The Narrative Construction of State (il)Legitimacy in Colombia's Peace Laboratory^1,2

Abstract

How is state legitimacy established in areas where it has long been lacking? While scholars have generally explained the construction of legitimacy as a consequence of state actions and used survey research or experiments to describe local evaluations of the state, in this article I describe the microprocesses that link the two: how communities experience the state, collectively make sense of it, and behave in ways that consent to or challenge state power. Based on 3 years of ethnographic fieldwork in a rural Colombian village experiencing growing state presence after decades of armed group control, I theorize the emergence of state legitimacy or illegitimacy as a process of narrative construction. Locals facing a landmark peace process and a coca substitution program that has destroyed the local economy make sense of the state by constructing narratives about it that spread throughout the community. These narratives combine with material need to influence forms of social action that demonstrate assent to or defiance of state power—behavior that communities also understand through public narratives. Fine‐grained ethnographic description of the narrative construction of legitimacy demonstrates the importance of collective meaning‐making processes to political beliefs and behavior.