Civil Society, Rule of Law, and Social Conflict in Peru.

This paper focuses on the impact of local civil society organizations on the features and trajectories of social conflicts in Peru. The current Peruvian environment is characterized by weak rule of law and a consequent unreliability of formal mechanisms through which citizens’ grievances can be expressed and addressed. In this context, small, local civil society organizations have emerged at the community level as a means to enhance the effectiveness with which popular concerns are voiced. While both civil society and rule of law have been presented in the literature as potentially key elements for improving governance and reducing violence, there is insufficient empirical research on how the two interact when they are weakly institutionalized. The case of Peru offers a valuable opportunity for evaluating this relationship, as accounts of social conflicts collected by the Peruvian Ombudsman over the last three years shed light on the particular shortcomings of the rule of law, the type of actors involved in articulating popular discontent, and the strategies they select in order to do so. The paper finds that the presence of civil society organizations increases the likelihood that complainants will attempt to use legal mechanisms and peaceful demonstrations to resolve disputes. However, it also finds that due to the weakness of the rule of law, these usually prove ineffective and the presence of civil society organizations is therefore insufficient to curb the recurrent use of violence as a means to express grievances. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]