Public Goods Provision during War: Evidence from the Colombian Case

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The papers in this panel focus on institutional arrangements and state-building efforts during the conflict and their effects on post-conflict trajectories of violence and democracy in Colombia.

Colombia offers a unique opportunity to study different dimensions of conflict for several reasons. First, the country hosted multiple armed actors, which included insurgent groups, both state and non-state counter-insurgency groups, organized crime, among others, and thus allows to explore the different strategies adopted by them through the diverse stages of the conflict. Second, it affected a large proportion of civil society generating a wide variety of coping strategies which resulted in large-scale impacts on the country’s trajectories of state-building, development, and democracy. Third, geographical variation in the presence of actors, repertoires of violence, and political strategies allow an in-detail analysis of the resources and conditions, amongst other factors, around which conflict evolves and actors adapt. Finally, the prevalence of violence for most of the country’s recent history provides an opportunity to leverage variation over time and identify the causes and consequences of conflict as a contextual phenomenon.

Specifically, these papers show the different ways in which conflict and armed actors' strategies shape the provision of public goods: through the effects on individual-level preferences towards redistribution (Moore), through co-opting the policy-making process by influencing legislators (Uribe), and through shaping the incentives of the private sector (Angulo). Additionally, a final paper explores the other side of the relationship by studying how the provision of public education shapes the dynamics of conflict (Garbiras-Díaz and García-Montoya). Together, these papers aim to contribute to a growing literature on the provision of public goods during armed conflict.

The research designs of these papers cover a wide variety of units of analysis, sources and empirical methods of data analysis. On the one hand, they explore the relations between violence and politics at different levels: individuals, communities and municipalities, and the national level. On the other hand, they rely on primary and secondary sources by using archival data, survey evidence, administrative data and original datasets collected by the authors to study the different questions.

Garbiras-Díaz and García-Montoya aim to understand the effects of Radio Sutatenza, a massive education program, on the trajectories of violence in Colombian municipalities between 1960 and 1970. Founded in the 1950s during “La Violencia” conflict, this program expanded throughout the country in the initial stages of the armed conflict between las Farc and the Colombian State. Moore uses an original survey to understand the effect of violence and wartime governance on individual-level preferences regarding social and redistributive policies. Uribe draws on legislative data from the Colombian Congress to explore how right-wing paramilitary groups influenced the behavior of lawmakers. Angulo uses municipal-level data on public-private partnerships for the provision of roads to understand the impact of parapolitics on the participation of the private sector in the provision of public goods. Through an instrumental variables approach, Angulo estimates the effect of right-wing illegal armed groups co-opting democratic institutions on the provision of public goods.

Colombia is currently amid the implementation of a peace agreement with FARC and is considering restarting negotiations with ELN. The history of violence in Colombia and the risk of falling in the conflict trap (again) demands a better understanding of the legacies of conflict and how they shape post-conflict transitions and individual preferences.

Sub Unit

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Individual Presentations

• Politics After Rebel Governance: Legacies on Political and Policy Preferences - Sarah Moore

• The Pacifying Role of Education: The Case of Radio Sutatenza - Laura Garcia Montoya, Princeton University; Natalia Garbiras-Díaz, European University Institute

• From Capture to Co-Governance: Paramilitary Influence in the Colombian Congress - Andres Uribe, University of Chicago

• Public Goods and Civil War: Paramilitary Cooptation of Institutions and Roads - Camila Angulo Amaya, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Chair

• Laura Acosta Gonzalez NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Discussants

• Sarah Zukerman Daly Columbia University

• Oliver Kaplan University of Denver