Dr. Abbey Steele: Rebel Governance and Post-conflict Political Participation скачать в хорошем качестве

Dr. Abbey Steele: Rebel Governance and Post-conflict Political Participation

The UBC Department of Political Science’s Distinguished Speaker Series hosted Professor Abbey Steele (University of Amsterdam), for her talk titled, “Rebel Governance and Post-conflict Political Participation” on Monday, January 31, 2022. Abstract (based on joint work with Michael Weintraub): Rebels, militias, and criminal groups govern civilians, in competition with or alongside the state. We argue that governing strategies adopted by armed groups during civil war produce variation in how citizens in post-conflict environments participate in politics. In particular, an armed group’s position relative to the state and its ideology of governance interact to influence individuals’ later choices about political participation. Armed groups are either anti- or pro-state, and engage in shared or centralized governance. We expect that anti-state groups that engage in shared governance are likely to lead individuals to be more engaged in informal politics in the long term. Informal politics include strikes and protests, and participation in community councils. In contrast, we expect pro-state armed groups that engage in centralized governance to be associated with higher participation in formal political channels, such as electoral politics and contact with politicians. We test our expectations with an original survey of 12,000 households from war-affected communities in Colombia. We find that respondents who reported governance by either the FARC or the paramilitaries were also more likely to report participation in formal political channels, and in informal channels, than those who did not report experiencing rebel rule. We then explore some potential explanations for these unexpected outcomes. Our study demonstrates the importance of exposure to wartime governance by armed groups and forms of post-war political participation, with implications for the health of post-war democracy and civic life.