Current Research

A growing body of political science literature explores the relationship between political violence and post-traumatic growth. Research on this phenomenon suggests that individuals reporting higher victimization are more likely to be politically engaged and community oriented. This literature, while making good use of large datasets and successfully garnering scholarly attention, tends to almost entirely overlook gender and Latin America by focusing on male subjects in clean conflict cases in Europe, Africa and Asia. Yet, a gendered Latin American perspective has much to offer when trying to understand the consequences of war for men and women. This article critically examines the research on violence and gender in Latin America through a systematic and in-depth literature review showing what Latin America has to offer. We identify, assess, and contextualise contributions on empowerment, resistance, mobilisation, and resilience in the region that should speak to the literature on political violence and post-traumatic growth.

Political participation and social activism are crucial for sustainable peacebuilding in conflictaffected societies. However, communities and individuals could be wary of engaging in activism or supporting activists due to fear of retaliation from armed groups, and this perceived danger can hinder collective action and sustainable peacebuilding. Existing data shows that women participate less in politics when women activists have been killed. Therefore, we theorize that perceived dangers of political activism are gendered, with women facing fewer deaths than men but distinct threats from their own communities that discourage their participation. In this study, we experimentally test whether the presence of armed groups influences perceptions of danger associated with different types of political action, and whether these perceptions differ depending on the activist’s gender. Drawing on survey data from Colombia (N = 1,000), we find that the presence of armed groups increases perceived danger across political actions. Contrary to our predictions, we do not observe an effect of activist gender, yet the effects of armed actor presence are more robust in scenarios involving women activists. Using a systematic hand-coding approach of open-ended responses in which participants comment on reasons for perceived danger of activism allows us to identify key patterns in danger perceptions. This analysis shows that men activists are more frequently viewed as being themselves potential sources of danger, whereas danger associated with women activists is more often attributed to their gender and to anticipated reactions from the community. These findings highlight how gendered perceptions of danger shape the space for political engagement in conflict-affected contexts.

Recent literature attributes patterns in the onset and success of peace processes to rebels' institutional characteristics, yet we have little understanding of why some rebels reach peace agreements rapidly while other civil war negotiations drag on for years. Rebel groups' behavior in peace negotiations is centrally determined by the leaders in charge. We examine peace negotiation duration in 172 peace processes between 1975 and 2013, combining 10,000 negotiation-months observation with recent data on rebel leader attributes. We argue that combat experience provides rebel leaders a particular ability to overcome negotiation holdups due to incomplete information and ameliorate certain types of commitment problems. For rebel groups stronger, at par, or weaker than their government opponent, we find strong quantitative support for our claim that rebel leaders with combat experience reach peace settlements significantly faster. Moreover, we find that leaders lacking combat experience are more likely to stall when in a position of relative weakness vis-à-vis the government.