Political Reintegration Research Articles

Crimea's Return to Russia: A Comparative Analysis of the Political Reintegration of the Republic of Crimea and the Federal City of Sevastopol Into Russia (2014-2022)

Crimea's Return to Russia: A Comparative Analysis of the Political Reintegration of the Republic of Crimea and the Federal City of Sevastopol Into Russia (2014-2022)

International Efforts to Prevent the Political Reintegration of Crimea and Sevastopol Into Russia

International Efforts to Prevent the Political Reintegration of Crimea and Sevastopol Into Russia

From ‘Territorial Peace’ to ‘Total Peace’ in Colombia: A Geopolitical Balance

ABSTRACT This forum discusses the concept of ‘total peace’ (paz total) and the notion of ‘peace regions’ (regiones de paz) recently coined by the government of Colombia to advance in the implementation of the Peace Accords signed back in 2016 with the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces FARC. Broadly drawing on a radical and critical geopolitics perspective, the forum’s contributions offer a set of interpretations, exploring a wide range of different aspects, such as the relations with the previous concept of ‘territorial peace’ (paz territorial), the changing geographical dynamics of the armed conflict, the proliferation of unlawful armed structures and drug trafficking, and violent processes of capital accumulation. Moreover, specific themes such as environmental conflict, the political reintegration of the guerrillas, gender and differential approaches, and ethnic and peasant communities’ perspectives are also addressed, without losing sight of the more general question of the country’s territorial reordering.

How Ethnic Discrimination Shapes Political Reintegration After War: Insights From a Conjoint Experiment in Colombia

The reintegration of former armed group affiliates into formal politics is a fundamental challenge for post-conflict societies. Arguably, this challenge is even more difficult in settings where ethnic discrimination is pervasive, since discrimination implies comparatively higher barriers to political reintegration for racialized ex-combatants. In this paper, we explore how ethnicity and armed group affiliation interact to shape electoral prospects. Specifically, we investigate whether participants in a conjoint experiment in Colombia discriminate between political candidates of European and African descent and whether politicians of different ethnic identities are differentially punished for ties to armed groups. We find that participants display a strong aversion toward politicians with armed group affiliations and that they discriminate against Afro-Colombian candidates. Furthermore, we demonstrate that biases are additive, in the sense that Caucasian and Afro-Colombian candidates are equally punished for associating with armed groups. Finally, we explore heterogeneous treatment effects to shed light on sources of ethnic discrimination and aversion toward former armed group affiliates.

Transitioning Guerrillas: An Analysis of the Internal Cohesion of the Former FARC in Their Transit from War to Democracy

ABSTRACT The emergence of ex-rebels’ political parties after peace accords creates a vehicle for political reintegration, which in turn has positive effects on peace and democracy consolidation after war. However, many of these parties tend to break apart and disappear, elevating the risk of renewed cycles of political violence. In times of war, cohesion plays a pivotal role in maintaining the bonds among members of armed organizations. It empowers them to perform effectively even in the face of challenging conditions and continues to be a critical factor during postconflict transitions. By means of a quantitative analysis of former FARC guerrillas in Colombia, now part of a newly founded legal political party, we test whether ideology, organizational dynamics, or individual perceptions and motivations help to explain their levels of cohesion. Our results show that even if all dimensions add up to the observed cohesion levels, perceptions of internal democracy, and inclusion, are the most relevant. We argue that assistance to former rebels in their organizational reengineering efforts after war will help to reduce the risk of the negative effects of rebel party collapse.

From Insurgency to Local Politics the Case of the Former FARC-EP Insurgent Guillermo Torres in Turbaco, Colombia

ABSTRACT Political participation by the former FARC-EP in Colombia remains challenging. Yet, despite limited acceptance of ex-rebels by Colombian society, ex-insurgent Guillermo Torres successfully ran for office in the municipality of Turbaco. We observe how he negotiated his identity as former rebel, revolutionary musician, and son-of-the-soil, to make himself a credible candidate, and to implement a progressive agenda. We challenge mainstream perspectives on ‘political reintegration’ and localise the ‘rebel-to-party’ debate. We suggest four elements to understand ex-insurgents political participation in local realms: identity and sense of belonging, insurgent and post-insurgent relations with local society, interaction with regional elites, and partisan competitiveness.

Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration in Colombia: Lost human rights opportunities for ex-combatants with disabilities

This article examines whether and how the circumstances of Colombian ex-combatants with disabilities were recognized in the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) processes in the period following the adoption of the 2016 peace agreement. Our results suggest severe procedural and substantive shortcomings during the drafting of the peace agreement and the implementation of the DDR processes that exacerbated the exclusion of ex-combatants with disabilities from available opportunities for their social, economic, and political reintegration. We conclude that a better understanding of the disabling impact of conflict and the experiences of impairment and disability could have mitigated such neglect.

Rethinking female ex-combatants, reintegration, and DDR: towards political reintegration?

ABSTRACT United Nations-led Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes have increasingly included female ex-combatants; however, the contribution of such DDR programmes to female ex-combatants’ empowerment and reintegration, as well as to peace-building, remains debated. Drawing on 77 semi-structured interviews with female ex-combatants and DDR officials in Liberia and Nepal, this article explores the potential of political reintegration to better support female ex-combatants’ reintegration and the building of an inclusive, positive peace. This article contends that political reintegration can provide female ex-combatants with peaceable means to address grievances and bring together ex-combatants and non-combatants to work towards peace. Political reintegration support should not be a substitute for economic and social reintegration or physical and mental health support, but rather should work to compliment these. To be meaningful to female ex-combatants and to peace, political reintegration support must prevent a ‘triple burden’ of productive, reproductive, and peace-building/political labour. Lastly, this article argues that UN-led DDR has potential to contribute to or undermine building an inclusive, positive peace if it were to provide reintegration support to female ex-combatants.

Cuestionando el mantra "Todos para uno y uno para todos": la reintegración de las excombatientes de Aceh

The involvement of female combatants in the Aceh conflict challenges the stereotype of peaceful women, but these women have largely been overlooked in formal peacebuilding programmes. Using a qualitative approach, this chapter reveals the complex ways in which gender obstructs just and fair reintegration. Three areas are looked at closely: social reintegration (public acceptance of ex-combatants), economic reintegration (access to compensation) and political reintegration (support for female ex-combatants’ candidacy to the local parliament). The chapter finds that gender in intersection with other identities influences which female ex-combatants benefit from reintegration programmes. It explores explanatory factors such as loyalty to the struggle for freedom, the timing of disarmament, and kinship with male elites (men in power)—identifying the last of these as the most important. Although female ex-combatants do not face social stigma in this context, their access to economic and political reintegration benefits is limited and strongly influenced by their kinship with and proximity to men in power. Consequently, Aceh’s female ex-combatants cannot be seen as homogenous. Post-conflict peacebuilding programmes have created inequalities, and the old mantra ‘all for one, one for all’ has lost its meaning. These findings underscore the importance of looking at equality and inclusivity in an intersectional way at every stage of peacebuilding, including where reintegration processes are concerned.

The Culture of Royalty Political Reintegration. The Case of Romania and Other Eastern-European Experiences in Post-Communism and Before and After EU Accession

The Culture of Royalty Political Reintegration. The Case of Romania and Other Eastern-European Experiences in Post-Communism and Before and After EU Accession

Reclaiming the political centre after National Socialism: the discursive repositioning of the far right in Austrian (party) politics, 1949–60

ABSTRACTBeginning in 1947, the growing reintegration of former National Socialists (Ehemalige) into Austrian post-war society also facilitated attempts at far-right political reorganization. The protagonists of this reorganization had to realign their position within the political field and adjust their self-presentation to the new democratic context. Yet, ideological continuities can be detected. The idea and the reclaiming of the ‘centre’ (Mitte) were crucial concepts in the political struggles for repositioning and legitimization in Austrian democratic institutions after 1945. This article adopts several approaches. First, it reconstructs the manifold aspects of the concept of the ‘centre’ in political discourse before and after 1945. Second, it then examines the argumentative strategies referring to this specific concept during parliamentarian speeches by representatives of the two far-right parties explicitly representing former National Socialists in post-war Austria: Verband der Unabhängigen (League of Independents) and Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party of Austria). This political reintegration and discursive repositioning in parliament also exhibited a spatial dimension, since the representatives moved from the very right margin of the semicircle to the centre of the plenary assembly. The normalization of former National Socialists and far-right positions within a democratic context succeeded, as will be argued, at least partly thanks to the (strategic) appropriation and redefinition of the concept of the centre.

Terrorism as Method in Nepali Maoist Insurgency, 1996–2016

During the period 1996–2006, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) waged overt people’s war to seize state power and institute a new order that realized the party’s understanding of ‘New Democracy’ as posited by Mao Tse-tung. Contextual shifts led to a crucial strategic turning point in September 2005, when the Maoists agreed to a united front with estranged legal parties to oust the monarchy and establish a republic. Though touted as acceptance of political reintegration, the move was tactical rather than strategic. The party had no intention of supporting a parliamentary version of democracy and thus, 2006–2016, engaged in a covert effort to seize power. Central to this effort was the paramilitary Young Communist League (YCL), the members of which responded to inflammatory party verbiage and exhortations with attacks upon rival political actors. These attacks, academically and legally, were terrorism and offered a salient illustration of intra-state unrestricted warfare. Ultimately, organizational, national, and regional circumstances caused the main Maoist movement to move decisively away from its covert approach. By that time, however, radical splinters had embraced the use of terrorism against rival political actors, creating a situation whereby local politics is yet a dangerous endeavor in certain areas and at certain times.

Savage Theories by Roy Kesey

Palo Oloixarac. Savage Theories. Trans. Roy Kesey. New York. Soho Press. 2017. 291 pages. In Savage Theories, Palo Oloixarac addresses the conflict of being both an individual with ideas and a social animal with libido. Theory and sexuality are woven together in the work, but only through an endless, brutal process, which the narrator depicts with uncompromising wit and arrogance. Oloixarac gives her narrator freedom to comment on anything by the tonal illusion of disinterestedly commenting on everything . Her style grants a feeling of resolution to each issue raised—be it an analysis of 1980s Argentine pop culture or the effects of early psychoanalysis on political philosophy. The reader feels learned and rushed along to the next exciting revelation . And they are exciting—Oloixarac explores hushed-away and ignored culture in broad daylight as well as that part of a person we would rather forget about, though it churns and wails. Situated in the dark corners of Argentine academia and counterculture, the narrator invests the reader in her fierce ambitions while relaying, entwining the intelligent passion of Kamtchowsky and the haughty genius of Pabst. If there is love in Savage Theories, it is first sensual, then intellectual. Emotion, in this world, is an oft-ignored chemical byproduct. And yet each character is full of yearning, more or less silent, which compels and completes them. But completion, or self-realization, is not their ultimate goal. Each character strives to enable or force others to see the world through their perspective; in order to realize this goal, Kamtchowsky employs her camera, Pabst relies on his blog, and the narrator turns herself over to her obsessively grand philosophical theory. The language of Savage Theories is dense but fluid. At times the erudite references and ideas, so casually intermingled, border on the solipsistic. It is then that the reader may grow frustrated; pulled along by the author’s artful current, one may find oneself finishing a section and surprised at how little has been understood. Occasional endnotes and footnotes do much to repair this experience, and the pleasure of puzzling over Oloixarac’s complexity is very real. While remarkably intelligent and uncompromising, Oloixarac’s artistic touch is her principal means of captivating readers. And, even this, she is not shy to assert. The narrator writes to her prey, “The seductive powers of syntax grow ever stronger by subjugating those gathered around the one who organizes the verbs,” and the reader blushes, compelled to continue reading. Carson Schatzman University of Oklahoma Chan Ho-Kei. The Borrowed. Trans. Jeremy Tiang. New York. Black Cat. 2017 (©2016). 490 pages. This is a remarkable book, truly brilliant, whose 490 pages is initially intimidating, but reading it is as pleasurable as bingewatching a miniseries or reading your way through another author’s novel series. Divided into six chapters, The Borrowed is really six discrete novellas with six different crime stories set in Hong Kong in six years beginning in 2013 and scattered backward to 1967. Each focuses on the relationship between mentor Kwan Chundok and his “student,” Sonny Lok. Kwan is a brilliant police detective with great powers of observation and deduction , while Sonny, sincere and honest, plays Watson to him. Kwan, of course, uses unconventional methods to trick out confessions , and the first story shows Lok has taken up the baton his mentor (on his deathbed) has been forced to drop. Some of the stories have a lot of action in them—shoot-outs, ransom drops, and bombings—while at least one is a masterpiece of the old-fashioned drawing room mysteries in which the suspects have been gathered to talk through the odd details of a crime until one of them confesses. Each story is a worthy detective story on its own, but together they make a mosaic of Hong Kong as it passes from being one of the jewels of the British Empire to political reintegration with China. The constabulary changes in the level of corruption. The bureaucracy and internal politics of the organization hinder the honest cop seeking justice, and gang leaders often have more influence than government officials. World Literature in Review 94 WLT MAY–AUGUST 2017 ...

The Borrowed by Jeremy Tiang

Palo Oloixarac. Savage Theories. Trans. Roy Kesey. New York. Soho Press. 2017. 291 pages. In Savage Theories, Palo Oloixarac addresses the conflict of being both an individual with ideas and a social animal with libido. Theory and sexuality are woven together in the work, but only through an endless, brutal process, which the narrator depicts with uncompromising wit and arrogance. Oloixarac gives her narrator freedom to comment on anything by the tonal illusion of disinterestedly commenting on everything . Her style grants a feeling of resolution to each issue raised—be it an analysis of 1980s Argentine pop culture or the effects of early psychoanalysis on political philosophy. The reader feels learned and rushed along to the next exciting revelation . And they are exciting—Oloixarac explores hushed-away and ignored culture in broad daylight as well as that part of a person we would rather forget about, though it churns and wails. Situated in the dark corners of Argentine academia and counterculture, the narrator invests the reader in her fierce ambitions while relaying, entwining the intelligent passion of Kamtchowsky and the haughty genius of Pabst. If there is love in Savage Theories, it is first sensual, then intellectual. Emotion, in this world, is an oft-ignored chemical byproduct. And yet each character is full of yearning, more or less silent, which compels and completes them. But completion, or self-realization, is not their ultimate goal. Each character strives to enable or force others to see the world through their perspective; in order to realize this goal, Kamtchowsky employs her camera, Pabst relies on his blog, and the narrator turns herself over to her obsessively grand philosophical theory. The language of Savage Theories is dense but fluid. At times the erudite references and ideas, so casually intermingled, border on the solipsistic. It is then that the reader may grow frustrated; pulled along by the author’s artful current, one may find oneself finishing a section and surprised at how little has been understood. Occasional endnotes and footnotes do much to repair this experience, and the pleasure of puzzling over Oloixarac’s complexity is very real. While remarkably intelligent and uncompromising, Oloixarac’s artistic touch is her principal means of captivating readers. And, even this, she is not shy to assert. The narrator writes to her prey, “The seductive powers of syntax grow ever stronger by subjugating those gathered around the one who organizes the verbs,” and the reader blushes, compelled to continue reading. Carson Schatzman University of Oklahoma Chan Ho-Kei. The Borrowed. Trans. Jeremy Tiang. New York. Black Cat. 2017 (©2016). 490 pages. This is a remarkable book, truly brilliant, whose 490 pages is initially intimidating, but reading it is as pleasurable as bingewatching a miniseries or reading your way through another author’s novel series. Divided into six chapters, The Borrowed is really six discrete novellas with six different crime stories set in Hong Kong in six years beginning in 2013 and scattered backward to 1967. Each focuses on the relationship between mentor Kwan Chundok and his “student,” Sonny Lok. Kwan is a brilliant police detective with great powers of observation and deduction , while Sonny, sincere and honest, plays Watson to him. Kwan, of course, uses unconventional methods to trick out confessions , and the first story shows Lok has taken up the baton his mentor (on his deathbed) has been forced to drop. Some of the stories have a lot of action in them—shoot-outs, ransom drops, and bombings—while at least one is a masterpiece of the old-fashioned drawing room mysteries in which the suspects have been gathered to talk through the odd details of a crime until one of them confesses. Each story is a worthy detective story on its own, but together they make a mosaic of Hong Kong as it passes from being one of the jewels of the British Empire to political reintegration with China. The constabulary changes in the level of corruption. The bureaucracy and internal politics of the organization hinder the honest cop seeking justice, and gang leaders often have more influence than government officials. World Literature in Review 94 WLT MAY–AUGUST 2017 The Borrowed manages to combine the pleasures...

From structural breakage to political reintegration of the working class: Relative surplus population layers in Argentina and their involvement in the piquetero movement

In this paper, we examine the different layers of the relative surplus population in Argentina and the development of the Argentinian piquetero movement, which tried to establish an alliance between employed and unemployed workers. We highlight the potentialities and the limits of this initiative, especially regarding the organisation and integration of the different layers of the relative surplus population.

Reintegrating Rebels into Civilian Life

Considerable resources are devoted to ex-combatant reintegration programs in current peace processes, but evidence on their effectiveness remains thin. We use original survey data to study an ex-combatant reintegration program implemented after Burundi's 1993-2004 civil war. Previous quantitative studies have found reintegration programs to be ineffective, but only ex-combatants who self-selected into programs were studied. We avoid such selection problems with a quasi-experimental design exploiting an exogenous bureaucratic failure. We find the program resulted in a 20 to 35 percentage point reduction in poverty incidence among ex-combatants and moderate improvement in livelihoods. But this economic boost does not seem to have caused political reintegration: while we find a modest increase in propensities to report civilian life as preferable to combatant life, we find no evidence that the program contributed to either more satisfaction with the peace process or a more positive disposition toward current government institutions.

Reintegrating Rebels into Civilian Life: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Burundi

Considerable resources are devoted to ex-combatant reintegration programs in current peace processes, but evidence on their effectiveness remains thin. We use original survey data to study an ex-combatant reintegration program implemented after Burundi’s 1993-2004 civil war. Previous quantitative studies have found reintegration programs to be ineffective, but only ex-combatants who self-selected into programs were studied. We avoid such selection problems with a quasi-experimental design exploiting an exogenous bureaucratic failure. We find the program resulted in a 20 to 35 percentage point reduction in poverty incidence among ex- combatants and moderate improvement in livelihoods. But this economic boost does not seem to have caused political reintegration: while we find a modest increase in propensities to report civilian life as preferable to combatant life, we find no evidence that the program contributed to either more satisfaction with the peace process or a more positive disposition toward current government institutions.

Militias, tribes and insurgents: The challenge of political reintegration in Iraq

Following its overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the United States was confronted with one of the most complex state-building enterprises of recent history. A central component of state building, emphasised in the literature yet given scant attention at the time of the invasion, is the process of political reintegration: the transformation of armed groups into political actors willing to participate peacefully in the political future of the country. In Iraq, political reintegration was a particularly important challenge, relating both to the armed forces of the disposed regime and to the Kurdish and Shia militias eager to play a role in the new political system. This article examines the different approaches employed by the United States toward the political reintegration of irregular armed groups, from the policy vacuum of 2003 to the informal reintegration seen during the course of the so-called “surge” in 2007 and 2008. The case study has significant implications for the importance of getting political reintegration right—and the long-term costs of getting it badly wrong.

Engaging disengagement: The political reintegration of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front

The conflict between the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Sierra Leonean government represents a highly instructive study for reintegration projects. Far from being a conventional political insurgency readily lending itself to peaceful political transformation, the RUF possessed within the ranks of its young and brutalised recruits a fundamental rejection of Sierra Leone's political structures. As such, Sierra Leone presented a unique challenge for reintegration efforts, requiring not only the immediate reconciliation of ex-combatants with victims and civil society, but also the long-term political incorporation of a group of youths defined by their very disengagement from and distrust of the political system. This article argues that the Sierra Leone experience demonstrates that successful political reintegration does not simply amount to political participation per se, but rather requires specific forms of political participation, which reinforce the primacy of peaceful political interaction over and above other means for affecting change. In this regard, this article concludes that despite progress in many key areas, former fighters of the RUF have yet to be fully politically reintegrated.

The way back in: Reintegrating illegal armed groups in Colombia then and now

Back in the early 1990s, Colombia reintegrated five left-wing guerrilla groups. Whether as groups or individuals, these guerrillas found space for legitimate political participation at the local and national levels. Society accepted them and they embraced democracy and contributed to the strengthening of liberal political ideas and human rights norms in the country. Fifteen years later Colombia is once again attempting to reintegrate ex-combatants, 33,000 from the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, the so-called ‘paramilitary’—a right-wing force that sought to fight guerrillas—and about 11,000 ‘individually demobilised’ combatants of FARC, ELN and AUC who have since 2002 deserted their group. This time, however, the task of transforming illegal armed groups into legitimate political entities is proving to be harder. In particular, the reintegration of the paramilitary has elicited wide criticism from Colombians and the international community. Why are things different today? By examining and comparing the processes of political reintegration of the M-19 and the paramilitary this article will argue that there are at least four critical factors that either allow or bar former combatants from becoming legitimate players with a capacity for political interlocution: the international and domestic political and normative contexts; the nature and behaviour of the illegal armed group (how much power they command, to what extent groups use war for personal profit and whether they commit egregious crimes); the terms of the peace negotiation; and the practical dimensions of exercising political interlocution.