The conventional wisdom in political science is that for a democracy to be consolidated, all groups must have a chance to attain power. If they do not then they will subvert democracy and choose to fight for power. In this paper we show that this wisdom is, if not totally incorrect, seriously...

Durante el periodo comprendido entre 1946 y 1966, Colombia fue el escenario de un agudo conflicto interno conocido como la Violencia, en el cual se estima que más de 190,000 personas perdieron la vida. La evolución de la Violencia nos plantea diversas preguntas ya que su aparición e...

The conventional wisdom in political science is that for a democracy to be consolidated, all groups must have a chance to attain power. If they do not then they will subvert democracy and choose to fight for power. In this paper we show that this wisdom is, if not totally incorrect, seriously...

El objetivo de este trabajo es determinar las variables que explican la actividad armada de los grupos irregulares desde mediados de los años setenta y establecer las posibles causas de expansión hasta el año 2002, teniendo en cuenta particularmente el papel de la descentralización entendida...

How important is the enforcement of political rights in new democracies? We use the enfranchisement of the emancipated slaves following the American Civil War to study this question. Critical to our strategy, black suffrage was externally enforced by the U.S. Army in ten Southern states during...

The failure of Reconstruction is widely seen as a key factor in the social and economic status of African Americans today. Despite the imposed extension of the franchise to the formerly enslaved, Southern elites used violence and other extralegal means to regain power and ultimately remove these...