When do governments concede to terrorists?

Abstract

This study addresses the question of whether violence leads to governments making concessions. There were four hypotheses proposed that support the research on this question. The first proposed that there was no correlation between levels of violence and concessions. The second proposed that concessions increase as violence increases. The third proposed that concessions decrease as violence decreases. The final hypothesis proposed that there would be no concessions until a certain level of violence was reached, which was designated as a tipping point. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) served as the sample case study of this analysis. The findings indicate that there is no statistically significant relationship between levels of violence and the Colombian government making concessions to the FARC. Regardless of the amount of violence that the FARC perpetuates each year, the Colombian government does not make concessions. Further analysis suggests that there may be a relationship between presidential parties, elections cycles, and governments making concessions.