Peace at Last: Analysing the Underlying Dynamics of the Colombian Agreement

Research Puzzle: Why has it become possible now to sign a peace agreement in Colombia given that this had proven to be elusive for decades?

This project will examine Colombia's political economy to assess how it has conditioned agent efforts to sign the historic peace agreement in 2016. Specifically, changes in the social relations of production around the conflict outbreak period (1958-1966) will be compared with changes taking place in these relations since 2002, the year when previous peace negotiations failed. This will make it possible to shed light on the structural factors shaping the interests of key social forces, thereby linking successful strategies for achieving conflict resolution with Colombia's historically-constituted state-formation. Methodologically, the project will be a comparative case-study, which analyses and compares
circumstances that potentially explain conflict-onset with circumstances that explain conflict-resolution.

This will be a comparative case study, comprising data collection, documentary analysis and semi-structured elite interviews.