Born to run: where rebel parties participate in post-conflict local elections

ABSTRACT Where do newly formed rebel parties run their candidates for local elections? Most work on rebel parties examines the factors that explain rebel party success on the national level. However, few studies look at where rebel parties run candidates in elections and at the local level. We develop a dataset to analyze the activity of FARC (Fuerzas Alternative Revolucionaria del Común) in the 2019 local elections in Colombia. Using both a Firth Logit regression and Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial model, we found that former rebel parties are more likely to candidates in locations where they have had a historical presence, where ideologically similar parties also ran candidates, where there is a larger field of candidates, and in areas with less institutionalized elections.