiveness of state security policies. Employing Boolean algebra and comparative case study analysis the dissertation examines seven variables in order to identify these regional configurations: poverty and inequality; presence of lootable resources (coca, oil and gold); institutional presence; political inclusion; number of insurgent groups; social density and geography. Although the implementation of the DSP produced significant changes in the level of contestation at a national scale, empirical analysis of the 1995-2011 period leads to the conclusion that the particular characteristics of each regional configuration are ultimately fundamental in determining variations in violent conflict at the subnational level