Enforcement, Empowerment and Entitlement (3E): Subnational determinants of armed post-conflict stability

Abstract

Between 1958 and 2017, Latin American countries experienced a long and intense cycle of insurgent internal armed conflicts for State sovereignty in multiple exceptional war territories. I consider this long period of internal armed conflict as the cycle of integrated armed insurgencies (1985-2017) due to the type of armed insurgent actors and the political objectives contested by the rebels challenging the State.

Despite the variation in the strategies and pathways for ending the armed conflict, the long-term cycle of the integrated Latin American internal armed conflicts is over. Nevertheless, the legacies of violence over the States, the former rebels, and the civilian victims in the pre-existing subnational conflict zones still are alive. Likewise, the Latin American’s State capacities for achieving armed post-conflict stabilization, implementing post-conflict policies, and controlling the new post-insurgent risks of armed violence are critical.

As a result, a new set of contentious political subnational challenges for achieving a higher internal armed post-conflict stabilization have arrived. Scholars, peace managers, and policymakers have concentrated on national peace and reconciliation processes under the classic Galtung 3R model: Reconstruction, Reconciliation, and Resolution. However, the internal armed conflict is an eminently subnational phenomenon. In this sense, I suggested a turn in the studies of armed post-conflict, from the national scale of Galtung's 3R (1998) to the 3E of subnational legacies of internal armed conflict on post-conflict stabilization. Namely, Enforcement, Empowerment & Entitlement (3E Model).

I claim that the Subnational Legacies of the Armed Conflict (SLAC) determines the variation in the Armed Post-conflict Stability levels (APS). Thus, my research attacks one underexplored issue of the armed post-conflict studies. At the same time, it suggests a theoretical and empirical framework for explaining the dynamics of the armed post-conflict stabilization and its causal mechanism. My research employs a mixed-methods strategy combining geo-nested analysis (Harbers & Ingram, 2017) of a medium-n analysis data set (Sundberg & Melander, 2013) and a diverse cases comparison (Gerring, 2007) encompassing the Latin-American IRE from 1957 to 2019.

Likewise, I use in-depth case studies (small-n analysis) for the empirical testing of the 3E mechanism, causal process observations, and process tracing techniques for APS levels variation. In that manner, I cover the entire spectrum of post-conflict stabilization (APS) variation as quasi-experimental complete matching techniques and control by design the potential selection bias errors. My findings demonstrate the potential use of the 3E Model as an explanatory mechanism for the variation of subnational post-conflict stability.

My findings suggest that the more fulfilled the sequential chaining of the 3E mechanism, the higher the level of post-armed conflict achieved. The preceding was empirically evidenced by comparing diverse APS cases, including The strong APS level achieved by the Ecuadorian northern border Planning Zone 1, the partial APS identified in the Colombian Eastern of Antioquia region, the fragile APS level observed in the Peruvian VRAEM, and, last but not least, the weak APS level of the Colombian southwest region.