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IS-BILAT-Mobilitet Norge-USA /Canada

Conflict resolution and democratization: the political transformation of armed insurgency movements in war to peace transitions

Tildelt: kr 75 000

Contemporary peace processes in developing countries are commonly elite-focused and tend to overemphasise the effects of democratic institutions on peace. These characteristics raise concerns regarding the links between democracy and peace, and regarding the means and prospects of reworking state/society-relations in a democratic direction. Transforming armed rebel movements into democratic political entities or parties is a major peace building challenge. It not only requires that former combatants agree to put down their weapons, but more importantly it compels former rebel leaders to change their military struggle into political ones and to reorganize hierarchical military organization into democratic organizations. These transformations do not occur w ithin a vacuum of the organizations themselves, but are highly determined by contextual variables in the domestic and international environment. The overall analysis of this project therefore addresses the following main research questionwith reference to the two main cases GAM in Aceh, and the LTTE in Sri Lanka: "What structural forces, opportunities, and constraints shape the transformation of rebel groups into non-armed political actors" by focusing on (1)how and to what extent have the processes of co nflict resolution generated political transformations amongst armed rebel groups, and what are the main obstacles to conflict resolution and democratization amongst these? (2) what historical and sociological perspectives may help explain these altering s tructures and dynamics, and/or to what extent have these been incorporated into the peace processes? (3) In what ways do democratic reforms related to transformation of rebel groups into political parties secure substantial democracy? In addition minor ca ses are included for the purpose of theory development. The project period spent at UCLA will focus on collaborative work with senior resarchers there. The principal output will be academic articles and presentatio

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IS-BILAT-Mobilitet Norge-USA /Canada

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