IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/polsoc/v36y2008i1p3-34.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Telling the Difference: Guerrillas and Paramilitaries in the Colombian War

Author

Listed:
  • Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín

    (Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internacionales of the Nacional University of Colombia, fgutiers@hotmail.com)

Abstract

The effort to build a political economy of war without politics is finding its limits. The question now is what comes next. How to put politics back in? This article compares systematically two non-state armed groups that participate in the Colombian conflict, the main guerrilla (FARC) and the paramilitary. It shows that despite their similar financial bases, they appear to exhibit systematic differences— regarding both their social composition and their internal/external behavior—and claims that the key to understanding them is the set of organizational devices that each group crafts in its process of survival and growth. All this suggests that a main tenet of the early political economy of war, that all non-state armed groups can be understood as being strategically identical, is flawed. It also poses a classificatory challenge.

Suggested Citation

  • Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín, 2008. "Telling the Difference: Guerrillas and Paramilitaries in the Colombian War," Politics & Society, , vol. 36(1), pages 3-34, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:36:y:2008:i:1:p:3-34
    DOI: 10.1177/0032329207312181
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329207312181
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0032329207312181?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cramer, C., 2002. "Homo Economicus Goes to War: Methodological Individualism, Rational Choice and the Political Economy of War," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 1845-1864, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christopher Blattman, 2009. "Civil War: A Review of Fifty Years of Research," Working Papers id:2231, eSocialSciences.
    2. Christopher Blattman & Edward Miguel, 2010. "Civil War," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 3-57, March.
    3. Enzo Nussio & Ben Oppenheim, 2013. "Trusting the Enemy: Confidence in the state among ex-combatants," HiCN Working Papers 144, Households in Conflict Network.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mac Ginty, Roger, 2013. "Indicators+: A proposal for everyday peace indicators," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 56-63.
    2. Brenner, David, 2015. "Ashes of co-optation: from armed group fragmentation to the rebuilding of popular insurgency in Myanmar," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 65546, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Rusch, Hannes, 2023. "The logic of human intergroup conflict:," Research Memorandum 014, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    4. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2017. "A critical survey of the resource curse literature through the appropriability lens," CEPN Working Papers 2017-14, Centre d'Economie de l'Université de Paris Nord.
    5. Lebdioui, Amir, 2021. "The Multidimensional Indicator of Extractives-based Development (MINDEX): A new approach to measuring resource wealth and dependence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    6. Benedikt Korf, 2006. "Functions of violence revisited: greed, pride and grievance in Sri Lanka’s civil war," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 6(2), pages 109-122, April.
    7. Hye-Ryoung Jung, 2024. "The Historical Origins of Communal Violence in Africa: Common Pool Resources-Driven Trust and Its Contrasting Effects on Violence," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 36(1), pages 53-81, February.
    8. Gries, Thomas & Haake, Claus-Jochen, 2016. "An Economic Theory of 'Destabilization War' '- Compromise for Peace versus Conventional, Guerilla, or Terrorist Warfare," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145617, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. Van Leeuwen, Mathijs & Van Der Haar, Gemma, 2016. "Theorizing the Land–Violent Conflict Nexus," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 94-104.
    10. Pamina Firchow & Roger Mac Ginty, 2020. "Including Hard-to-Access Populations Using Mobile Phone Surveys and Participatory Indicators," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 49(1), pages 133-160, February.
    11. Thomas Gries & Claus-Jochen Haake, 2016. "An Economic Theory of 'Destabilization War'," Working Papers CIE 95, Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics.
    12. Liliya Yakovleva & Oleg Dubinskiy & Yaroslav Kotenko, 2022. "Legitimacy On The Frontline. Public Policy In Ukraine Between Public Good And Private Interests," Baltic Journal of Economic Studies, Publishing house "Baltija Publishing", vol. 8(3).
    13. Andal, Emmanuel Genesis T., 2016. "The Economic Incentives of International Conflicts: A Theoretical Exposition," Journal of Economics, Management & Agricultural Development, Journal of Economics, Management & Agricultural Development (JEMAD), vol. 2(1), June.
    14. Gutiérrez Sanín, Francisco & González Peña, Andrea, 2009. "Force and ambiguity: evaluating sources for cross-national research – the case of military interventions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 28494, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Christopher Cramer, 2003. "Does inequality cause conflict?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(4), pages 397-412.
    16. Michele Tronconi, 2017. "L'origine costitutiva dei corpi intermedi, tra economia, politica e selezione naturale," LIUC Papers in Economics 304, Cattaneo University (LIUC).
    17. Christopher Blattman & Edward Miguel, 2010. "Civil War," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 3-57, March.
    18. Meierrieks, Daniel & Krieger, Tim & Klotzbücher, Valentin, 2021. "Class Warfare: Political Exclusion of the Poor and the Roots of Social-Revolutionary Terrorism, 1860-1950," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 32(6), pages 681-697.
    19. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2017. "A critical survey of the resource curse literature through the appropriability lens," CEPN Working Papers hal-01583559, HAL.
    20. Vahabi,Mehrdad, 2019. "The Political Economy of Predation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107591370, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:36:y:2008:i:1:p:3-34. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.