This edited volume provides scholars and students of Peruvian politics much to think about. The book analyses the effects of Peru's Internal Armed Conflict (IAC) (1979–93) on contemporary Peruvian politics since the mid-1990s. The introduction, conclusion and 11 essays focus on macropolitical and institutional impacts across four realms: state institutions, civil society, political parties and public opinion. The volume is framed broadly enough to effectively incorporate and engage distinct literatures on the political legacies of conflict. Contributors include both English-speaking and Peruvian scholars, bringing diverse perspectives. Most contributors use a qualitative methodology, except one chapter on public opinion that brings in a survey list experiment.
The publication is most useful for scholars and students of political science. However, its different chapters engage with a broad range of research programmes within political science, including civil war, political development and democracy (to name a few). Individual chapters might also be relevant for scholars working in gender studies, Indigenous studies, social movements and electoral politics. Beyond the community of scholars, the volume or individual chapters could be useful to graduate and upper-level undergraduate students.
The introductory chapter by Hillel David Soifer and Alberto Vergara positions the book within a scholarly debate on the weight of the IAC as a factor shaping Peru's distinctive post-conflict trajectory. The book does not claim that the IAC was the most central causal factor, but rather offers an assessment of how useful the post-conflict lens is for understanding contemporary Peruvian politics. To that end, the introductory chapter identifies three causal channels through which the IAC shaped contemporary Peruvian politics: wartime mechanisms, post-conflict legacies, and struggles over legacies.
The first two chapters to follow the introduction provide historical and theoretical context for thinking about the Peruvian IAC. Chapter 1 by José Luis Rénique and Adrián Lerner provides an historical overview of the Peruvian conflict, evaluating its designation as a ‘peasant war’. Chapter 2 by Livia Isabella Schubiger and David Sulmont analyses the Peruvian armed conflict in comparative perspective as a case of irregular, non-ethnic conflict shaped by a revolutionary, Marxist–Leninist–Maoist ideology.
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 examine IAC impacts on Peruvian state institutions. In Chapter 3, Maxwell A. Cameron compares the 1979 and 1993 Peruvian constitutions, demonstrating a shift to a more authoritarian democracy. Soifer and Everett A. Vieira (Chapter 4) show that the IAC restructured Peru's coercive institutions but did not expand state capacity. Last, Eduardo Dargent and Noelia Chávez (Chapter 5) find that wartime mechanisms and legacies tarnished the image of public universities; contributed to the exodus of affluent students and high-quality professors; and potentially weakened student organisations, leaving public universities as a low political priority in contemporary Peru.
Chapters 6 and 7 take up IAC effects on civil society. Jelke Boesten's essay (Chapter 6) examines the link between twenty-first-century gender-based violence and IAC wartime mechanisms such as the use of sexual violence by state forces as a weapon of war. Chapter 7 by Maritza Paredes finds that the IAC resulted in supportive links between Peruvian Indigenous organisations and human-rights NGOs, but also divided highland and lowland Indigenous movements thereby foiling the development of a nationally cohesive Indigenous organisation.
Regarding political parties, Paula Muñoz (Chapter 8) examines how wartime mechanisms and legacies contributed to the fragmentation of Izquierda Unida (United Left, IU), an electorally viable coalition of Left parties in 1980s Peru that failed to unify against revolution and extreme violence. In contrast, the succeeding chapter by Vergara and Daniel Encinas finds that the IAC helped to unite the Right around a commitment to the neoliberal economic model. The resulting ‘conservative archipelago’ is a powerful political force in contemporary Peru.
Chapters 10 and 11 address IAC impacts on public opinion. First, Arturo Ladonado, Jennifer L. Merolla and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister link concern for terroristic violence in Peru with stronger support for iron-fisted governance. Moreover, they find that the effect of exposure to news about terroristic violence on democratic attitudes is conditioned on political identity. Second, Paulo Drinot (Chapter 11) examines debates on the Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, CVR) report with data from online discussions surrounding El ojo que llora, a monument in Lima memorialising the victims of the IAC. While human-rights and victim-survivor groups endorse the monument, detractors to the CVR narrative disparage El ojo for discounting the sacrifice of state forces and for inclusion of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) members.
Finally, in the concluding chapter Steven Levitsky synthesises the contributors’ findings about IAC impacts on Peru's distinct post-conflict political trajectory. Levitsky also connects IAC effects to the resurgence of fujimorismo, an outcome not explicitly addressed in the volume.
This volume makes an invaluable contribution to the study of Peruvian politics. It has broad impact across several research programmes on civil war, democracy, public policy, social movements, political parties, state capacity and the politics of memory. Each contributor identifies how the Peruvian case validates and challenges existing ideas within a research programme. Indeed, a central strength of the work is that it takes a comparative perspective without abandoning contingency and the importance of non-conflict factors in contemporary Peru.
The volume also contributes to research on the legacies of violence with a longer-term perspective that considers IAC impacts across decades, thereby problematising core questions about path dependency and persistence of conflict legacies over time. Finally, the volume recognises the historical roots and consequences of greater IAC impacts on historically marginalised Indigenous highland communities.
A limitation of this work is that it discounts the post-conflict literature and therefore the role of conflict termination in post-conflict development. Peru's military victory is potentially important to its distinct political trajectory compared to cases where the IAC ended in revolution (Cuba, Nicaragua) or a peace agreement (Guatemala, El Salvador). The editors rightly assert that the post-conflict literature's focus on peacebuilding offers little leverage in Peru. However, within the literature, there are relevant arguments about the political consequences of conflict termination that present an alternative lens for examining some outcomes addressed in this volume.
In closing, this volume is an essential read for scholars and students in political science. The analysis contributes substantively and broadly across multiple literatures and addresses longer-term impacts, causal complexity, and contingency. Moreover, while the book does not aim to engage the post-conflict literature, it contributes with an important analysis of an under-studied case and path to peace by military victory.
