How Does Citizen Participation Shape Peace Agreement Implementation? The Case of Colombia

The Colombian 2016 peace agreement has attracted international praise but poor implementation progress and participatory shortcomings have domestically fostered significant dissatisfaction. These match with persistent practical gaps in implementing participation around the world although inclusion has globally become the norm in the peacebuilding realm. Against this background, this thesis examines how citizen participation shapes peace agreement implementation. Informed by principal-agent theory, it relies on a systematic empirical approach to explore from a micro-political perspective the dynamics and consequences of inclusion in the implementation of bottom-up rural development programmes (PDETs) for Colombia’s most war-affected regions. This investigation is based on an iterative research process with residents of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta-Serranía del Perijá region that involved long-term interactions and several research stays (2021-2023) on-site of in total eight months length. Three original surveys with PDET community representatives, victims’ representatives and regional state officials, interview, focus group, participant observation and informally generated data elucidate the inclusion perceptions, preferences, and actions of key stakeholders of the sub-national PDET implementation. Apart from generating novel insights into inclusion challenges, this counterbalances a lack of research on peace agreement implementation processes and citizens’ role in them. In doing so, it contributes to the theoretical development of scholarly peacebuilding debates by foregrounding how information asymmetries, incentives, participants, and (perceptions of) their performance influence peace agreement implementation dynamics and their outcomes. This thesis finds that participatory promises created expectations among community and victims’ representatives, which the institutional set-up and functioning of the PDET implementation could not accommodate. Participatory deficits trigger numerous responses, including narratives of intentional exclusion, coordination efforts, discretion mobilisation, conflict and disengagement. Inclusivity matters little to community actors compared to the PDETs’ developmental outputs. Nonetheless, collective participatory frustration significantly influences PAI efficiency, inclusivity, and legitimacy and can unintentionally undermine peace agreement implementation as well. Therefore, this thesis cautions against general calls for (more) inclusive peace processes and advocates for increased attention to the political nature and consequences of public administration processes peace agreement implementation involves.