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Clientelistic Warfare analyzes the relationship between Colombian paramilitaries and the State in the period 1982-2007. Despite the attention that the paramilitaries demand, due to both the magnitude of their crimes and their specifi cities, understanding the nature of this interaction has proven to be complex. They were not a homogeneous, hierarchical force, but a protean network of highly localistic coalitions and units. Based on new and extensive empirical evidence, this book shows that even in diverse circumstances there was a set of basic mechanisms that established a link between the State and paramilitary factions, which marked the trajectory of the latter. These mechanisms, in turn, were permanently mediated by political institutions and the highly clientelistic Colombian polity. Therefore, without a close reading of the Colombian clientelistic politics and statehood, it is not possible to understand the interaction between the two entities.
List of contents
CONTENTS: The state-paramilitary relationship puzzle - Democracy, clientelism, violence - The Colombian war - Paramilitary structures - Trajectories and crises - The paramilitaries, the army and the police - Informational labyrinths - Paramilitaries in politics: Friends, factions and murderers - Building the state from below? The take-over of the health system - The dynamics of coercive dispossession.
About the author
Francisco Gutiérrez-Sanín is a researcher at the Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internacionales at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He has a PhD in Political Science from Warsaw University. Throughout his career he has worked and published on civil war, patterns of violence against civilians, statehood and state fragility, political indicators, political parties, and clientelism. He participated in the Comisión Histórica del Conflicto y sus Víctimas summoned by the Colombian government and FARC peace table.
