Dr Jan Boesten has been awarded a year extension to his grant from the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung Foundation.

Research has shown that, contrary to intuition, civil war zones often appear fairly orderly. Rebels establish governance systems. Jan’s work in the previous academic year looked at how the changing security landscape affects trust relations in conflict zones through the peace process with the FARC in Colombia. This inquiry built on an original and innovative conceptualization of the relations between combatants and civilians in civil war, which borrows from sociological theories of trust and confidence.

The research project has brought two important findings to the surface: 1) prior to the peace accord, the FARC have mitigated uncertainty by providing what can be described as shadow citizenship; 2) the FARC, an insurgent group, and the AUC, a counterinsurgent paramilitary group, imposed government system that had differing effects on the ability of recognition between armed actors and local population.

These findings give rise to a further question: What are the effects of paramilitary preponderance on perceptions of (un)certainty and confidence in rules of conduct? This is now the focus of Jan’s work for the coming year.