Democracy and Violence, Early Warning and Conflict Prevention Implications for International Assistance

CONCLUSION: DEMOCRACY AND VIOLENCE, EARLY WARNING AND CONFLICT PREVENTION – IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE Marc Chernick The six chapters presented here each provide a different optic from which to view the functioning of democratic governance, violent conflict, and the relationships among the various components of each. Four of the chapters address political processes (García Villegas and Uprimny on the legal state, Martínez on state capacity, García and Hoskin on democracy and Chernick on social protest) while the two other chapters directly examine the multi-dimensional phenomena of violent conflict (Segura and Camacho on social violence and Reyes on political violence). Each chapter focuses on one or more of the eight quadrants of polyarchy and conflict outlined in the Georgetown-United Nations methodology. Individually, they probe and examine the core issues of how Colombia’s democratic regime functions, how the capacity and territorial presence of the Colombian state can be measured, how social/criminal violence has interacted with other forms of violence as well as impacted on democracy and the rule of law, and how political violence has affected democratic governance and legitimate state authority. In Chapter I, we outlined five phases of escalating conflict delineated by the International Peace Academy (IPA): • Potential Conflict • Gestation of Conflict • Trigger/Mobilization of Conflict • Conflict Escalation • Post-Conflict