Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:05:49.161Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Paz sí, pero no así”? Voter Profiles and Attitudes Toward the 2016 Colombian Peace Agreement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2021

Manuela Muñoz Open the ORCID record for Manuela Muñoz [Opens in a new window]  and
Mónica Pachón Open the ORCID record for Mónica Pachón [Opens in a new window]
Manuela Muñoz
Affiliation:
Manuela Muñoz is a doctoral student in political science at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA. manuela.munozf@tamu.edu.
Mónica Pachón
Affiliation:
Mónica Pachón is an associate professor on the Architecture and Design Faculty, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. mopachon@uniandes.edu.co.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In October 2016, the proposed peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was narrowly defeated in a referendum that sought its public approval. This article examines how previous structured political predispositions and attitudes shape voters’ preferences in a referendum. In a combined survey—a face-to-face sample in Bogotá and an online sample—conducted before the plebiscite, it identifies voter cleavages using principal component analysis (PCA). It finds three consistent components with profiles reflecting whether an individual is a progovernment citizen, a right-conservative voter, and a citizen with an evangelical religious identity. The findings suggest that voters are heterogeneous and that different predispositions and attitudes cluster in specific types of voters, which shaped these voters’ willingness to endorse the proposed peace agreement.

Keywords

voting behaviorattitudesreferendumpeace agreementColombiaLatin America
Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 95 - 117
Copyright
© The Authors, 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the University of Miami

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Conflict of interest: Authors declare none.

References

Altman, David. 2010. Direct Democracy Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Arjona, Ana. 2016. War Dynamics and the NO Vote in the Colombian Referendum. Blog post. Center for Security Studies, October 28. http://isnblog.ethz.ch/conflict/war-dynamics-and-the-no-vote-in-the-colombian-referendum Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 1996. Uninformed Votes: Information Effects in Presidential Elections. American Journal of Political Science 40, 1: 194–230.Google Scholar
Batlle, Margarita, and Gustavo, Duncan. 2013. Colombia: un panorama menos confuso. Revista de Ciencia Política (Santiago) 33, 1: 101–16.Google Scholar
Berinsky, Adam J. 2007. Assuming the Costs of War: Events, Elites, and American Public Support for Military Conflict. Journal of Politics 69, 4: 975–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Botero, Felipe. 2007. Colombia: ¿democracia, paracracia o simplemente desgracia? Revista de Ciencia Política (Bogotá) 27, 3: 97–111.Google Scholar
Boudreau, Cheryl, and Arthur, Lupia. 2011. Political Knowledge. In The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science, ed. Druckman, James, Green, Donald, Kuklinski, James, and Lupia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 171–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrne, Sahara, and Hart, Philip S.. 2009. The Boomerang Effect: A Synthesis of Findings and a Preliminary Theoretical Framework. Annals of the International Communication Association 33, 1: 3–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casey, Nicholas. 2016. Colombian Opposition to Peace Deal Feeds off Gay Rights Backlash. New York Times, October 8. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/world/americas/colombian-opposition-to-peace-deal-feeds-off-gay-rights-backlash.html?_r=1 Google Scholar
Cederman, Lars-Erik, Gleditsch, Kristian S., and Wucherpfennig, Julian. 2017. Predicting the Decline of Ethnic Civil War: Was Gurr Right and for the Right Reasons? Journal of Peace Research 54, 2: 262–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Observatorio de Memoria y Conflicto. 2012. Cifras actualizadas del conflicto armado. http://centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/observatorio/infografias Google Scholar
Dancey, Logan, and Geoffrey, Sheagley. 2013. Heuristics Behaving Badly: Party Cues and Voter Knowledge. American Journal of Political Science 57, 2: 312–25.Google Scholar
De Vreese, Claes H., and Holli A. Semetko. 2004. News Matters: Influences on the Vote in the Danish 2000 Euro Referendum Campaign. European Journal of Political Research 43, 5: 699–722.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ding, Chris, and Xiaofeng, He. 2004. K-means Clustering via Principal Component Analysis. In Proceedings of the Twenty-First International Conference on Machine Learning. Association for Computing Machinery. www.acm.org. 225–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doyle, Michael, and Nicholas, Sambanis. 2006. Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, James N., Kuklinski, James H., and Lee, Sigelman. 2009. The Unmet Potential of Interdisciplinary Research: Political Psychological Approaches to Voting and Public Opinion. Political Behavior 31, 4: 485–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fergusson, Leopoldo, and Carlos, Molina. 2016. Un vistazo a los resultados del plebiscito. Miscelania de la Paz, October 3. https://sites.google.com/site/miscelaneadelapaz/datos Google Scholar
Jolliffe, Ian. 2002. Principal Component Analysis. 2nd ed. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
LeDuc, Lawrence. 2002. Opinion Change and Voting Behaviour in Referendums. European Journal of Political Research 41, 6: 711–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LeDuc, Lawrence. 2015. Referendums and Deliberative Democracy. Electoral Studies 38, 139–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liendo, Nicolás, and Braithwaite, Jessica M.. 2018. Determinants of Colombian Attitudes Toward the Peace Process. Conflict Management and Peace Science 35, 6: 622–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, J. Scott. 1997. Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables. Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
Lupia, Arthur, and McCubbins, Mathew D.. 1998. The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Matanock, Aila M. 2017. Bullets for Ballots: Electoral Participation Provisions and Enduring Peace After Civil Conflict. International Security 41, 4: 93–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matanock, Aila M., and Garbiras-Díaz, Natalia. 2018. Considering Concessions: A Survey Experiment on the Colombian Peace Process. Conflict Management and Peace Science 35, 6: 637–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matanock, Aila M, and García-Sánchez, Miguel. 2017. The Colombian Paradox: Peace Processes, Elite Divisions, and Popular Plebiscites. Daedalus 146, 4: 152–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mazzoldi, Díaz, Génica, Irina Cuesta, and Eduardo, Alvarez Vanegas. 2016. La “ideología de género”: ¿un spoiler para la paz? FIP Opina, October 17. www.ideaspaz.org/publications/posts/1414.Google Scholar
Mood, Carina. 2010. Logistic Regression: Why We Cannot Do What We Think We Can Do, and What We Can Do About It. European Sociological Review 26, 1: 67–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, David. 2012. Borders and Conflict Resolution. In A Companion to Border Studies, ed. Thomas, M. Wilson and Donnan, Hastings. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell. 249–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noticias Caracol. 2016. Santos advierte que FARC comenzaría una guerra urbana si no se firma la paz. June 17. https://noticias.caracoltv.com/colombia/santos-advierte-que-farc-comenzaria-una-guerra-urbana-si-no-se-firma-la-paz Google Scholar
Noticias RCN. 2016. Entrevista completa con Alvaro Uribe: si hubiera ganado el Sí, la Constitución colombiana estaría sustituida. October 2. https://noticias.canalrcn.com/videos/entrevista-completa-alvaro-uribe-si-hubiera-ganado-el-si-constitucion-colombiana-estaria Google Scholar
Nussio, Enzo, Rettberg, Angelika, and Ugarriza, Juan E.. 2015. Victims, Nonvictims and Their Opinions on Transitional Justice: Findings from the Colombian Case. International Journal of Transitional Justice 9, 2: 336–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pachón, Mónica. 2009. Colombia 2008: éxitos, peligros y desaciertos de la política de seguridad democrática de la administración Uribe. Revista de Ciencia Política 29, 2: 327–53.Google Scholar
Perez, Lexi V. 2017. Principal Component Analysis to Address Multicollinearity. Unpublished mss. Walla Walla: Whitman College.Google Scholar
Registraduría, Nacional del Estado Civil. n.d. ¿Qué diferencia hay entre un plebiscito y un referendo? https://www.registraduria.gov.co/Que-diferencia-hay-entre-un.html Google Scholar
Stanley, William, and David, Holiday. 2002. Broad Participation, Diffuse Responsibility: Peace Implementation in Guatemala. In Stedman et al. 2002. 421–62.Google Scholar
Stedman, Stephen J., Rothchild, Donald S., and Cousens, Elizabeth M., eds. 2002. Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Tellez, Juan Fernando. 2018. Worlds Apart: Conflict Exposure and Conflict Termination Preferences. Journal of Conflict Resolution 63, 4: 1053–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weintraub, Michael. 2016. ¿Qué pasó? In ¿Qué pasó, Colombia? ed. Meléndez, Marcela. Blog post. Foco Económico, October 4. http://focoeconomico.org/2016/10/04/que-paso-colombia/ Google Scholar
Weintraub, Michael, Fernando Vargas, Juan, and Flores, Thomas E.. 2015. Vote Choice and Legacies of Violence: Evidence from the 2014 Colombian Presidential Elections. Research & Politics 2, 2: 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yagoub, Mi mi. 2016. Colombia’s FARC Could Break Apart: Defense Minister. InSight Crime, October 25. https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/colombia-farc-could-break-apart-defense-minister/ Google Scholar
Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhukov, Yuri M. 2013. An Epidemic Model of Violence and Public Support in Civil War. Conflict Management and Peace Science 30, 1: 24–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Muñoz and Pachón Dataset

Dataset

https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/laps
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Muñoz and Pachón supplementary material

Muñoz and Pachón supplementary material

Download Muñoz and Pachón supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 593 KB