Where do Armed Actors Fight? Land Inequality and State Capacity in the Colombian Civil War

This article proposes a new concept of territorial dispute in civil wars to ask what makes a place more likely to be contested. It also investigates the territorial dispute causes of the Colombian armed conflict. I suggest that there is a correlation between land inequality and state capacity, and the process of inequality production and its resulting state capacity provide the motives, incentives, and opportunities for territorial dispute. I test my theory with a database composed of 200 Colombian municipalities over a five-year period. My results suggest that land inequality leads to greater state capacity, and intermediate state capacity correlates with territorial disputes. The findings confirm the existence of a nexus between land inequality and conflict in Colombia through state capacity. This has implications for the strategy of expanding state presence during the post-conflict period.