The Legacy of Violence on Post-Civil War Elections: The Case of El Salvador

Abstract

Over the last several decades, numerous civil wars have ended as a consequence of negotiated settlements. Following many of these settlements, rebel groups have made the transition to political party and competed in democratic elections. In this paper, I assess the legacy of civil war on the performance of rebel groups as political parties. I argue that the ability of rebels to capture and control territory and their use of violence against the civilian population are two key factors explaining the performance of rebels as political parties. I test these hypotheses against the case of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador using one-way ANOVA and multivariate regression analyses. In analyzing the FMLN's performance in the 1994 "elections of the century," I find that, as a political party, the FMLN benefited both from the state's violently disproportionate response and its ability to hold territory during the war.Keywords El Salvador . Guerrillas . Civil war . Elections According to Fearon and Laitin (2003), there were 127 civil wars from 1945 to 1999. While the majority of all civil wars end in military victory by government or rebel forces, roughly 25% have ended as a result of negotiated settlements (Licklider 1995). These negotiated settlements typically involve not only a cessation of armed conflict and the disarmament and demobilization of former combatants, but social, economic, political, and military reforms. The settlements are designed to facilitate the transformation of a system based upon violent political conflict between armed groups to one based upon nonviolent political conflict between competing political parties. Unlike those civil wars that end through military victory, these negotiated settlements do not allow either the government or the rebel group to claim outright victory and impose its will upon the defeated. Elections are frequently used to determine who will rule in these post-civil war societies because they are supposed St Comp Int Dev (2010) 45:104-124

Electoral Performance by Post-Rebel Parties

“…A substantial literature on rebel governance suggests that administering territory may also create capacities likely to affect governance and political participation by these groups (Arjona 2014;Clapham 1998; Huang 2012; Ishiyama and Widmeier 2017; Mampilly 2011). Using the cases of El Salvador and Nepal and Tajikistan respectively, 420 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION Michael Allison (2010) and John Ishiyama and Michael Widmeier (2013) find that rebel control of specific regions impacts local election results. Ishiyama and Widmeier (2017) extend their research to a large-N study and find, as in their case studies, that the key may lie not in the specific organizational competencies that territorial administration generates, but rather in the connections that rebel groups must forge with civilians in their areas of control to extract the resources on which they depend for their survival.…”

Civil Wars and Party Systems

“…Indeed, as Tilly () notes, civil wars involve establishing “alternative sovereignties” to the governing parties, even if the rebel forces are not separatist movements. The opposition, in order to attract supporters to its banners, must establish some way to distribute resources to followers and must provide some kind of basic services to engage in civil war (also see Gurses and Mason, ; Allison, , ). This provides an important organizational basis for electoral challenges to the governing party once the civil war has ended.…”

“…In particular, these studies have focused on whether former rebel groups decide to adapt to, evade, or exit the postwar political arena (Manning, ; de Zeeuw, ; Deonandan, Close, and Prevost, ; Södeberg‐Kovacs, ). Others (for instance, Allison, , ) have examined the factors that explain the electoral success of former rebel groups that turn into political parties. What is distinctly missing from this discussion of political parties is the general impact violence has on postwar party systems development.…”

Candidate recruitment and former rebel parties

“…Rather, the literature has tended to focus either on whether former rebel groups decide to adapt to, evade or exit the post-war political arena (Deonandan et al, 2007;de Zeeuw, 2007;Manning, 2007;SodebergKovacs, 2007) or on the electoral performance of such parties (Allison, 2010(Allison, , 2006.…”