How Violent Actors Distort the Path to Political Power: Evidence from Colombia
Photo: Juan Diego Duque Salazar
In many countries, violent groups interfere in politics and deform democratic decision-making. This jeopardizes democratic ideals about equality in political participation and democratic representation. At the same time, many politicians with known ties to violent groups are successful in democratic elections. This project seeks to shed light on this paradox.
Details
- Period: 2026-01-01 – 2030-12-31
- Budget: 6,720,000 SEK
- Funder: Swedish Research Council
Description
Political violence features in democratic politics worldwide. Violent actors use force, threats, and intimidation to circumvent democratic processes, thereby undermining politicians’ accountability to voters. In this project, we focus on how violent actors influence the path to elected office. We study how violent actors’ interference in politics affects who is willing to run for political office, parties’ candidate selection, and citizens’ vote choice.
We focus on Colombia, where the problem of violent actors interfering in politics manifests widely. This makes it possible to observe mechanisms and develop novel theorizing on an understudied phenomenon. We combine survey experiments with political elites and voters, violence event data, data on candidate profiles, elite interviews, and citizen focus groups. We collaborate with the civil society based election monitoring organization Misión de Observación Electoral, which strengthens the project’s contribution to the democratic development in Colombia. Through careful theorizing and rich and diverse data sources, we will disentangle the factors that enable violent practices to override democratic ideals and allow undemocratic leaders to gain power.
Research project leader Sandra Håkansson says:
Our project can also contribute with insights about the democratic implications of violent actors' increased activity in politics in more peaceful contexts where political violence is on the rise, such as the U.S., Germany, U.K., and Sweden.