Violent Democratization

Leah Carroll is an independent scholar who works with the Office of Undergraduate Research at University of California, Berkeley.

"This is not an ethnography of war, but an effort to draw out comparative learning for students of democratization and social movements about the difference the latter can make in contexts of violence, armed conflict and state repression. As such, it is a welcome break from the focus on armed actors in conflict." —Journal of Latin American Studies"Violent Democratization is based on extensive and diverse research. Carroll draws upon electoral data, the press, governmental and corporate reports, and oral interviews to construct this dense analysis. Excellent maps, tables, and charts support the investigation. The work makes a substantive contribution to the modeling of political processes and offers an intimate analysis of the complex trajectory of contemporary Colombian history." —The Americas"Leah Anne Carroll has written one of the best books in English in recent years about Colombian politics. I reach that evaluation because of the focus of her study, the theoretical set-up methodology, and the conclusion which ties all the preceding together." —International Affairs"This book is a remarkable contribution to theoretical debate and empirical knowledge of societies involved in long duration conflicts, in a context of undeniable democratization processes. It will enrich the renewed debate on the crisis of the institutions and political representation in Latin America." —Gonzalo Sánchez Gómez, IEPRI, Universidad Nacional de Colombia"How can social movements survive and promote progressive change in the face of violent repression? For anyone interested in answering this question, Leah Carroll's book is an invaluable gift. Solidly grounded in incredible field research and twenty years of painstaking analysis, Carroll's comparison of regional political outcomes in Colombia's violent countryside is a major addition to the existing literature that should be read and studied with care by scholars and activists alike." —Peter Evans, University of California, Berkeley"Leah Anne Carroll's Violent Democratization is an extraordinary work of scholarship that makes an important contribution to the study of recent Colombian politics and raises important theoretical and political questions that transcend the Colombian case. Carroll's interviews with activists in the three regions she studies, done in the late 1980s and early 1990s at personal risk to herself, provide a wealth of data and analysis heretofore unavailable to scholars. Her explanation of the differences she found among the regions will stimulate debate on crucial questions central to understanding Colombia's contemporary political crisis and the question of Latin American democratization more generally." —Charles Bergquist, University of Washington, Seattle