Book Review
Gallo, Carmenza
Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia by Nazih Richani, State University of New York Press, 2002, 228 pp., $65.50 cloth, $21.95 paperback. Killing Peace:...
...The second is the development of a "positive political economy" for the conCarmenza Gallo is associate professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York...
...The first is the failure of available mechanisms and channels to solve the disputed issues in the conflict...
...This failure opened the door to the emergence of alternative "solutions" that included armed conflict and land seizure...
...Thus, institutional failure, material gains from waging war, and balance of forces configured a bounded system of interactions and alliances that perpetuated itself...
...Intervention by Garry M. Leech, Information Network of the Americas, 2002, 116 pp., $10.00 paperback...
...Yet the author's definition of a "positive political economy" does not seem sufficient to distinguish Colombian guerrillas and paramilitary groups from all other cases of civil war in which contenders have to lever (or shift) resources to wage wars, thus developing a vested interest in their perpetuation...
...Currently she is doing research on taxation and democracy in South America...
...Richani rightly underlines the crucial, and often ignored, role of material resources in the perpetuation of the civil war...
...government has provided aid to the military, nominally intended to combat drug trafficking, but in practice used to combat guerrillas, thereby giving incentives to war and not to peace negotiations...
...Indeed, taxation of rich landlords, together with kidnapping of rich and non-tax paying individuals, and especially taxation of coca, provided an economic mainstay to guerrilla warfare, and made the relative cost of peace higher than the cost of war...
...policies have fueled the conflict...
...policy in this conflict...
...These three conditions existed in Colombia at least until the early 1990s, and the chapters are organized to systematically show that this is so...
...On the one hand, the U.S...
...tending parties...
...On the other hand, the U.S...
...The book's clear goal is to inform a lay audience about the complexities of the conflict and to underline the impact of U.S...
...The third is the emergence of a balance of forces among parties that leads to a "comfortable impasse...
...Richani's book then argues that systems of violence emerge under three conditions...
...These books are needed additions to the not-so-extensive literature in English on Colombia's current civil war...
...This question, according to Richani, has larger theoretical relevance...
...But Richani rightly points out that violent conflict itself may become an outcome, configuring a protracted stable conflict, or a "system of violence...
...Killing Peace: Colombia's Conflict and the Failure of U.S...
...Nazih Richani's book Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia is a convincing and important analysis of the current military conflict in Colombia...
...It may be that abundance and the permanence of resource availability are critical to alter the relative cost of war and peace...
...companies' investment in Colombia, has exacerbated the economic conditions that feed political discontent and insurgency...
...Leech decidedly thinks that U.S...
...Garry M. Leech's Killing Peace: Colombia's Conflict and the Failure of U.S...
...Through the war, guerrillas and military accumulated new wealth to maintain and expand their war activities, establishing what Richani calls a "positive political economy...
...government, through IMF liberalization policies and support for U.S...
...The book focuses on a fundamental question: Why is it that the Colombian civil war, which has existed for several decades, has become a protracted, seemingly endless conflict...
...The book, available at <www.colombiareport.org/>, succeeds in both respects...
...policies toward the Colombian insurgency implied a low intensity strategy of combat between the military and the guerrillas that over time developed into a "comfortable impasse," where all contenders "prospered...
...Intervention is an excellent short overview of the past and the present of the Colombian civil war...
...Last, both state policies and U.S...
...Notwithstanding this and other questions Richani raises, he has written an important and theoretically informed analysis of a very complex interaction, with rich and nuanced analysis of the military, the guerrillas, and the changing Colombian upper classes...
...Given the evidence, it is difficult to disagree with the author about this point...
...Briefly, the author argues that land conflict is at the root of the guerrilla war and that existing institutional mechanisms, as well as those specifically created over the years to solve it, failed...
...The author anchors the present conflict historically, providing the context and the reasons for the civil war, and the interplay of the different parties--peasants, guerrillas, the state, military and paramilitary groups...
...Accepted theoretical frameworks argue that violent political conflict is a process that leads to one of several outcomes: revolution, repression or defeat of the powerchallengers, or negotiated settlement...
Vol. 36 • July 2002 • No. 1
