Colombia: Introduction To A Special Issue Of Defence And Peace Economics

Abstract

the fall of 2009, where J. Vargas is a Professor of Economics. All articles in this special issue deal with the case of Colombia, a country that since its independence some 200 years ago might well be said never to have known a period of 'nonconflict,' certainly not in the past 50 or 60 years during which politically and criminally motivated violence has wracked city and countryside alike.All articles have been peer-reviewed, first at a day-long workshop with formal presentations, discussants, and debates held at the Universidad del Rosario on 16 November 2010, and for which we gratefully acknowledge and thank the sponsors at Rosario, and then via anonymous external peer review as well. Although specific to Colombia in their application, all articles carry messages that are relevant beyond Colombia's specific case. This is by design: we wished not only to highlight the professional abilities of Colombian economists, but more importantly to pick topics, issues, ideas, and methods that would be relevant and could be adopted elsewhere.The article by Mauricio Rodriguez and Nancy Daza -'Determinants of Civil Conflict in Colombia: How Robust are They?'examines the statistical stability of coefficient estimates when data sets, conflict measures, or estimation methods are varied. Using municipal-level data, they find that signs and statistical significance of the marginal effects of the explanatory variables change in response to variations in any of the three dimensions and that only few robust explanatory variables can be identified. They suggest that their results thus may place specific findings and interpretations of other published papers in doubt. Consequently, they recommend that researchers should perhaps routinely apply varied data, measures, and methods in order to examine the robustness of putative findings.A second article, by Paola Palacios -'Forced Displacement: Legal versus Illegal Crops'develops a formal model to study the differential patterns of forced migration that the establishment of palm oil plantations and of coca crops generate in regions in Colombia. Allowing for crop production to differ in labor intensity, she argues that less laborintensive crops make it more likely that potential producers (who are allied with an armed group) try to evict peasants instead of hiring them. By doing so, the author provides an interesting explanation of the fact that the establishment of (legal) palm oil plantations generates more forced migration than the introduction of (illegal) coca crops in Colombia. This is an important article with potentially wide applicability as crop substitution pro-

Contribution of science, technology, and innovation to post-conflict in Colombia

“…In this way, it plays an active role in monitoring the fulfillment of the tasks and objectives of the mission 4 . In the post-conflict in Colombia, UN created the United Nations Verification Mission, which will verify the political, economic and social reinstatement; and security guarantees for the members of the FARC, their families and for the communities 5 . Once this mission is created, it will be charged with verifying the following two points of the Final Agreement 6 : Point 3.2 of the Agreement: Reintegration of FARC into civilian life -economically, socially and politically.…”

“…This generation of violence that has affected different regions of the country, increases with factors such as lack of education and job opportunities, facilitating the influence of criminal gangs (financed by drug trafficking) in youth, making them participate in activities outside of the law, such as smuggling, illegal mining, kidnappings, hired killers, assassinations and a variety of irregular business modalities ( 18), ( 30),( 22), (1). After of a conflict that has passed more than fifty years, the country reaches a peace agreement with the largest guerrilla group in Colombia (5), the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which surrendered their weapons and became a legally constituted political party under the Peace Agreements signed on September 26, 2016 2 . This peace agreement sows its foundations in 6 fundamental pillars: (i) policy and sustainable development, (ii) political participation, (iii) solution to the problem of illicit drugs, (iv) point about the victims of the armed conflict, (v) ) end of conflict and (vi) implementation, verification and endorsement 3 ; which in turn arise from 6 points in common between the FARC-EP and the national government during the negotiation process (8):…”

Contribution of science, technology, and innovation to post-conflict in Colombia

“…In this way, it plays an active role in monitoring the fulfillment of the tasks and objectives of the mission 4 . In the post-conflict in Colombia, UN created the United Nations Verification Mission, which will verify the political, economic and social reinstatement; and security guarantees for the members of the FARC, their families and for the communities 5 . Once this mission is created, it will be charged with verifying the following two points of the Final Agreement 6 : Point 3.2 of the Agreement: Reintegration of FARC into civilian life -economically, socially and politically.…”

“…This generation of violence that has affected different regions of the country, increases with factors such as lack of education and job opportunities, facilitating the influence of criminal gangs (financed by drug trafficking) in youth, making them participate in activities outside of the law, such as smuggling, illegal mining, kidnappings, hired killers, assassinations and a variety of irregular business modalities ( 18), ( 30),( 22), (1). After of a conflict that has passed more than fifty years, the country reaches a peace agreement with the largest guerrilla group in Colombia (5), the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which surrendered their weapons and became a legally constituted political party under the Peace Agreements signed on September 26, 2016 2 . This peace agreement sows its foundations in 6 fundamental pillars: (i) policy and sustainable development, (ii) political participation, (iii) solution to the problem of illicit drugs, (iv) point about the victims of the armed conflict, (v) ) end of conflict and (vi) implementation, verification and endorsement 3 ; which in turn arise from 6 points in common between the FARC-EP and the national government during the negotiation process (8):…”

Behavioral Differences in Violence: The Case of Intra-Group Differences of Paramilitaries and Guerrillas in Colombia

“…It is widely known that it has been characterized by the involvement of three violent groups: the right-wing paramilitaries; the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC); and the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN). The Colombian case has received a substantial attention by social scientists [see among others the special issues edited by Brauer and Vargas (2012) and Caruso and Vargas (2014)]. but less attention has been paid to behavioral differences between and within armed groups.…”