Re-theorising the participation-security nexus in war-to-peace transitions

ABSTRACT War-to-peace transitions feature multiple insecurities not directly connected to armed conflict, seen clearly in violence associated with social and political participation by marginalised persons and communities. Understanding such violence requires re-theorisation of the relationship between citizen participation and security. Grounded theory research on sectoral and temporal patterns of violence in Colombia’s Cesar Department suggests it is utilised by societal elites in response to grassroots participation. I analyse electoral participation, intra- and inter-community participation, and participation in dialogue with authorities at multiple levels, finding that empowered citizen participation is a key means to ensure citizen security. This includes participatory peacebuilding mechanisms during 2011–2016 peace negotiations with FARC-EP, involvement in ongoing peace accord implementation, and elaboration of local development plans. Re-theorising the participation-security nexus challenges ‘security first’ analyses and calls on academics, practitioners, and policymakers to consider the motives, methods, and mechanisms through which violence is utilised to block empowered citizen participation.


Introduction
They are killing our social leaders with the aim of frightening others and preventing them taking part in decisions that affect the development of their communities. 1tizens' security and their meaningful participation in societal decision-making are inextricably linked during periods of war-to-peace transition.This paper engages with the puzzle of greater participation improving citizen security while exposing the most active citizens to more violence.Retheorisation of the participation-security nexus is grounded in Colombia where a 2016 peace agreement brought disbandment and demobilisation of the oldest and largest guerrilla organisation, FARC-EP.Apparently paradoxically, killings of social and political activists have risen sharply since 2016 even as the general rate of homicides and of armed conflict related deaths has fallen. 2Furthermore, regions with high levels of violence and insecurity are highly correlated with regions where there are low levels of participation by communities and individuals in and with the state.This is seen clearly in the historical pattern of electoral abstention rates across different departments. 3 common interpretation of this phenomenon is that violence -related partly but not entirely to the armed conflict -blocks citizen participation.Security analysts, policymakers, and practitioners consequently adopt a 'security first' approach that will create or expand the space for citizens to safely participate. 4While there is a need for a minimum level of physical security to allow people to participate in political processes without fear, I argue that this crude theorisation of the participation-security nexus misrepresents violence as an exogenous factor rather than as a socially-rooted phenomenon.This leads to insufficient analysis of the users and targets of violence, and the motives and processes through which violence is enacted.
I argue that violence arises in particular contexts as a response by societal elites to engaged citizen participation: people are killed when they participate.More accurate theorisation takes attention away from the 'security first' approach, to instead consider the motives, the methods, and the mechanisms through which violence is utilised to block the exercise of democratic citizenship.As the opening quote shows, violence directed towards the most active citizens -known in Colombia as social leaders -targets the wider community.This theorisation is based on rigorous grounded theory enquiry in Cesar, a conflict-affected department in northern Colombia.Analysis and reflection on this case shows that the commonly assumed causality of insecurity impeding participation is, at best, unclear.Often, causality runs the other way, with deficient citizen participation increasing insecurity, while certain participatory processes improve peace and security outcomes.
I begin by showing how violence is a socially-rooted rather than exogenous phenomenon: it is deliberately targeted by societal elites at individuals and groups that challenge the societal status quo.In other words, there is significant sociopolitical utility to the use of violence by local elites,5 during electoral campaigns, but also against people protesting corruption, illicit economies, or corporate activities, especially in the extractive industries.Of central importance is tracing the temporality of the connection between violence and citizen participation.
2 Front Line Defenders, Global Analysis 2018 (Dublin: Front Line Defenders, 2019), 16; CINEP/PPP, Revista Noche y Niebla N.° 61 (Bogotá: CINEP/PPP, 2020), 19-21; Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, El riesgo de defender y liderar: Pautas comunes y afectaciones diferenciales en las violaciones de los derechos humanos de las personas defensoras en Colombia (Bogotá: Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, 2020), 28-29; and Presidencia de Colombia, Colombia registró en el primer semestre del 2020 la tasa de homicidios más baja de los últimos 46 años: Policía Nacional (2020), https://id.presidencia.gov.co/Paginas/prensa/2020/Colombia-registro-en-primer-semestre-del-2020-tasa-de-homicidios-mas-baja-de-los-ultimos-46anios-Policia-Nacional-200701.aspx. 3Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi, Mapeando la abstención electoral de Colombia en el siglo XXI (2018), https://igac.gov.co/es/noticias/mapeando-la-abstencion-electoral-de-colombia-en-el-siglo-xxi. 4 Orlando A. Mejía Quintero, 'La acción integral: herramienta de gestión de  Citizen security entails meaningful citizen participation in analysing and expressing the state of (in)security and then deciding and implementing the measures to alter the state of (in)security.This is not to disregard that people can be made safer by measures taken by state authorities, for instance the disarticulation of criminal structures or demobilisation of armed groups.Such measures have the potential to increase physical security if well-conceived and implemented.Yet these may not contain the citizenship element that is central to increased citizen security, an 'ideal-type societal order in which citizenship reduces violence or the threat thereof'. 6y participation I mean the actions of ordinary citizens -not bureaucratic and political elites -to influence political outcomes and decisions that affect public affairs in their society. 7This encompasses a wide sphere of potential action including voting, intra-community organisation, civil society network building, and dialogue with state authorities.Recent research has empirically demonstrated the positive effects on governance quality of higher levels of participation, enhanced further by greater socio-economic equality of participation 8 ; while participation runs like a thread through the 'three general problems a political system must solve to count as a democracy: empowered inclusion, collective agenda and will formation, and collective decision making'. 9articipatory processes are key in empowering citizenship to hold state power to account through linking political space with political capabilities. 10articipation is a particularly fraught issue during armed conflict and war-to-peace transitions.Strategic participation by women's organisations is known to increase the gender inclusivity of peace agreements and transitional legislative initiatives.This can be vital in improving gender equity and the security of women and LGBT+ persons. 11rucially, the benefits of participation transcend specifically gendered elements, with stronger influence by women's groups in peace processes facilitating reaching an agreement, and subsequently increasing its durability: by 20% over two years, and by 35% over fifteen years. 12These data add to the growing realisation that peace cannot be sustained without ownership on the part of domestic civil society actors. 13Recent scholarship likewise shows how citizen participation during transition can improve civic competence and influence public policies aimed at transforming insecure conditions and contexts. 14articipation engages citizens in addressing issues of security, human rights, and the rule of law through forming networks of relations and organisations within communities and fostering links between communities and state institutions. 15Empirical data demonstrate that intra-community relationships and dialogue with authorities are key axes of participation.These are central to re-theorising the participation-security nexus, particularly how and when the exercise of participation improves security.
The following section sets out how I designed and implemented the research to gather appropriate data that enabled deep reflection and theorisation on the participationsecurity nexus in the context of a violent war-to-peace transition.I explain why the empirical richness provided by grounded theory was appropriate to generate novel conceptual understandings; the methodology for collecting, analysing, and integrating data; and the suitability of Cesar Department as a case study.I then introduce the key elements of my theorisation on the participation-security nexus in complex post-conflict or transitional scenarios: the social utility of violence; the connection between direct violence and structural violence; how deficient participation increases insecurities; and the security-enhancing nature of certain participatory processes.This reflects the paradoxical nature of participation as a condition for enhancing security and citizenship that is nevertheless fraught with risk.
These theoretical elements will be supported by grounded data from Cesar and my retheorisation located within new intellectual waves in transitional justice, peace, and security studies.I conclude by presenting implications for more sustainable securityenhancing processes in transitional contexts, in particular how analytical lessons from successful examples can be extracted and shared using an up-across-down logic.

Generating grounded security theory
A rigorous grounded theory approach empirically and analytically anchors my retheorisation of the participation-security nexus.Grounded theory's back and forth interaction of data and analysis 16 was appropriate to challenge common assumptions on the relationship between participation and security.I interrogated emerging data and ideas with analytic questions throughout the research, raising the level of conceptualisation and ability to generate theory from data analysis. 17April 2019 saw a preliminary visit to Cesar and first round of interviews with experts in and on the department.A longer visit to Cesar followed in June and July 2019, with interviews conducted until saturation was reached at 50 interviews.Iterative rounds of data coding and reflection facilitated more sophisticated theorisation of the relationship between citizen participation and security in transitions from armed conflict to peace.Interview data was triangulated with information obtained from focus groups conducted in July 2019 and November 2020.
The study's empirical basis is Cesar, a department in the Colombian Caribbean region bordering Venezuela, albeit divided by the northernmost spur of the Andes that hinders movement between the two countries.It constitutes an ideal case study to generate theory as it has past and ongoing experiences of insecurity deriving from Colombia's armed conflicts, criminality, and structural societal and geographical factors.Whiles not one of the very most violent of Colombia's 32 departments, Cesar was ranked seventh equal for electoral violence in 2018-2019 18 and tenth for number of human rights violations linked to political persecution, abuse of authority and social intolerance in the first half of 2020, including three killings linked to politico-social violence. 19Cesar is thus quite representative of regions previously highly affected by armed conflict that continue to show vulnerability to the exercise of violence for political ends.
The first-order perspectives of residents were supplemented with second-order interviews with representatives of the Colombian state, international organisations, professional civil society, and academics.These semi-structured interviews were coded in NVivo at a highly granular level to facilitate dynamic interaction between the data and my emerging ideas that raised the analytic level and revealed the most relevant analytical categories. 20 subsequently created three coding matrixes to explore the relationships and interactions among the categories 'Participation', 'Security', and 'Transitional Justice, Peace Process, Armed Conflict Dynamics'.The first matrix mapped the overlapping coding for the 13 Participation nodes and 8 Security nodes, revealing 170 matching references across 34 interviews.The second matrix mapped the overlapping coding for the 13 Participation nodes and the Transitional Justice, Peace Process, Armed Conflict Dynamics node, revealing 102 matching references across 23 interviews.The third matrix mapped the overlapping coding for the 8 Security nodes and the Transitional Justice, Peace Process, Armed Conflict Dynamics node, revealing 60 matching references across 26 interviews. 21 adapted standard grounded theory methodology by maintaining coding intensity throughout the analytic cycle to allow inferences to be drawn from the frequency with which codes occurred alone and in interaction with other codes.Coding inductively at a high level of detail, consistent with the nuance of the interviewees' narrative, facilitates the emergence of novel insights and reduces the risk of reproducing researchers' pre-existing mental maps. 22Vitally, it constitutes an epistemological reorientation towards validating grass-roots knowledge claims and recognising the analytical capabilities of the people facing insecurity.This is particularly true in complex transitional scenarios, because 'while topdown actors and processes provide for stable spaces to deliberate on peacebuilding issues and institutionalise solutions, in conflict contexts they tend to exclude some actors and perspectives and lack the ability to learn, coordinate, and adapt to context changes.' 23 Having explained the analytic strategy I now show the theoretical insights it enabled.

Re-theorising the participation-security nexus
The central contribution of this article is to distinguish theoretically between asserting that insecurity prevents participation and asserting that participation triggers insecurity for active citizens.The former assertion justifies a military-led counter-insurgency approach of conquering territory prior to engaging in state building activities, with inhabitants of that territory at a later stage being able to participate as citizens in a way not previously possible. 24This approach contains two highly problematic assumptions.Firstly, that violence exists in the abstract, as an amorphous exogenous force without social roots -it is something 'out there' that constrains citizens' agency to participate meaningfully.Secondly, that people in these regions are not perceived as citizens of the state with full rights, but as victims with limited agency or potential enemies of the state. 25It has led to a situation where 'public security provision tends to focus on eliminating enemies or competitors to state territorial control and not on mitigating the perverse effects of insecurity and violence on people's lives.Sometimes the methods used by the police and military forces increased unrest, fear and insecurity among the local population'. 26sserting that participation triggers insecurity for the most active citizens, on the contrary, understands violence as a socially-rooted phenomenon deliberately used against individuals and groups that challenge the societal status quo.In other words, there is a high utility to the use of violence for sociopolitical ends in periods of electoral competition, as well as against people protesting corruption, illicit economies, or private sector activities, especially in the extractive industries.In Colombia this is seen by the increase in killings, including massacres, of community activists 27 even as the general rate of homicides has fallen.My theory explains this puzzle through tracing the temporality of citizen participation and violence, thereby examining the extent to which violence is 'useful' for the achievement of social and political objectives.I then go on to explore three distinct ways in which participation and security are bound together: deficient participation driving insecurity; participatory processes enhancing security; and the contribution of grassroots participation to peacebuilding in war-to-peace transitions.

Understanding the utility of violence as political strategy
Violence has a sectoral and a temporal dimension.First, violence is not random, but targeted at specific sectors or categories of people for specific purposes.Second, and closely related, this differential dimension necessitates examination of the temporality of violence.For instance, grass-roots sociopolitical participation that challenges entrenched orders often triggers the utilisation of violence in response.This important theoretical insight helps explain specific forms of insecurity associated with electoral and non- electoral participation in marginal regions of Colombia.A long-time community organiser and past electoral candidate detailed the macabre pattern of assassinations in Cesar of mayors and councillors linked to trade union and social movements; reaching its apogee when 15 people linked to the movimiento integración cívico in Pailitas municipality were killed in the mid-90s. 28This was accompanied by the selective assassination of grassroots political leaders making political or social demands and organising at the community level. 29The result was a chilling impact on participation that cut off at source community demands for change given that 'within a violent process there cannot be participation by anybody'. 30The departmental government reported that grassroots sociopolitical mobilisation increased through the 1980s and 1990s before being countered by a campaign of violence orchestrated by local political elites. 31This supports recent findings that the election of mayors from previously excluded left-wing parties results in an increase in right-wing paramilitary violence, to the tune of an additional 5 to 7.3 violent events per 100,000 inhabitants per year during their term. 32rimary and secondary research indicate that obstacles to participation are socially constructed through the utilisation of violence against opponents of the status quo.This can be seen intergenerationally as traumatic collective memories of violence, and the fear it engenders, continue to reduce people's willingness to make claims that would benefit their communities. 33The utility of violence to order societal relations and achieve political objectives was seen in communities described as lacking participation and livelihood opportunities having become accustomed to keeping quiet and accepting minimal living conditions. 34The most common interaction across the three matrixes was 'Participation -Obstacles and Limitations' and 'Security Challenges'.These two nodes were coded concurrently 58 times across 20 interviews, and were also the two most coded nodes, with 238 references in 38 interviews, and 280 references in 45 interviews respectively.References coded concurrently at 'Participation -Not Occurring' and 'Security Challenges' showed an even stronger inhibiting effect of violence.
The temporality of violence utilised in response to grassroots electoral mobilisation was seen again in relation to the 2018 national elections for president and congress and 2019 departmental and municipal elections.The 2018 elections were the most peaceful in Colombian history. 35It was also the first time that a left-wing candidate, Gustavo Petro, had got into the presidential election second round. 36This was somewhat surprising, as was Petro's high electoral support in Cesar, perceived to have been achieved without resorting to vote-buying. 37Violence during the subsequent 2019 electoral campaign was attributed to Cesar's traditional political elites reacting against what they perceived as a very real challenge from previously excluded leftists. 38he existence of socially entrenched political mafias prepared to use or threaten violence was reported by a Colombian state representative in Cesar 39 and by civil society organisations. 40Pares registered 246 victims of 193 incidents of electoral violence during the electoral year of 27 th October 2018 to 27 th October 2019, with Cesar's 11 victims making it the joint-seventh most affected department. 41In all probability this is an underestimation given that the Colombian civil society Electoral Observation Mission registered 265 victims of threats, kidnappings, disappearances, attempts, and killings between 27 th October 2018 and 27 th June 2019, 42 and 38 public order disturbances between 28 th August and continuing into the vote counting phase. 43Pares' own analysis furthermore suggests that 49% of victimisation throughout Colombia occurred in the final three months of the campaign, including 10 of the 25 killings. 44he utility of violence during periods of electoral competition has been discussed in detail for other Latin American cases, for instance violence against political activists creating base communities in El Salvador. 45Yet the constitutive power of violence to shape social and political dynamics functions outside of those periods, with electoral violence a subcomponent of political violence. 46As Birch, Daxecker and Hoglund observe: 'targeted electoral violence prevention measures can help prevent the worst forms of violence, but eliminating violence from the range of strategies considered by electoral actors requires deeper changes in sociopolitical structures of inclusion and exclusion'. 47Active citizen participation can confront the 'deep insecurity' of structural violence, a situation in which highly inequitable power relations stop claims at source. 48hallenging these deeper structures of power often triggers the more clearly 'manifest insecurity' of direct violence in response.
The connection between structural and direct violence is evident in primary and secondary data.Interviewees in Cesar continuously emphasised that most contemporary violence was neither random, nor directly linked to armed conflict.Instead, it was asserted that violence was directed towards people, generally from marginalised communities, who were too forthright in making claims that affected elite interests. 49Social and community leaders leading protests against corruption and destruction linked to large infrastructure and fracking projects have been deliberately and systematically targeted. 50Threats, intimidation, and stigmatisation of community leaders to dissuade activism have historically coincided with periods of strengthened community resistance and moments of public and judicial support. 51This is in line with global trends that see 77% of human rights defenders killed while promoting land, indigenous peoples', and environmental rights. 52It is noteworthy to observe the reaction by many societal elites to Colombia's land restitution programme.Opposition by large individual and corporate landowners through opaque legal processes and the utilisation of violence against people claiming land titles, regularisation, or restitution 53 has meant land restitution achievement is massively below targets and below the level needed to seriously address structural violence.
Campaigns against corruption in the control of public budgets and contracting are likewise met with violence, 54 with one civil society interviewee insisting that corruption constitutes a more serious security threat in the political sphere than paramilitaries, linked particularly to the payment of royalties in a context of institutional weakness. 55he recurring pattern of grassroots mobilisation and participation triggering violent responses -in Cesar, other parts of Colombia, and worldwide -supports the need for more sophisticated theorisation of the participation-security nexus, particularly during war-to-peace transitions.

Deficient participation driving insecurities
Given that grassroots mobilisation is frequently met with violent responses, it is apposite to ask why people choose to participate.I now consider the proposition that it is precisely a lack of participation that undermines security, and helps explain why people nevertheless strive to participate.This is on one level about the lack of opportunities that many people have to meaningfully participate in society.Land ownership is highly inequitable, well-paid dignified jobs are scarce, and public appointments or contracts often require having the correct personal connections.Human insecurity and vulnerabilities are the outcome.In extreme cases, a lack of political, social, and economic participation led many people, often poor peasants, to form, join, or support armed groups.The existence and activity of these groups -whether guerrillas, paramilitaries, or criminal gangs -has serious implications for the security of members and for local societies where they operate.Without change in these patterns of exclusion an end to violence is highly unlikely even following FARC-EP disbandment and demobilisation. 56At the same time, communities with low levels of political, social, and economic participation are more vulnerable to the utilisation of violence, as is the case of the Yukpa indigenous people in Cesar.This is not merely a question of individual livelihood strategies, but of the inability of communities in marginal regions to influence decisions that affect them in a way that would reduce exposure to insecurity.Locally grounded analysis locates the structural causes generating conflict in Colombia in 'the economic, social, and political measures taken by the different governments and which do not allow the Colombian society to participate in the elaboration of policies that could help ensure these structural causes do not generate further vulnerabilities'. 58This lack of access to the means of political participation has been recognised by state entities as one of the most profound factors in igniting and prolonging the country's armed conflicts, 59 seen also in El Salvador, where contractions in the arenas for political participation during the 1970s encouraged opposition coalescence in the FMLN and subsequently civil war. 60he lack of popular participation in societal decision-making in Colombia has seen a boom in extractive initiatives that have severe security-decreasing social, health and environmental impacts.It furthermore enables corruption in the granting of infrastructure and mining licences that dilapidates public resources and makes the holding of office more valuable, hence increasing the temptation to utilise violence.In this regard, 'Participation -Clientelism and/or Corruption' is the 4th largest node with 201 references over 34 interviews, and with significant overlap with security-focussed nodes.
A direct link between non-participation and insecurity is the relative scarcity of grounded knowledge in the elaboration of state policies.These are normally created with minimal local input, leading to misguided or inefficient use of resources. 61A specific concern is that the lack of local participation results in the exclusion of vital information that would better guide state security plans, strategies, or decisions, 62 with one recent study showing wide discrepancy in the assessment of security trends made by state security forces and communities, caused primarily by the lack of participation of these communities in enunciating the security challenges or proposing solutions. 63One community leader cited a Colombian colonel: 'do not fuck around because peace is an order and peace must prevail; it is an order from Bogotá and we do not make any problems here'. 64While a normative commitment to peace from military officials is welcome, the top-down nature of imposing peace fails to appreciate the localised dynamics of armed conflict and insecurity, or the legitimate concerns that exist in transition.It also created rancour based on the belief that the Havana Peace Accord prioritised FARC-EP excombatants over victims and other societal actors -especially when demobilised excombatants are guilty (or so perceived) of having killed family of new neighbours. 65he initial problems caused by lack of participation can turn into a spiral of ever worsening security for marginalised communities.Lack of meaningful citizen engagement by the state can facilitate the territorial control of non-state armed groups, either because the state undermines its own legitimacy through its law enforcement 66 or because the order promised by non-state actors proves alluring where there is little official order. 67This places people at significant risk of violence from guerrilla, paramilitary, or criminal groups who may not 'govern' in accordance with national and international law or with respect for human rights even where they hold a degree of local legitimacy.The problem runs deeper still because non-state armed groups often actively discourage contacts with the state, thereby rendering residents prone to violence at the hands of state military forces who may regard them as enemies or as collateral damage in military-led counter-insurgency approaches. 68here are various ways in which insufficient, deficient, or non-existent participation has negative consequences for security.The failure to ensure local ownership of peace and security is particularly problematic in light of evidence that civil society participation is an important source of security.In the following section I analyse and theorise how participation can enhance security in line with the epistemological reorientation towards valuing grassroots analyses and knowledge production.

Participation contributing to enhanced security
The person who promotes, who catalyses, who leads, is killed.And this is the problem.We are exhausting the regional intelligence, which is what could have the capacity to provide solutions to this problem. 69e previous sections demonstrated the utilisation of violence in response to grassroots participation in electoral campaigns, community campaigns, or protest movements, as well as setting out the risks of non-participation.Nevertheless, people recognise that strong community participation is needed to overcome their existing insecurities.This can be seen in the quote above: contained within a negative reflection on the conditions of security for social leaders and activists appears the conviction that improving these conditions requires precisely the type of grassroots participation that is currently being castigated.The data indicate strong desire by many activists to work for their community in the face of security challenges. 70his requires normalisation of participation and democratisation of decision-making that could reduce the security risks associated with the exercise of opposition.At the most pragmatic level, widened participation would mean a strategy of beheading opposition or protest movements would be less successful. 71Currently opponents are sparse and so easily identifiable.More ambitiously, and hence on a longer timescale, deepened participation is a 'political methodology of empowerment' 72 that can alter the normative basis on which forums are created and decisions are taken by challenging entrenched decisionmaking hierarchies. 73his theorisation supports the empirical observations that 'participation can help to build public opinion, to disseminate a sense of rights, to encourage people to challenge the status quo and to engage citizens in addressing issues of security, human rights and the rule of law'. 74I look now at how various types of participation can improve security before analysing the Havana Peace Accord (HPA) and Development Programme with Territorial Focus (PDET -Programa de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial).I think these through analytically using an 'up-across-down' logic.This is not about simply copying successful local models or processes, but rather extracting their key lessons (up), thinking about them at higher conceptual and/or geographical levels (across), before applying the key lessons in a contextually relevant manner (down). 75The up-across-down approach, and its application to different types of participation, is discussed in greater detail in the conclusion.
1. Participation in elections is regarded locally as a security enhancing activity, with 'Participation -Elections' coded concurrently with 'Security -Improving' 10 times, with 'Security -No Change' twice, and never with 'Security -Worsening'.Successful participation in elections leads in some cases to greater grassroots participation in local assemblies from where a greater degree of citizen oversight can be exercised.Councillors do not stop being community leaders when they are elected; participation in municipal councils and departmental assemblies constitutes a key manner of exercising citizen control over mayors and governors respectively. 76The significant increase in electoral participation at community-level is a milestone achievement in recent years that offers hope for a more participatory and inclusive public sphere in the future.Greater social diversity in representation could mean the concerns -including the security concerns -of marginalised peoples, groups, and communities are more likely to be placed on the agenda, discussed, and assigned value in public life.An example of the security-enhancing properties of increased electoral participation is the Alto Ariari region of Meta Department where the direct election of mayors was a starting point for community-based processes of reconciliation and conviviality that have reduced levels of violence and fear. 772. Intra-community participation can increase security in various ways, particularly through proactive identification of risk dynamics and attempts to prevent, resolve, or mitigate these.Often these attempts revolve around community understandings of social problems and their associated insecurities like prostitution or drugs, seen, for example, in people becoming promoters of peace and restorative justice 'in order to address a person, a family, a community, a household in conflict, and make them understand that violence is not the solution'. 78Bottom-up threat assessment and decision-making is key in building citizen security: a good example is the isolated rural community postponing a mayoral campaign event for security reasons. 79While postponement of the event constitutes an alarming intromission in the ability of rural inhabitants to meet and 74  question potential lawmakers, it highlights that decisions are being made and measures taken at the community level to better guarantee their own security.Ultimately, the violence would have targeted the community rather than the candidate, arriving for a short period with a security disposition.
The community dynamics of ex-combatant demobilisation and reintegration need also be considered.A grass-roots security and peace-building approach relies heavily on community level acceptance, tolerance, and reconciliation. 80It is recognised locally that triggers for insecurity will remain if people are not prepared to accept the reintegration of ex-combatants. 81Some community leaders have attempted to foster acceptance and reconciliation with local demobilised people, 82 helping to build trust as well as raise living standards by working together to improve provision of public services. 833.While community-level initiatives are important, sustainable improvement in security undoubtedly requires participation in dialogue with state authorities.Collaborative security enhancing strategies could see communities, NGOs, and corporations sharing the load that the state is incapable of handling alone, although without forgetting that the state has ultimate responsibility for guaranteeing human rights and security. 84 community leader in Cesar familiar with INT50's organisation remarked that it involved participatory work among communities in collaboration with state security forces and companies to map insecurities and the factors that could help mitigate these insecurities in Cesar. 85Another local leader set out the need for engagement with the state through legal, peaceful channels, 86 while a JAC president detailed how a Peasant-Military Accord had improved mobility in their region. 87Such initiatives have been effectively implemented in other parts of Colombia, for example Terminales de Justicia in Arauca Department. 88articipation with the state ought to be disaggregated, with a distinction often made between the national and the local levels, and among different agencies, ministries, and departments.One civil society professional was adamant that officials at the higher levels of government lack detailed understanding of themes and territories, and that PDET have advanced due to the heroic work of those at the coalface. 89It is unfortunately beyond the scope of this article to engage deeply with this, beyond noting that 'State Presence -Uneven' was the 12 th largest node with 118 references over 35 interviews.Particularly insightful is that the interaction between 'Participation -Dialogue with Authorities' and 'Security -Bottom-Up Plans' exists only in the negative, with communities' views not consulted and proposals not integrated into municipal plans by authorities. 90This lack of participation is attributed to a lack of political will rather than normative constraints given that 'the mechanisms of participation in this country are even more developed than in Europe -they are almost all in the constitution'. 91hile Cesar experiences increasing levels of intra-and inter-community organising, effective participation with state authorities continues to be deficient.Most striking is the scarce integration of regional concerns into National Development Plan or National Security Policy.Unfortunately, these are the forums where locally-grounded analyses and solutions are required for sustainable increases in security.4. Dialogue with 'authorities' also covers the relationships that grassroots communities have with armed groups who often hold more power (sometimes even legitimacy) than the state.Participation with non-state armed groups has been a vital component of bottom-up security approaches. 92It was considered important to 'know how to live with' the guerrilla and communicate the danger that their presence entailed for local inhabitants who could be killed by paramilitaries for collaboration. 93This demonstrates the participation that local community leaders have always tried to have in mediating local problems through dialogue with authorities, whether their 'authority' derived from licit or illicit means.Dialogues between communities and FARC-EP were important when establishing the demobilisation zone in Manaure municipality: inability to select appropriate locations may have hindered the signing of a peace accord and subsequent demobilisation.The continuation of contact that began in the framework of the peace talks facilitated better socialisation of the accords, their policy outcomes, and their implementation, as well as engendering more positive relationships between excombatants and residents of neighbouring communities. 94

Participation improving security in and through the peace process
Peace should be understood as the termination of the social, economic, political, and cultural conflict in the country, which is what caused the armed conflict, and we believe that for this peace to be stable and durable, Colombian society must participate not as a spectator but as an agent of peace building. 95ace and security are not synonyms.Multiple insecurities exist that are exogenous to or only indirectly connected to armed conflict.Nevertheless, armed conflict termination and successful peacebuilding are significant steps that facilitate sustainable increases in security.The existence of participatory peacebuilding mechanisms related to the peace process with Colombia's largest rebel group will be the subject of the following sections.Wide participation was integral to the comprehensive and inclusive HPA, which in turn emphasised the need 'to expand democracy as a condition to achieve firm foundations for peace'. 96etheorising the participation-security nexus is integral to processes that deepen democratisation as a foundation for peace.Obviously, democratisation is a complex and multifaceted process, and I do not claim that participation is the only factor.Nevertheless, it is 91 INT23. 92 a non-negotiable condition that contributes to deeper processes of democratisation and empowerment by expanding opportunities to influence policies, programmes, and projects. 97Cesar is calmer since the HPA was signed, with people increasingly able to travel to and around the department and social leaders feeling increasingly empowered. 98he HPA impact was summarised as: generating hope among Colombian people; permitting people to talk about issues other than armed conflict; making spaces for participation visible; and making people more aware of their rights. 99hile the Havana peace talks and final accord were negotiated between the Colombian government and FARC-EP, their foundational principles emerged from grounded peacebuilding work that has advanced over the last decades. 100Mechanisms for written and oral input by victims and other societal actors were established, reflecting the bottom-up security perspective well-articulated in this section's opening quote.Cross-community grassroots organisations exercised agency by making contributions to forums that served as inputs to the Havana talks process. 101This was accompanied by a wider opportunity for societal demands to be introduced onto the political agenda by grassroots processes of mobilisation. 102he process of building peace demonstrates the symbiotic interaction of participation and security.Increased mutual trust between community and state representatives, building on recognition that the political moment has changed, facilitates the emergence of legal peaceful pathways to political contestation, claims-making, and dialogue. 103This was curtailed previously by the tendency of many state officials to conflate dissent with insurgency, sometimes using methods that had the self-fulfilling result of creating more insurgents.
A central plank of the peace building strategy was Law 1448 on Victims and Land Restitution which gave normative value and institutional support to victimised individuals, groups, and communities, including educating on rights.The expressed causality is of empowered citizenship building peace as 'victims, comprehensively repaired, exercise their citizenship and contribute to the consolidation of peace'. 104Law 1448 was considered crucial in encouraging participation that is both differentiated and cuts across communities, for example helping to vertebrate the organisation of ethnic territories for black communities recognised as victims of the armed conflict.With increased knowledge of -and access to -rights, people became less willing to fatalistically accept that killings and rapes were part of the normal way of things, and instead began to denounce abuses and crimes. 105This impulse, based on participation as citizens with rights in dialogue with a state with duties, is a crucial step in sustainably improving security.
Arguably the HPA's most important public policy outcome is the PDET, a participatory planning mechanism created to improve living conditions in sixteen Colombian regions particularly affected by armed conflict.PDET have been described as a 'spectacular example of democracy' carried out at the community level and moving upwards, thereby breaking the customary pattern of plans being written in Bogota. 106he appreciation of the PDET as a positive and participatory process was apparent in various interviews. 107One regional PDET consultant gave figures of 25,000 people participating across 8 thematic pillars in the first sub-municipal phase, prior to a twoday participatory dialogue meeting involving one delegate per pillar and nucleus, additional victims' representatives, Territorial Renewal Agency (ART -Agencia de Renovación Territorial) and mayoral staff to create a ten-year municipal level plan. 108he municipal pacts in Magdalena, Guajira, and Cesar departments were signed between June and December 2018, and the Sierra Nevada-Perijá-Zona Bananera Regional Transformation Action Plan (PATR) ratified on 21 st December 2018.The common consensus is that no planning process has ever been so participatory -due significantly to the peace process enabling a new space for deep citizen participation. 109ach PDET's PATR is legally required to be used as a planning framework by the municipal and departmental governments taking office in January 2020 following the October 2019 elections.This constitutes a major success in putting community analysis of needs, challenges, and solutions on the political agenda, as well as a normative standard by which to monitor progress and ensure compliance.Urgent strategic projects are being rolled out with the objective of entrenching peace and encouraging territorial transformation in marginal regions.Full implementation is, however, barely beginning, hindered to some extent by the impacts of COVID-19 and failure of the national government to guarantee sufficient resources.The most significant security improvement will occur if PDET successfully catalyse increasing prosperity, thereby reducing the incentives for people to join criminal organisations as a livelihood strategy. 110Yet the longer-term empowerment function of enhanced civic competence created through participation in planning, oversight, and monitoring activities and their challenge to hierarchical decision-making structures should not be underestimated. 111

Discussion
Empirical engagement in the Colombian Caribbean reveals societal dynamics of security that fit with emerging peace and conflict scholarship emphasising how narrow understandings of security create a securitised peace focused on achieving and maintaining public order among deviant populations.Such overwhelming concern for 'security' subsumes the objective of transformative peace by ignoring the social context in which violence occurs, including the local governance issues that underpin the emergence of many armed actors. 112The erasure from many analyses of structural violence, particularly those linked to state-building and state-maintaining violence, invisibilises the variegated manners in which sociopolitical and social exclusions and violence regulate access to, and interactions within, the political sphere. 113The direct violence seen in Cesar can therefore be theorised as 'violence on violence', or a manner to force compliance to an underlying structural violence when this is being challenged.In this sense this article fits into new intellectual waves that examine 'violence far more in terms of its qualities as a phenomenon than the quantities of its lethalities'. 114egarding the use of violence as part of a political repertoire, Montoya's in-depth investigation of modern El Salvador powerfully demonstrates that post-war does not mean post-violence.Like my findings in Cesar, she found strong connections betweenand even coalescence of -political actors and violent actors and strong overlaps between licit and illicit economies of violence that suggest violence was and is deeply constitutive of El Salvador's liberal market democracy. 115Rojas and Tubb's analysis of violence in mid-20th century Colombia likewise found that violence and its ascription to supposedly uncivilised populations was used as a technology of power and governance they call 'tanatomo-power'. 116Importantly for this article's emphasis on agency and popular participation, they argue that La Violencia was the cumulative effect of the closing of political space due to lack of voice, loss of place and devaluation of supposedly superfluous individuals. 117he inherent violence of non-participatory political spheres, which manifests in multiple ways, bulwarks my re-theorisation of the participation-security nexus and explains the rationale for grassroots actors to participate not 'despite' but 'because of' the violence in their surroundings.As an increased number and diversity of people participate in the political realm, new voices contribute to policies and practices which address the factors of violence reproduction and their impacts on politics, 118 allowing the emergence of non-dominating power and its legitimation through active participation in the arena of politics. 119The potential of empowered participation to change societal and community outcomes 120 locates this work at the interface between peace and conflict studies and transformative justice understood as 'a form of community-based practice where individuals, groups and practitioners engage in advocacy work and activism for addressing issues of violence and harm and securing justice'. 121This is about rooting theory and praxis in the place-based experiences of marginalised peoples and their connections to structures and processes at different scales that underpin ongoing harms, 122 supporting calls for emancipatory peace based on critical citizenship that cultivates cultures of community activism, interaction, and mobilisation 123 and allowing positive examples of peacebuilding, transformative justice, and conflict transformation to be scaled-up and scaled-out. 124

Conclusion
This article has used detailed empirical evidence to contribute more sophisticated theorisation of the relationship between citizen participation and security in transitions from armed conflict to peace.This has great relevance in contemporary Colombia where implementation is ongoing of a peace agreement that gave explicit weight to the necessity of encouraging citizen participation.Making people rather than the state the objective of protection means having citizens define their security challenges and design the solutions.This can be done through building community-level social networks; collaboration across communities and with state, corporate, and civil society actors; and by grassroots representatives gaining access to decision-making forums.This is not to discount the role of the state, which will be the subject of future work that disaggregates the state and analyses empirical achievement of its normative function as nominal guarantor of participation, security, and peace.Empowered citizen participation, in fact, offers a more productive way of building legitimate and functional state presence than military incursions that often cause casualties and can delegitimise the state if it becomes perceived as threat to, rather than guarantor of, citizens' lives and rights. 125etter theorisation of the participation-security nexus facilitated by rigorous analysis of Cesar Department in Colombia has significant academic, policy, and practice relevance.Twenty-first century international interventions have generally attempted to resolve governance failure through attempts to (re)build the state by entering first with soldiers and then with civilian administrators and development. 126This has rarely varied in such interventions in either their invasion or peacekeeping modalities and successful state-building has been elusive. 127he theory developed in this article contends that 'security first' approaches invariably underestimate the need for active citizen participation.Much more attention is needed on facilitating multiple and multi-level access points for local civil society to make their voices heard, and to state efforts to create an enabling environment for civil society involvement in processes of societal decision making. 128These would immeasurably strengthen the achievement of more robust citizenship and more sustainable security for people by engendering more inclusive societal consensus on what constitutes peace and security, as well as by strengthening the state-society relationships that can make their achievement possible.
While participation derives from the local level, it cannot remain there.Communities exist within a wider societal structure, with variegated connections to other communities as well as to state, private sector, civil society, and international actors.It is important to recognise that bottom-up initiatives, however laudable, have limited impact, especially when they clash with more powerful impulses.At the same time influence on the state is difficult if the opportunities for dialogue are not regular, sustained, and institutionalised.One potential approach is to replicate successful grassroots initiatives in different places using an 'up-across-down' logic. 129his reflexive logic would begin with close study of initiatives to distil the key elements of their success.These would then be passed upwards as inputs into higher level discussions, including comparisons of different experiences, to abstract key lessons and share them horizontally (regionally or nationally).These could subsequently inform the design and implementation of initiatives, processes, and models in other communities that face distinct challenges.The important thing is that this is not about unreflexively copying existing successful initiatives, as these can easily fail in different contexts.Instead, it is about learning how other communities in other contexts made them work: whether that is about the importance of a strong leadership group, engaging with key partners, ensuring internal transparency, or engaging in deep diagnostic analysis.
To explore some of the examples of participation analysed above, successful electoral participation in Cesar in recent years is based on strong associative movements, in rural areas particularly around ASOPERIJÁ and its campaigns for a peasant reserve zone.ASOPERIJÁ has strengthened organisationally through extracting the lessons of other peasant reserve zones, particularly Montes de María through the Caribbean Node.Members of ASOPERIJÁ stood for election in various municipalities, supporting each other and building alliances with other local organisations to increase the political salience of issues affecting rural territories and peasants.Lessons can be extracted about leveraging support from regional organisations and alliance building and transmitted to other parts of the country where peasants are a similarly ignored social category yet face distinct challenges.The Peasant-Military Accord in Pailitas municipality is another case where lessons can be extracted regarding the modalities of interaction, which stakeholders were involved, and how the relationship was built from first contacts to the creation of a local securityenhancing accord.Distilling and applying these key lessons would be valuable to replicate such accords in locations where differences in military presence, social forces, and the security issues faced all militate against simply copying the existing Pailitas accord.
This 'up-across-down' approach -akin to the hybridised processes grounded in local cultures and context yet contributing to national-level change130 -could have a far more contextually-relevant and transformative effect than uncritical adoption of 'best practices' handed down by state, international community, or civil society organisations.Adopting this approach can harness the strengths of grass-roots knowledge generation while having impact on security policies and practices that transcend the immediate locale.