“Fests of Vests”: The Politics of Participation in Neoliberal Peacebuilding in Colombia

Katherine Gough,Irene Vélez‐Torres,James Larrea‐Mejía,Krisna Ruette‐Orihuela,Giulia Piccolino

doi:10.1111/anti.12785

Katherine Gough, Irene Vélez‐Torres + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12785

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Abstract

AbstractThe Colombian Peace Agreement signed in 2016 was saluted internationally by scholars, policy makers and practitioners for encompassing the concept of territorial peace as a means of ensuring local participation in the strengthening of state institutions. Based on engaged research conducted in the Department of Cauca and Bogotá between 2017 and 2020, we critically analyse territorial peace, exploring its ideation, implementation, and subsequent decline in favour of security and stabilisation. We argue that the government’s peacebuilding rationale and mechanisms sought to reinforce the neoliberal state through a constrained participation model, which marginalised the progressive struggles of local communities living in former conflict affected areas. Without a radical breakdown of pre‐existing power structures of exploitation and domination, community participation in peacebuilding runs the risk of legitimising state‐led initiatives that ensure the political rule of capital, strengthen the bureaucracies of the centralised state, and create new violent disputes without resolving existing ones.

Highlights

Disillusionment with liberal top-down peacebuilding has led scholars and practitioners to advocate a legitimacy-based approach to post-conflict statebuilding (Heathershaw 2008; Zamudio and Culebro 2013)
The intention was that PDET and Programme for the Substitution of Illicit Crops (PNIS) should be formulated and implemented with the participation of rural inhabitants from areas affected by the armed conflict, an approach labelled as “territorial peace” by the architects of the Agreement (Jaramillo-Caro 2014)
While the progressive potential of territorial peace captured the attention of international organisations and scholars, and participation was portrayed as a successful example of bottom-up peacebuilding (Del Cairo et al 2018), we claim that the changes incorporated into the PDET and PNIS did not destabilise the neoliberal hegemonic model of the state

Summary

Introduction

Disillusionment with liberal top-down peacebuilding has led scholars and practitioners to advocate a legitimacy-based approach to post-conflict statebuilding (Heathershaw 2008; Zamudio and Culebro 2013). While the progressive potential of territorial peace captured the attention of international organisations and scholars, and participation was portrayed as a successful example of bottom-up peacebuilding (Del Cairo et al 2018), we claim that the changes incorporated into the PDET and PNIS did not destabilise the neoliberal hegemonic model of the state.

Results

Conclusion