Local state building in Colombia

Violence that has occurred after the FARC laid down their weapons in several regions of the country demonstrates that peace building depends not only on the implementation of the peace accords, but also on increasing the capacity of the state at the local level. There is an important academic and social agreement about the necessity to recognize the particular characteristics of regions that have been afflicted by the armed conflict. However, this agreement does not imply that each municipality or village needs to have a totally different and unique strategy. In this context, based on the systematic study of five municipalities, the aim of this article is to propose some theoretical tools to find a balance between a universal law that disregards the particular characteristics of local contexts and a local law that discounts the centralizing features of any state.