Alvarez, Giovanny.

Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 2025

This study introduces and analyzes the concept of the “economic spoiler”—armed actors motivated to preserve illicit economies—to explain how developmental peace policies can fail. Focusing on Colombia’s post-2016 shift to a consent-based counternarcotics program (PNIS), the paper argues that this ‘soft’ policy created a strategic incentive for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissidents, acting as economic spoilers, to use targeted violence. They sought to sabotage the state’s program and coerce farmers back into the coca economy. Using comparative interrupted time series analysis, quantitative analysis shows homicides increased most severely where the PNIS made civilians vulnerable targets, providing a novel, actor-centric explanation for post-accord violence.

With Patricia Sullivan & Nathan Marx

Journal of Conflict Resolution (JCR), 2025

This article introduces the US Aid to Security Sector Actors (USASSA) dataset, the product of a collaboration between academic researchers and the nonprofit Security Assistance Monitor. In addition to providing the most comprehensive source of data on US security assistance, the USASSA dataset transforms detailed information about how security assistance funds are spent into aid and recipient typologies that can be used to conduct more sophisticated analyses of how this foreign policy tool is employed, its utility, and its limitations. Our data clearly show not only the magnitude and geographic reach of US security assistance, but also its diversity. While some security assistance is akin to humanitarian aid, other types of assistance blur the line between foreign aid and proxy warfare. We demonstrate the utility of the dataset with an exploration of whether the effects of US security assistance on human rights violations and domestic terrorism vary across types of aid.

Alvarez, G.

Job Market Paper

Why do amnesties that succeed in ending armed conflict fail to reduce—or even increase—societal violence? This study develops a Dual-Arena Theory arguing that transitional justice mechanisms operate differently across two spheres: the Elite Arena of political violence and the Local Arena of societal violence. Amnesties covering human rights violations (HRV amnesties) pacify elites by providing credible security guarantees but endanger communities by transmitting an impunity signal that erodes rule of law. These amnesties represent strategic elite choices that do not satisfy international accountability norms in form while preserving impunity in substance. Using a Callaway-Sant'Anna difference-in-differences estimator across 68 post-conflict countries (1989--2020), I find that HRV amnesties reduce conflict-related deaths by 82% while increasing homicides by 13-31% over fifteen years. Truth commissions implemented without HRV coverage reduce political violence without increasing societal violence, confirming that impunity—not transition itself—drives Local Arena effects. These findings reveal a hidden cost of negotiated peace: elite pacification comes at the expense of everyday security.

Alvarez, Giovanny

Why does violence often transform rather than terminate following state interventions? I argue this puzzle stems from neglecting the organizational context of violence. My “dual arenas” framework contends that state strategies—accommodation versus coercion—produce different outcomes depending on whether political and societal violence operate through separate actors (separation) or are fused within hybrid armed groups (entanglement). Neither strategy eliminates violence; both redistribute it between arenas. I test this using Interrupted Time Series analysis on Colombia (1980–2021), which offers variation across all four strategy-context combinations: coercion under separation (1980–1982), accommodation under separation (1983–1992), accommodation under entanglement (1993–2001), and coercion under entanglement (2002–2021). Results show that each policy transition transformed violence trajectories: the 1983 shift to accommodation reduced political violence while societal violence rose; the 1993 shift to entanglement reversed this pattern as political violence accelerated while societal violence declined through market consolidation; and post-2002 coercion reduced political violence but—contrary to the hydra effect prediction—societal violence continued declining. These findings demonstrate that organizational context critically moderates strategy effectiveness, explaining why successful interventions may transform rather than eliminate violence.

With Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín

Conflict, Security & Development (CSD), 2008

This paper discusses a complex process of aid oriented towards taming the Colombian conflict. We show that, despite the grand declarations provided generously by all actors involved, there has been much strategic manoeuvring and inconsistency. We describe how Colombian decision makers made a transition from the intent of establishing peace as a nationalist programme to the effort of internationalising war. However, the transition interacted with—and was somewhat dampened by—the set of constraints they faced. A very important part of these constraints was related to the choice, when seeking key international partners, between the United States and Europe. Donors, at the same time, had their own objectives and constraints, and frequently promoted lines of action that were at odds with their stated objectives. At the same time, the analysis suggests that despite—and sometimes even because of—these limits some windows of opportunity for positive developments have been opened.