Dr Geraldine Butos
“Ideology not only shaped insurgent identities but also structures national politics around peace.”
Colombia’s history with insurgent groups has deep ideological roots, from Marxist-Leninist guerrillas like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) to more recent hybrid organisations mixing political discourse with organised crime, such as Segunda Marquetalia and Estado Mayor Central. In this blog, I draw on my research on micro-ideologies – the ways in which groups frame conflicts, pursue goals, and set normative constraints – to show how ideology continues to matter for both war and peace.
Ideology in a Fragmented Battlefield
Rebel groups are not ideologically homogeneous. Instead, I argue that their ideologies are structured around three dimensions: conflict framing, conflict goals, and normative constraints. These dimensions determine how groups interpret the causes and nature of the conflict (framing), what they aim to achieve through violence or negotiation (goals), and the boundaries they impose on their actions (normative constraints). Variation across these dimensions reveals how groups construct unique micro-ideological identities even when operating under the same overarching doctrine.
In my research, I explore how micro-ideological differences between the ELN and the FARC around conflict framing, goals and normative constraints deepen our understandings of their divergent attitudes towards peace. The ELN, for instance, retains a revolutionary vision and shows little interest in transitioning into democratic politics. Unlike the FARC, whose 2016 agreement was premised on a move “from arms to politics”, the ELN has no clear incentive to follow that path. For many ELN members, the ultimate act of commitment is not electoral participation but an ideological devotion that embraces martyrdom and seeks the complete transformation of the Colombian state. This vision complicates any negotiation, and these ideological commitments reveal why peace processes, though framed around ideology, have often struggled to account for the ways in which armed groups simultaneously engage with other logics of survival.
In my work, I analyse armed-group documents, press statements, and interviews to trace how organisations justify violence, define enemies, and set limits on what is permissible in war. These micro-ideological patterns shed light on why some groups embrace negotiations as consistent with their worldview, while others reject them as betrayal.
Peace Negotiations and the Multiplex Nature of Armed Groups
Ideology not only shapes insurgent identities but also structures national politics around peace. Negotiations have become a polarised political battlefield, with support or opposition often grounded more in ideological loyalties than in evidence, as the 2016 peace referendum in Colombia showed. The contrasting legacies of leaders such as Juan Manuel Santos and Álvaro Uribe reveal how visions of peace are filtered through partisan divides. Both leaders pursued peace, but from distinct ideological premises: Uribe advanced a security-first, punishment-centred approach that favoured conditional, limited concessions to the insurgent groups, while Santos championed a comprehensive, rights-centred settlement with restorative sanctions, rural reform and political reincorporation for former combatants.
Peace processes have often treated insurgencies primarily as ideological actors, without addressing how ideology interacts with illicit economies and territorial control. The Colombian state negotiated with M-19, EPL, Quintín Lame, and PRT in the early 1990s, and later with the FARC in 2016, but these agreements did not fully capture the multiplex nature of armed groups. The result has been partial peace and renewed violence, as dissidents like Iván Mordisco or Iván Márquez combine claims of ideological purity with narcotrafficking and other illegal economies. This reflects what I find in my work: ideological framings persist even when groups adapt to economic opportunities.
A micro-ideological lens allows us to see why some groups transition into politics while others remain outside. Today, while Comunes, the political party that emerged from the FARC, is struggling to reorganise and meet the electoral threshold to remain in the Colombian Senate, many FARC dissidents operate with criminal portfolios that include human trafficking, extortion, and drug routes through the Darién Gap or Catatumbo. Colombia’s FARC agreement was largely built on ideological concessions, yet its aftermath shows the risks of underestimating how ideology interweaves with other drivers of violence.
This is not unique to Colombia. Earlier peace processes in El Salvador with Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in 1992 and the Guatemala agreement with Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) in 1996 centred on ideological reconciliation. A micro-ideological perspective helps explain why the FMLN successfully entered politics in El Salvador, while other groups in Central America remained marginalised. These outcomes depended not only on political opportunity structures but also on how groups framed their struggles and legitimised violence. Today, however, many armed groups across the region combine ideological discourses with diversified criminal portfolios, making peacebuilding more complex.
Territorial control further illustrates how ideology matters in practice. Colombian insurgents have long framed their presence in jungles, mountains, and border regions as both strategic and political, embedding themselves in economic corridors while claiming to defend and transform local populations. Unlike separatist movements elsewhere, they do not seek new states but project ideological authority over space and resources, where political and material logics reinforce each other.
Ideology shapes how armed groups define their purpose, legitimise violence, and imagine political futures, while also influencing how society debates and contests peace. Yet ideology is not an abstract discourse: it intersects with geography, governance, and economic survival. Some studies estimate that around one-third of ex-combatants cite livelihoods as their reason for rearmament, but those choices are always filtered through ideological worldviews that justify, constrain, or expand violent repertoires. Colombia’s “Total Peace” strategy will only succeed if it recognises this dual reality. Negotiations must engage insurgents’ ideological visions while simultaneously addressing the economic and territorial conditions that allow them to persist.
My research on micro-ideologies shows that ideology structures how groups define enemies, targets and repertoires of violence. At the same time, micro-ideological configurations set the conditions under which groups negotiate and pursue peace. Recognising these ideological configurations is essential for designing peace processes that address not just material incentives but also the symbolic and normative commitments that sustain armed conflict. For policymakers and researchers alike, the challenge ahead is to understand not whether ideology matters, but how it continues to matter in shaping both war and peace.
