Politicians: the sinews of counterinsurgent governance in Colombia

This article discusses the role of politicians in counterinsurgent governance in Colombia, especially in the period of vigorous paramilitary expansion from the mid-1990s to 2006. Using several archival sources and new data and cases, I show that politicians were a fundamental cog in the machinery of Colombian paramilitary governance, precisely because they did what politicians usually do: aggregate and process their constituents’ demands – including demands for violence – link different territorial levels, produce legitimising rhetoric, and articulate and coordinate different actors. The analysis has analytical implications and fills a lacuna in the rebel governance literature, which has hardly found a place for politicians in the understanding of armed group territorial control in general, and of counterinsurgent control in particular.