Kolombiya’daki Barış Sürecinin Radikal Demokrasi Teorisiyle Analizi

Abstract

The peace settlement on 26 November 2016 – in between the Colombia Government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (hereafter, FARC), overcame the half-century civil war and insecurity environment in Colombia. Thanks to the democratic discourse and efforts to transform the friend-enemy relationship into the rival relationship, the peace process has gained importance in terms of political science and democracy. Furthermore, the peace process not only comprises the peace with FARC but also refers to a comprehensive democratic transformation which calls all the elements to cause antagonisms in the country to agonism. This thesis aims to analyze the conflict and peace processes in Colombia relied on radical democracy theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. This study pays particular attention to the radical democratic potential of the conflict and post-conflict transformation process in Colombia consisted on the terms such as antagonism, agonism, friend-enemy, articulation, discourse, collective identity, chain of equivalence, subject positions put forward by this theory. The first chapter puts forth a historical background in Colombia based on Mouffe’s conceptual distinction between ‘political’ and ‘politics’. Afterward, legal regulations of the peace process will be detailed. The thesis discusses the argument that Colombia has the potential for transforming social antagonisms to agonism. Yet, the failure to ensure social cohesion constitutes a major obstacle to the transition to adversary politics. It can be observed that the radical democratic transformation based on the peace process in Colombia triggered social antagonism. This study upholds that there is a corresponding paradox to the paradox which is assumed to be in liberal democracy among the ontological and practical propositions of radical democracy because of the incompleteness of society.