4

PATHWAY(S) TO POLITICS

The Transformation Mechanisms

From the outside—and to many people on the inside—the end of conflict is an overdue respite from violence and turmoil. Yet, for rebel groups, the end of war is a major shock to both their organization and the environment in which they operate. The simultaneous end to conflict and demand to reinvent themselves as a political party fundamentally alters the group’s needs, opportunities, constraints, and goals—all of which leaders must navigate while also preparing for elections and preventing spoilers. Thus, even if the ceasefire sticks, survival and stability are not foregone outcomes for all involved. While the opportunity to pivot from battlefield to ballot box may seem like a clear way to sidestep this existential threat, the reality is much more complex.

The wartime development of proto-party structures provides new insight into how rebel groups acquire skills with utility that transcends the battlefield. However, useful histories do not guarantee transferable histories—and they certainly do not translate directly into electoral success. Even the most politically diverse insurgency must undergo a massive organizational transformation at the end of the conflict, and wartime structures alone are insufficient to explain that process, for two reasons. First, successful transformation requires the ability to exploit those structures at a moment’s notice. Second, and more important, it requires the ability to survive the organizational upheaval.

Conventional accounts of rebel-to-party transformation are framed as straightforward—if extensive—efforts in hiring and firing with an eye toward running for office in the upcoming elections.1 Legislative seats, however, are not the only thing at stake. When it comes to massive structural overhauls, organizations are gambling with their lives.

To get traction on the causes and consequences of rebel-to-party outcomes, we must first understand rebel-to-party transformation as a process—specifically, a process of organizational change.2 While the outcome refers to the point at which a militant organization takes on the form and functions of a legal political party, the process refers to the internal structural overhauls that get it there. Transformation as a process is underexplored largely because, once again, political science lacks tools for modeling these types of changes. As a result, even where scholars do address it, the process is not fully explicated. Different scholars have alternately characterized the transformation process as an “ongoing socialization with democratic behaviors,” a series of attitudinal and organizational changes, and a series of internal elite negotiations alongside a robust outside hiring process.3 The problems are twofold. First, not all of these processes are necessary. Second, even where they do exist, each of these factors is only a small part of the story; from an organizational vantage, there is much more to explain.

Internal transformations come with a host of risks and challenges.4 After all, organizations specialize in “doing the same things in the same way, over and over.”5 Typical organizational changes involve one of two scenarios: (1) the organization does the same thing in a new way (e.g., the New York Times adapting to digital markets), or (2) the organization does a new thing in the same way (e.g., Tito’s Vodka producing hand sanitizer at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic). These types of pivots are difficult enough. Rebel-to-party transformation, however, seems to demand both: that the organization perform a new set of tasks, using different methods, while also adjusting to a different environment. Moreover, the pressures of change become more numerous and more severe as the scale of the transformation grows. And as far as scale is concerned, the transformation from militant group to political party is as large as it gets. Thus, it also demands an explanation for how groups are surviving those changes, let alone thriving at their culmination.

The goal of this chapter is to dig into and resolve the paradox that comes into view when we hold accounts of the transformation process up to an organizational light. On the one hand, rebel-to-party scholars tell us the transformation process involves “build[ing] party structures from scratch” once the war ends, “finding people with appropriate skill sets to fill political and administrative positions,” and “learn[ing] the art of nonviolent politics.”6 On the other hand, scholars who study organizational change tell us that “sharp breaks are seldom observed” and “[major] changes in organizational strategy and structure are likely to have negative consequences.”7

If we take each literature at face value—the deeper we dig, the less we know. The tension between these two accounts is made even more taut when we consider that organizational sociologists largely focus on firms: legal businesses that operate (almost) exclusively aboveground. By their nature, firms comprise skilled and trained personnel; they have considerable and (usually) legally acquired capital on hand and a sizable pool of talent from which to recruit. But if organizational change is difficult at Apple Inc. or Ben and Jerry’s ice cream company, then rebel-to-party transformation is nothing short of miraculous.8 In short, to return to the quip that motivated this book in the first place, we are told that “failing churches do not become retail stores.”9 But in this case, they certainly seem to. The question then is, which is it?

The answer—albeit unsatisfying—is, a little of both, and a little of neither. The most optimistic models of rebel-to-party transformation do not account for the existential risks accompanying substantial organizational transformations. On the flip side, the most pessimistic models of organizational change too readily gloss over the fact that massive changes do happen—and that the organizations poised to survive these massive overhauls exhibit similar traits that contribute to both the change itself and their resilience to the process.

This chapter develops a theory of the rebel-to-party transformation process that accounts for the risks of organizational change and the traits that allow some militant groups to overcome them. I argue that groups’ capacity to undertake and survive transformation is a function of key traits associated with organizational resilience (which are either incentivized or discouraged): structural diversity, deference to expertise, and routinized flexibility. Then, I demonstrate that the specific structures built (or not) during war give rise to different pathways by which transformation unfolds: reprioritization or reconstruction. Crucially, the former attenuates the risks of transformation while the latter exacerbates them.

An Organizational Approach to Transformation

When analyzed through an organizational lens, conventional explanations for how a rebel group becomes a party leave many key questions unanswered. But organizational theory is not just a bearer of bad news. While this approach reveals that rebel-to-party transformation is laden with unforeseen obstacles, it also sheds light on the traits that allow many groups to overcome those challenges. By examining the prospects of transformation from the rebels’ vantage, we can more clearly see the scope of tasks that lie ahead as well as the threats to achieving them.

What is it like for a militant organization to stand in the liminal space between war and peace? As I alluded earlier, this period looks very different to (soon-to-be ex) militants than it does to outsiders. Since the move to electoral politics often implies an end to war, it is easy to downplay—or even to overlook entirely—the volatility of this period. Such sanguine views of conflict termination are evident throughout the literature on postwar democratization. For instance, Leonard Wantchekon and Zvika Neeman expressly set out to model “the transition from a chaotic status quo to a more orderly political regime.”10 This characterization, however, obscures the very real turmoil militant organizations face as they stand on the precipice of massive organizational overhaul and a markedly different future.11

Major organizational change is never easy, but transforming in the context of a volatile environment means rebels are adjusting to a moving target.12 Indeed, in the related context of party adaptation, Angelo Panebianco explicitly argues that environmental turbulence destabilizes the party and its structures. Here, it is worth remembering that Panebianco is highlighting the risk for groups that are already parties.13 The implications for transformation and how we study it are serious: rebel-to-party transformation isn’t just something rebels need to do; it’s a challenge rebels need to overcome. However, rebels not only risk failing at the ballot box; the very act of organizational change is risky, costly, and sometimes deadly.14 As such, the capacity to transform into a political party on the heels of war requires more than resources. Rebel groups must also demonstrate a capacity for resilience and adaptation as they absorb the shock of the war’s end and reconfigure to meet the demands of electoral politics.

To explain rebel groups’ varying abilities to transform into political parties, I turn to two traits introduced in chapter 1—resilience and adaptability—and the factors that shape them. Organizations differ considerably in their ability to absorb shocks and adapt to new environments.15 The first step in a theory of rebel-to-party transformation is to account for how the organization hangs together through the end of war and the transformation process. However, since the endgame is about more than just “bouncing back” to its original form, a comprehensive theory requires more than just resilience.16 The second theoretical step requires accounting for the group’s adaptation into a political party: the specific organizational changes enabling the group to perform key party functions in the new electoral environment.17

Broadly, both resilience and adaptation are about flexibility:18 How much of a shock can the group absorb? How easily can the organization be reshaped? While the salience of these traits may seem intuitive or even obvious, it is worth noting the inherent paradox in the literature. Many traits scholars associate with successful transformation—centralization, bureaucracy, institutionalization—actually promote organizational rigidity.19 To be sure, these theories are not entirely misguided. The organizational strength conferred by a centralized bureaucracy is often conducive to survival on the battlefield. Think of a phalanx: rigid strength is a perk when the organization faces a consistent type of existential threat.

However, when the threat fundamentally changes—and the organization must change with it—anything that promotes rigidness becomes a liability. To transform successfully, militant organizations must exhibit traits that temper the destabilizing effects of organizational change. Explaining the outcome, then, requires turning to new and sometimes counterintuitive places to account for rebel-to-party success.20 In this section, I identify three core traits that facilitate resilience and adaptation: structural diversification (resources), deference to expertise (willingness), and repertoires of prior flexibility (experience).

Diversification

Diversification refers to the variety of roles or subdivisions within the organization that perform distinct tasks. It captures the range of skill sets an organization has at its disposal, defining not only “what an organization can do, but also what the organization knows.”21 Greater diversification enhances resilience by imbuing rebellions with a wide variety of skill sets and knowledge on which to draw as they navigate organizational change.22 Even the most fervent pessimists concede this point.23 As Gary Hamel and Liisa Välikangas poetically quip, “Variety is nature’s insurance policy against the unexpected.”24

Diversification is organizationally beneficial on two dimensions. Broadly, diversification of any sort will enhance resilience by imbuing the organization with a wide range of expertise and perspectives. More specifically, diversifying into relevant activities enables more seamless transformation into a political party. The fact of the matter is that organizational change is difficult, but it is not uniformly so. Transformation is both easier and less risky to the extent that organizations have experience with their future priorities. In organizational par-lance, proto-party structures imbue the rebellion with “established competencies”: preexisting structures dedicated to performing relevant tasks.25 As such, rebel groups that diversified into proto-party domains in the midst of war should exhibit the greatest capacity for adaptation when the war ends.

This same intuition is present in the rebel-to-party scholarship. Many argue transformation should be easier for groups that operated as parties before the war broke out. Carrie Manning and Ian Smith, for example, argue that we should be more likely to observe successful transformations from groups with “experience in political organizing.” To capture this skill, the authors assess whether groups operated as political parties prior to the outbreak of war.26 While this approach captures the intuition that institutionalized skills matter, I argue that it looks too far in the past to find party-relevant competencies. Bracketing the war further reifies the homogeneity assumption—that all rebels do during war is fight. Additionally, having once operated as a party does not account for whether or how the organization retained those party-relevant skills throughout the war.

By focusing on a wide range of party-relevant structures built during war, the theory developed here identifies a clearer mechanism by which experience affects future performance. Two expectations follow. First, militant organizations with greater diversification should be more likely to survive major shocks than their more homogeneous counterparts. Second, militant organizations that diversify by building proto-party structures during war will have an easier time transforming into political parties than those lacking political competencies. Diversification captures the organizational resources needed to survive and transform. In essence, it represents latent flexibility, because, as with any resources, having access to them does not guarantee their optimal use. The question is whether organizations are not just able, but willing to “divert resources from yesterday’s programs to tomorrow’s.”27

Deference to Expertise

In the previous chapter, I argued that institutionalized flexibility was a critical wartime trait for surviving postwar transformation. Here, I elaborate on the mechanism by which it helps rebel groups become parties. An organization’s willingness to be flexible requires a lot more than putting good intentions on paper. Resilience and adaptation under duress demand that organizational leaders prioritize relevant expertise—regardless of where the expertise lies in the organization. On this score, problems arise because hierarchy can be as much an analytic blinder on the ground as it is in scholarship. In both contexts, people equate hierarchy with a clear chain of command, definitive routines, cohesion, and, indeed, with organization itself.28 As Luther Gerlach and Virginia Hine astutely observe, “in the minds of many, the only alternative to a bureaucracy or a leader-centered organization is no organization at all.”29 Part of this oversight is based on the assumption that hierarchy is incompatible with flexibility.

The problems with hierarchy run as deep as the word itself: if we trace hierarchy back to its root, it literally translates to “sacred rules.” And sacrament is hardly conducive to flexibility. For any organization, a dogmatic commitment to hierarchy may also result in falsely equating rank with expertise. This blind spot can easily prevent leaders from seeing solutions that do not comport with the existing command structure. To overcome these problems and exploit the latent potential of proto-party structures developed during war, militant groups must exhibit a willingness to search for solutions that prioritize the quality of the solution over the rank of the solver.

If this prescription seems idealistic or even antithetical to military structures, the US Navy has a surprise in store. Consider the operational risks and procedures of manning an aircraft carrier. Aircraft carrier operations have almost no margin for error. The runway is 150 meters long, and slick with salt water and oil. Planes are taking off and landing contemporaneously, and they are fueled with the engines still running. If a landing jet overshoots the arresting wires, it cannot come to a stop on its own on the short (and busy) runway; if it undershoots the arresting wires, it can crash into the ship’s stern. For an added level of chaos, the deck rocks with the ocean and is largely crewed by “20-year olds, half of whom have never seen an airplane up close.”30 Things can—and do—go wrong.

The deck has a mix of ranks standing in different physical positions and performing different duties at all times. As a result, just standing in one physical position may incidentally afford someone the perspective to see a problem that their superior cannot. Unsurprisingly, as Gene Rochlin and his colleagues observe, “events on the flight deck . . . can happen too quickly to allow for appeals through a chain of command.”31 If flexibility and deference are integral to resilience, how does the navy reconcile the high-risk, high-stakes chaos of daily operations with the “formal organization, steep hierarchy by rank, and clear chains of command”?32 The answer is both simple and mind-boggling: they ignore it entirely. Every individual on the flight deck has “not only the authority, but the obligation to suspend flight operations immediately” and without penalty (even for being wrong).33

To be sure, the formal hierarchy still matters. But priorities shift when the stakes are high and expertise (or even just the right visual perspective) is diffused across ranks. Organizations can retain formality and centralization and simultaneously embrace flexibility when leaders acknowledge that temporary “flattening” is conducive to survival. Resilience is fostered when “individuals who are the most likely to have the relevant knowledge to . . . resolve a problem are given decision-making authority.”34 In other words, hierarchy is fine as long as it is more about the shape than the sacrament.

Deference to expertise is crucial in the rebel-to-party context because maximally exploiting preexisting competencies often means passing over high-ranking wartime commanders in favor of those involved in proto-party domains. Thus, we can expect to see smoother and more successful transformations among organizations with a legacy of prioritizing relevant expertise during the reorganization process, irrespective of the individuals’ wartime rank.

Repertoires of Prior Flexibility

Finally, as I alluded to in the previous chapter, the more a group adapts in the past, the better it will be at adapting in the future. Surviving previous organizational transformations—or, in Debra Minkoff’s words, developing a “repertoire of prior flexibility”—confers two notable advantages on rebel groups facing an additional major change in the future. First, organizations with a history of change and resilience are better able to seek creative solutions to novel problems. In essence, while deference to expertise combats structural rigidity, routinized flexibility combats intellectual rigidity. Although singular changes increase uncertainty and do pose risks to the organization, once a group has survived change, future transformations become less risky and less difficult. Second, groups that have successfully changed in the past tend to be more open to identifying shortcomings that need fixing. Once change becomes routinized, flexibility becomes part of the group’s identity, rather than a threat to it. Thus, rebel groups that embrace an organizational culture of feedback and self-reflection will be more resilient to future changes.

The traits contributing to organizational resilience and adaptability work best in conjunction with one another. Preexisting competencies are of little use if, at critical junctures, leaders are not willing to defer to the expertise of others. Similarly, developing a repertoire of adaptability is more difficult for relatively homogeneous organizations, which lack diverse approaches to problem solving. Crucially, rebels’ structural diversity—or lack thereof—lies at the root of resilience.

Before moving onto the final theoretical section, let us first take stock of what we know and what questions remain. Chapter 1 laid the foundation for taking an organizational approach to political phenomena. Chapter 3 built on that framework, demonstrating that proto-party subdivisions built during war provide rebel groups with both relevant and structured skill sets that translate to postwar politics. To be sure, the fact that proto-party structures are apposite to postconflict electoral strategy is fairly intuitive. Yet, as the conflict subsides and elections draw nearer, the group’s continued survival hinges on whether it can quickly adapt and exploit those skills.

The preceding section derived one of the three unforeseen benefits of proto-party structures: by enhancing organizational diversity and relevant competencies, these structures make rebel organizations more resilient to change than their homogeneous counterparts. Having addressed the nature of wartime organizational structures, whether and to what extent they overlap with party structures, and the traits that enable rebel groups to survive and adapt at the end of war, two key questions remain. First, how does the transformation process actually unfold? Second, what do structures buy us analytically that we cannot just explain with an organization that employs politically savvy individuals?

Mechanism(s) of Change: Two Paths to Transformation

This section combines the structural insights from chapter 3 with the organizational traits detailed earlier to answer the book’s core questions: How do you build a party out of the pieces of rebels? And why does it work sometimes and not others? I construct a theory elaborating the process(es) of rebel-to-party transformation: the sequence, nature, and challenges of organizational change on the heels of war. Drawing on the insights about rebels’ varied organizational legacies, I develop a two-path model of transformation that sheds new light on the divergent prospects for success. Crucially, the path articulated in the literature (building party structures from scratch) is not wrong, it just applies to a narrower range of rebellions than was previously thought. The core takeaway is that transformation unfolds in different ways depending on the structures rebel groups build and refine over the course of the conflict.

While the opportunity to transition into party politics can arise in different ways, the organization’s decision to exploit that opportunity is the analytic starting point of this framework.35 At that point, the group must first engage in an organizational audit: an iterative process of self-reflection in which it evaluates the difference between what it currently has and what it needs in order to function as a political party. Then, depending on whether the audit reveals structures with postconflict utility, militant organizations face one of two paths to party formation: constructing a party organization from the ground up or repurposing existing wartime structures into party roles.

The literature’s common refrain is that rebels must “build party structures from scratch,” “learn the art of non-violent politics,” and acquire the organizational and material resources to facilitate party transformation.36 Regardless of whether transformation always unfolds this way on the ground, this adage raises an important question that is analytically prior to party building: How do rebels know exactly what they need? Before groups can even attempt party formation, leaders must conduct a thorough organizational audit to plan the transformation period.37 On the one hand, they must ask, what has to go? Which structures are unlawful or unnecessary? On the other hand, leaders will ask, what can stay? Does the organization contain subdivisions or personnel whose continued involvement would benefit the new party? The rebellion must take stock of what it has, what it lacks, and what it no longer needs as it attempts to consolidate a party organization while simultaneously trying to survive the end of war.38

Although no one would deny that end-of-war audits happen, neither the nature nor the scope of the audit receives much scholarly attention.39 From a practical standpoint, scholars exhibit a reasonable preference for observable outcomes: splintering factions, electoral participation, postconflict democratization, full demobilization. However, critically engaging the logistics of this phase is instructive, particularly for this theory. The audit process reveals the specific relevance of proto-party structures over politically relevant skills, and the audit’s results determine how the transformation unfolds.

By focusing on full wings (i.e., subdivisions), my theory rests on the assumption that proto-party structures are uniquely valuable over individuals with what we might call proto-party skills (e.g., a combatant who is also skilled in political writing or union organizing). Thinking through the practical logistics of organizational audits substantiates this assumption and reveals why structures hold a privileged role over individuals. The logic underlying this assumption is simple: organizational structures will be easily visible from the top; individual skills won’t. Consider figure 4.1. In the run-up to elections, the budding party needs—among other things—individuals skilled in political messaging. For the sake of simplicity, figure 4.1 represents an individual with the relevant skill set.

Let’s consider the writers in a (stylized) organizational context, in which a given symbol represents an individual’s skill and role within the group. For the sake of simplicity, assume rebel groups can exhibit one of three structures. In the first option, depicted in figure 4.2, the skilled individuals are nowhere to be found. This organization is relatively homogeneous: the majority of structures are constructed to perform the same task (say, combat), and the additional structures are small and likely work in service of combat (a financing wing and a logistical wing, perhaps). In the second option, figure 4.3, the organizational structure mirrors that in figure 4.2, yet some of the individual members in unrelated roles also possess the writing skills necessary for successful campaigning. Finally, figure 4.4 depicts a structurally diverse rebellion, which boasts an entire wing dedicated to political messaging and propaganda.

FIGURE 4.1. Individual with messaging skills

FIGURE 4.2. Relatively homogeneous structure

FIGURE 4.3. Homogeneous structure with individual messaging skills

FIGURE 4.4. Diverse structure with integrated messaging division

Given these three different structures, what will audits reveal? And what are the implications for transformation? The first and third structures have straightforward implications. Leaders of the first structure (figure 4.2) will come up empty-handed, leaving them no choice but to recruit writing skills from the outside. In contrast, leaders of the third structure (figure 4.4) will find a clear wing of personnel with both skills and experience relevant to the new party’s needs.

The second structure, however, demonstrates why skilled individuals are not as valuable as dedicated structures. Keeping in mind that insurgencies often contain thousands of people, an audit of the structure in figure 4.3 will likely (albeit mistakenly) produce the same conclusions as an audit of the first structure (figure 4.2). The problem is straightforward: in most cases, individual skills are private information. Without dedicated subdivisions and bottom-up communication, leaders have no way to detect diverse skills among homogeneous structures. Taking the audit process into consideration reveals that even where “proto-party skills” are peppered throughout the armed forces, we lack a viable mechanism for explaining how leaders would identify them in the first place, let alone an efficient mechanism for combining them into a functioning unit. As Anna Grzymała-Busse observes in the formation of communist successor parties, any “structural, individual, or ideational [legacy] must be discernible . . . to affect the [new] party directly.”40

Leaders are not omniscient and audits do not yield objective or holistic truths. For rebellions laden with “hidden talents,” audits only turn up what leaders can see given the constraints of the organization’s structure, operations, and channels of communication—to say nothing of time. Assessing two organizations with the same number of writers, say, can yield very different results if the writers are structured in one organization, yet dispersed (and in unrelated roles) in the other. Moreover, even if skilled writers manage to come forward and be hired into a new wing as the party coalesces, these individuals have no experience working together and the organization has little to no experience in that domain. This divergence is why individual skills are less likely to translate into efficient and effective transformation than integrated structures.

Beyond highlighting the logistical importance of proto-party structures, the results of organizational audits have pivotal implications for the transformation process. Depending on what the audit reveals, militant groups face two different transformation processes with two very different prospects for success. If a rebel group has a largely homogeneous and combat-centric structure, the process of rebel-to-party transformation will unfold in much the way conventional accounts assume. Namely, the organization will have no choice but to recruit new personnel and build party structures from the ground up. However, for rebel groups endowed with proto-party structures, the transformation process can work through reprioritization—an augmentation and promotion of existing wings—rather than constructing the organization from scratch.41 Reconstruction and reprioritization are different mechanisms of transformation with fundamentally different risks of survival and prospects for success. The following sections trace the respective processes and their accompanying challenges, risks, and benefits.

Reconstruction: Building a Party from Scratch

The core descriptive insight of this book is that rebel organizational structures are more diverse than we currently account for, but not uniformly so. Thus, for some insurgencies, leaders will come away empty-handed—the audit having revealed a large gap between what the group has and what it needs. In the cases where leaders built and perpetuated relatively homogeneous, combat-centric organizations, the transformation process will unfold in much the way the literature portrays it. Leaders spearheading the transformation will have no choice but to build party structures from the ground up: recruiting experts from outside the organization, determining how the new party structures will be situated within the organization, and attempting to mitigate rivalries between longtime loyalists and new talent.

From an organizational frame of reference, rebel groups lacking proto-party structures exhibit four organizational deficiencies, only one of which is acknowledged in the current literature. Compensating for these deficiencies puts intense strain on organizational cohesion and resources, which in turn enhances the costs and compounds the risks of transformation.

The first (and only acknowledged) deficiency is that the nascent party lacks the personnel and corresponding skill sets needed for political domains in which the group must now operate. Thus, the leadership needs to find skilled individuals to take on the variety of administrative tasks needed to build and support a party organization. However, the process of organizational transformation is more intensive than just hiring qualified personnel to fill political positions, and it is riskier than just finishing the hiring process in time to campaign ahead of the elections. The second and related deficiency is the lack of corresponding structures: the relational protocols that determine how a given unit of individuals works together and how the unit is situated within the organization. Building a structure from scratch—say, a political-messaging wing—involves a variety of logistical considerations: establishing the roles within the unit (who writes what, who has veto power), deciding who reports to whom, and figuring out how resources are allocated and received. To boot, these decisions are more difficult to make when the people making them lack the necessary expertise or experience managing this kind of wing.

The third impediment to smooth transformation is the requisite trial-and-error period that accompanies expanding into a new domain.42 Insurgencies with a well-developed political-messaging wing during wartime likely did not get it right on the first try; rather, they tried, failed, updated, and learned over time. They figured out early on which messages resonate and which fall flat. Furthermore, in the context of political messaging, groups with preexisting wings also had established channels of civilian engagement. In contrast, new messaging structures cobbled together in the aftermath of conflict face the added pressure of developing a cohesive political message and testing it through nascent channels during a period of marked instability for the organization.

Finally, the process of building and prioritizing new structures coupled with a dismantling of old (typically combat) structures threatens the stability of the organization.43 According to Michael T. Hannan and John Freeman, major organizational change is destabilizing to the extent that it disrupts any of the four core aspects of the organization: (1) goals, (2) authority structures, (3) core technology (i.e., infrastructure and members’ skills), and (4) strategies.44 Building a party from scratch while dismantling combat units threatens the legitimacy of every core aspect of the organization as it existed during the conflict. Goals are shifted toward electoral and legal political engagement. Authority structures are disrupted as new hires in the party-building stage come to occupy high-ranking positions in the party to the exclusion of veterans of the insurgency.45 Further, the set of skills and strategies on which the nascent party must rely depart markedly from their previous operations. Such disruptions can result in internecine conflict, mass defection, and/or splinter groups (which, in the case of insurgent organizations, would likely take the form of spoilers who choose to continue fighting even in the wake of peace agreements).

Notwithstanding an abundance of cheery idioms about “new beginnings,” as an organizational strategy, “starting fresh” leaves much to be desired. One key expectation follows from this discussion: the extent to which a nascent party has to build political structures from scratch is the extent to which the party is unlikely to succeed in the long run. It faces greater costs, more challenges, and thus, more risks than its proto-party counterparts. This is not to say that successful parties have never trod this path. Yet, the inherent difficulty of party building in the wake of a settlement calls into question the assumption that all rebel-to-party transformations proceed (and succeed) through this route.

Reprioritization: Building a Party from Scraps

Although no organizational research is sanguine about the ease of major structural overhauls, even the most pessimistic theorists acknowledge that change is not uniformly difficult. Rather, the path to and prospects for successful transformation are a function of the group’s organizational legacies. When postconflict audits reveal a variety of proto-party structures, the transformation process deviates from conventional models. Proto-party structures allow rebel groups to transform into parties by redirecting resources through established channels to prioritize existing subdivisions staffed with experienced personnel.

Proto-party structures offer numerous advantages throughout the transformation process. On the one hand, they increase the efficiency of transformation; on the other hand, they mitigate its risks. The most intuitive advantage is that the group contains personnel with experience performing a relevant task. The salience of relevant experience has not escaped the rebel-to-party scholarship: Jennifer Dresden writes on the role of “convertible capabilities,” Ishiyama and Widmeier argue that establishing control zones during conflict allows the organization to acquire administrative skills that “assist in transformation,” and, fundamentally, the logic of relevant experience underlies Manning and Smith’s prewar party hypothesis.46 Experience in a given domain is unquestionably important, as it reduces start-up costs and shortens the trial-and-error period as the group pivots toward party politics.

The benefits of proto-party structures, however, are as much about the structure itself as the experience with party-relevant skills. Three related advantages compound, giving rise to a more efficient and less risky transformation process. First, an established structure means rebels on the cusp of party formation not only have access to skilled individuals, but those individuals also have long-standing experience working together. Members of a civilian administration division, say, have established roles, an agreed-upon division of labor, and existing protocols for important actions (e.g., recruiting and training new members, resolving internal conflicts, and executing projects). As a result, proto-party structures can vastly reduce an unacknowledged cost of transformation: the social start-up costs, or what Arthur Stinchcombe refers to as the “liability of newness.”47 Expanding an organization into a new domain entails more than just hiring skilled personnel. The new hires must work out their collective approach to a new task and navigate working together for the first time all while working amidst a changing organization. Even for highly skilled individuals, this type of social learning under pressure is a heavy burden on organizational efficiency.48 In short, the accrued experience of working together adds as much value as experience with the task on which they work.

The second and related benefit is that proto-party structures are already integrated into the organization. Thus, affiliated members not only have established relations among each other, but they also have established relations within the organization. Communication protocols between politically relevant units and the leadership already exist, as do channels through which resources can flow. As a result, the people most likely to remain in the organization throughout the rebel-to-party transformation process (the upper echelons of rebel leaders and the leaders of proto-party subdivisions) know how the organization operates, have a clearer sense of how to get (or even ask for) what they need, and potentially have an established rapport. Resources and information flow more efficiently through existing networks, which at such a critical time can be the difference between survival and death.49

Building on structural experience and organizational integration, the third boon to efficiency follows naturally: it is easier to repurpose and augment an existing wing than to build a new one.50 This advantage is crucial because even understaffed and underfunded proto-party wings will make transformation smoother and faster. If augmentation is an option, it contributes to the efficiency of transformation at three different stages. First, leaders can directly consult proto-party staff during the assessment phase—this advantage goes beyond mere visibility of the structure. Experienced personnel will know with greater specificity what they need to operate at new levels as the rebel group reorients to election season. In contrast, military commanders building a party from scratch may have a sense that they need skilled messaging staff, but will likely be hazy on the details or scope of what they need.

Then, since the wing is already integrated, proto-party staff can more efficiently exploit existing channels to make those requests and employ any additional resources sent their way. Relatedly, no group will entirely escape needing to hire from outside the organization. Yet, people skilled in a given task are more likely to know others on the outside with similar skills. As such, even where hiring is needed, it will be more efficient than it would be otherwise.

In sum, proto-party structures pave the way for a new and more efficient transformation process from start to finish, while also mitigating the accompanying risks. Keeping existing structures intact anchors the transformation process. Promoting from within decreases the likelihood of sowing resentment by passing over individuals who were there in the thick of war in favor of new hires. For example, while the Mozambican resistance movement, RENAMO, had political-messaging structures in place during the war, its administrative capacity was sorely lacking, and its rank-and-file members had less than a second-grade education on average. Consequently, the leadership had to look outside the organization to fill positions as it grew its political structure. The ensuing rivalries between the “bush-based core” of the organization and the urban intellectual outsiders who were quickly promoted to high-ranking positions is well documented.51 The inherent difficulty of transformation was exacerbated by mass defections from soldiers who felt slighted by the outsider promotions.

If indeed transformation occurs by reprioritization, case evidence should reveal a pattern of structural preservation. The “rebel” careers of five school-teachers in Mozambique illustrate this process well. In 1984—a full ten years before RENAMO ever appeared on a ballot—the leadership created a wing of politico-military commissars. Five schoolteachers were forcibly recruited to create a wing responsible for articulating a coherent political message to other soldiers. Later, in 1988, the same unit was augmented and dispatched in a campaign to provide political education to civilians. As the war came to a close, this group was again called on to aid in the negotiations process, and then promoted to high-ranking offices within the party.

It is worth noting, of course, that the two respective mechanisms represent more of a continuum than a fork in the road. Rarely will a militant organization come to the table completely empty-handed; rarely will it have a fully formed party in its back pocket. As I mention at the beginning of this section, while I present this theory as a two-path model of transformation, it is just a model. At the risk of besmirching the good name of Mr. Frost, the reality for militant organizations is that two roads rarely diverge in a yellow wood. Rather, for every organization, the transformation process will be some mixture of using what you have and filling in the gaps (albeit in different proportions). The takeaway is that every additional subdivision with postwar utility will make the transformation as a whole less taxing on the organization.

Transformation of the FMLN

The case narrative in chapter 3 left off at an optimistic point. By the late 1980s, FMLN forces had regained their military footing and vastly expanded their political influence both domestically and internationally. Internally, the organization was thriving as well: it experienced greater cohesion in this period, its combatants had better training, and its logistical and governance divisions were operating at a fuller capacity than had been possible in the early years of the war.52 While the FMLN had in place many of the structures and traits conducive to successful transformation, those structures alone do not guarantee rebel-to-party success—nor is their wartime presence sufficient to infer their postwar legacy.

This analysis tests whether the process of transformation unfolds as my theory predicts. Specifically, the FMLN’s proto-party structures should facilitate transformation by providing a more efficient path to party building, and their legacy of adaptation should enhance their resilience, by making change more routine and therefore less risky. Testing whether rebel-to-party transformation occurs by repurposing the organizational legacies of war demands very specific evidence. Beyond showing that rebel groups build partylike structures during war, I must show that they persist. In short, substantiating this argument requires evidence that rebel leaders are not just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And this is not a given. Faced with a new opportunity in a new environment, leaders may have the impulse to start fresh. Thus, I must show that the leaders managing the transformation know the postconflict value of wartime structures and that they capitalize on it. In service of this task, I will also show that previous organizational changes in the FMLN occurred via the same path.

On the flip side, if rebel-to-party transformation adheres to the process articulated in the literature, attention to party formation should only be evident as the war comes to a close. Evidence of any of the following actions would call into question the role of proto-party structures and the mechanism of my theory. First, any indication that leaders are prioritizing outside hiring would suggest the organization lacks personnel with transferable skills (or, alternately, that leaders are unaware of the skills within the organization). Second, evidence of (successfully) building party structures from scratch would undermine both the mechanism and the motivating premise of the theory. After all, if rebels can easily construct party organizations in the interim between settlements and elections, then we have little to explain beyond their hiring capacity, which is likely driven by different factors entirely.53 More specific to the FMLN, if the ERP succeeded in rapidly building party structures that performed at the same level as the legacy structures from the other groups, then structural repurposing may still be a path to transformation, but its benefits are likely less salient.

I retrace the FMLN’s organizational steps in light of the hypothesized mechanism and then trace the process of rebel-to-party transformation. To substantiate the mechanism, I provide evidence of the three dimensions of this theory: the organization’s legacy of resilience to major change, leaders’ wartime valuation of their proto-party structures, and the postwar repurposing of these structures both within and beyond the new party.

Between 1984 and 1989 the FMLN continued to hold the Salvadoran armed forces at bay. While the total number of combatants was half of what it was at the FMLN’s peak in 1983, the pivot to a war of attrition worked very much in the group’s favor. Nevertheless, neither side was ever able to maintain the upper hand on the battlefield for long. Aware that it was facing a likely stalemate, the FMLN consistently tried to entice the government to come to the negotiating table, but the government always refused. See, for example, the cover of a 1986 pamphlet depicting the government’s unwillingness to join the FMLN at the table.

By 1989, both the FMLN and the Salvadoran government were fighting as much against the clock as they were against each other. Funding for proxy wars was drying up quickly as tensions thawed between the USSR and the West. After the fall of the Berlin wall, both parties knew the war was as good as over. From an analytic standpoint, one could easily look at the timing of the transformation and tell a Cold War story about the war’s end. To do so, however, would both obscure and oversimplify the dynamics in play. Notwithstanding the role glasnost played in putting financial and temporal pressure on both sides, it was ultimately the FMLN’s international political-messaging division that forced the government’s hand into negotiations.

When Duarte’s government again denied the FMLN’s request for a peaceful and democratic solution to the war, the rebels responded with force. During the fighting, members of the Salvadoran Army murdered six unarmed Jesuit priests. The government tried to claim the priests were orchestrating the offensive, but the FMLN immediately leaned on its international press wing. At this point in the war, it had the infrastructure to ensure the atrocity was covered in mainstream international news, and it used this power to pressure the government into negotiations. According to Bracamonte and Spencer, the event led to a “total loss of credibility in the eyes of the international community.”54 Facing both a loss of funding and massive international condemnation, the government was forced to enter negotiations in late 1989.

The FMLN exploited the state’s decimated credibility to gain a considerable advantage at the negotiating table.55 Yet, defections and ceasefire breaches on both sides made for a bumpy and protracted process. The Salvadoran government and the international community made disarmament and demobilization of FMLN combatants a requirement before proceeding with its legal transition into a political party. For its part, the FMLN feared that the government would renege once the rebels handed over their weapons. As such, the negotiation process extended over a two-year period that was punctuated by skirmishes as well as an embarrassing discovery of cached FMLN weapons after the group claimed to have fully demobilized. This event did cost the FMLN some of its international credibility, though not enough to jeopardize the negotiations.

The war ended on January 16, 1992, when both sides traveled to Mexico City and, under the supervision of the United Nations, signed the Chapúltepec Peace Accords. In addition to allowing for the “full exercise of [the FMLN’s] civil and political rights,” the Chapúltepec Accords included a variety of clauses for which the FMLN pushed during the negotiation process, including electoral reforms, the creation of an independent judiciary, the disbanding of paramilitary bodies, land reform, and a restructuring and reduction of the armed forces.56

Resilience within Rebellion

The first part of this analysis situates the FMLN’s prior organizational changes vis-à-vis the theory of resilience and transformation. The purpose is twofold. Examining the organization’s attitudes toward and execution of past change establishes its legacy of adaptation and resilience. Whether change was met with openness or resistance, whether it was approached in a methodical or ad hoc manner, whether its scope was ambitious or circumspect provides critical insight into how the FMLN will approach change in the future. Moreover, examining past changes in light of the mechanism I propose enables me to test whether previous transformations unfolded by the same repurposing mechanism.

Looking back over the FMLN’s history reveals that prior changes were successful to the extent that the organization could repurpose existing structures to related ends—and the converse is true as well. The earliest evidence of structural repurposing came in Chalatenango. On the heels of the failed insurrection and equipped with few resources, the FPL nevertheless managed to build a robust network of local governance and education structures. This organizational expansion unfolds in lockstep with my theoretical expectations. Rather than building structures from scratch, the FPL leveraged the networks and leadership skills developed in Christian base communities to catalyze building new but related structures. As Pearce and others note, may of the early leaders in the PPL structures were the catechists (i.e., lay preachers), who had received training in leadership and oration in the previous decade.57 Other PPLs repurposed leaders and structures from the Union of Rural Workers (which itself “had its origins in . . . the popular church”).58 In both cases, those involved explicitly noted the importance of exploiting existing structures and repurposing skilled individuals.59

Moving ahead, we observe similar dynamics in the aftermath of the 1984 elections. Facing a new sociopolitical reality, in which opposition groups were legalized and refugees were returning home en masse, the FMLN changed both its strategies and its organizational composition. Once again, success (and failure) was conditioned on whether groups could repurpose existing structures into related roles. The FPL and PRTC were able to build on existing messaging and educational structures to develop robust internal and external political training programs. In contrast, the combat-focused ERP struggled in this period. The political reorientation of the group required it to build comparable structures from scratch, which “posed a particular challenge to the ERP,” according to Wood.60 The exception that proves the rule was the FMLN-wide distribution of a training pamphlet commonly referred to as The 15 Principles (Los 15 Principios del Combatiente Guerrillero).61 As Hoover Green observes, this manual is one of the most consistently cited sources of internal political education.62 To achieve dispersion that wide, the FMLN leveraged the ERP-affiliated Radio Venceremos Press System to print and distribute the pamphlet. Here was a structure that already existed and operated in political, noncombat domains. While the group had difficulty building new structures, Venceremos was quickly mobilized to take on a large-scale task in the vein of its typical operations.

To assess the counterfactual, consider the FMLN’s imprudent choice to “strip the political wings of their key cadres” to quickly build up understaffed combat units ahead of the Final Offensive in 1981.63 The organizational and operational consequences were vast and bleak. Ahead of what was supposed to be a nationwide strike, the organization had in essence severed its structural ties to what few unions and professional organizations still existed in the country. Additionally, it had constructed a military out of people with no military experience and too little time to train them. And we now know how the insurrection played out: undertrained combatants were unable to stave off the Salvadoran military and without links to the labor force, the national strike was a failure.64 This organizational misstep represents a complementary example of the risks of repurposing structures from one subdivision into an unrelated domain.

Notwithstanding the setbacks, the FMLN established legacy of adaptation in response to external shocks. More importantly, this resilience was not latent. Throughout the war, leaders reflected on these traits, which in turn, laid a stable foundation for future changes. As Villalobos once remarked, “We have been able to learn from every error . . . based on a serious self-critical spirit.”65 In response to this organizational learning, leaders implemented intentional structural changes: “In short, the Party again underwent a new readjustment of its structures, its thinking, its guidelines, and its strategy and tactics to face the new challenges.”66

THE LEGACY OF ORGANIZATIONAL AUDITS

Evidence of a postwar organizational assessment is a minimum requirement for my theory to hold. After all, if leaders are not critically examining the organization’s advantages, resources, and deficiencies as they stand on the cusp of party formation, then organizational traits are likely subordinate to other factors affecting transformation. This view is reflected in the literature as well. Jeroen de Zeeuw, for example, argues that rebel-to-party transformation entails the “postwar challenge” of reorienting the organization and developing new tactics, strategies, and structures.67 The question, however, is whether the auditing starts only when the war ends. I demonstrated in chapter 3 that organizational assessments were commonplace—one of the few institutions on which the OP-Ms agreed was the value of organizational learning and updating (autocrítico). Here, I examine the content of those audits. If wartime legacies play the central role in party formation that my theory proposes, I expect to find evidence that organizational assessments in direct service of political development happen early and often.

Internal documents, memos, and diaries reveal that organizational assessments were explicit and routine. In fact, rather than waiting for shocks, leaders were actually scheduling “autocrítico meetings.”68 Outlining the need for routinized assessments, FMLN leaders documented the imperative to “develop and maintain periodical evaluations that cover all the levels of the party to assess the necessary adjustments.”69

More important, however, not only did the FMLN conduct detailed audits in the run-up to the major organizational changes delineated earlier, but I also find clear and consistent evidence that many organizational assessments were conducted expressly with party formation in mind. For an early example, consider this excerpt from an FPL document aimed at formalizing the strategic relations between FPL structures, the PPL structures, and ANDES (the teachers’ union):

The construction of the party is an urgent priority . . . it is necessary to have a specialized party structure up to the levels of the departmental teams.

Tasks: Form cadres with specialized party objectives, so that their (eventual) promotion organically strengthens the party because we have the core elements already in place.70

The implications could hardly be more clear—and this level of foresight was not limited to the FPL. In a document outlining future organizational tasks, PRTC authors explicitly list among their objectives “to create in the process of the struggle, organizational structures that are guaranteed to continue their work after the conflict.”71

Displaying a remarkable command of organizational dynamics, leaders’ assessments also evince shortcomings that support my theory. In a document containing plans to augment the political cadres within the FPL, the authors note the following problem: “Some of the limitations are a function of staff shortages and organizational issues, such as having to relocate [skilled cadres and individuals] to new positions and therefore wasting their time and expertise.”72 Here, we find direct evidence that leaders not only made decisions based on expertise, but also that the failure to do so resulted in inefficiency, which they sought to correct.73

These assessments and the corresponding plans are nearly impossible to misinterpret. The FMLN’s wartime legacy of continued self-assessment, critique, and adaptation meant that the audit following the ceasefire was just one more instance of an ongoing routine. Leaders display—if not exceed—the organizational awareness and acumen this theory demands and their decisions to augment and repurpose structures in the face of major changes tracks with the predictions laid out earlier in the chapter.

Resilience beyond Rebellion

The question now is, did the FMLN’s wartime legacies bear fruit? In this analysis, I look for explicit evidence that personnel and subdivisions with relevant political experience are retained and prioritized as the FMLN gears up to operate as a party. So far, the evidence paints a picture of a structurally diverse organization, bound by flexible institutions, and run by leaders who routinely displayed the acumen to use these structures in service of their goals. Of course, these assets were not distributed uniformly. I expect to find that the balance of power in the new party is skewed in favor of the FPL, PRTC, and PCS—the OP-Ms that constructed the most robust proto-party divisions throughout the war.

On one side of the transformation were the OP-Ms who, throughout the war, had dedicated substantial resources to developing proto-party structures. The leadership and the individual OP-Ms immediately identified these structures as a viable foundation for the nascent party, as the following excerpts illustrate. For ease of reference, each quote is preceded by the corresponding OP-M or body:

FMLN General Command: We are in the period in which we must have the capacity to translate our political capital developed during wartime to the moment when there is peace in El Salvador, and the way we will do it is through elections.74

FPL: [Winning the ’94 elections will ensure] we can reorient local popular power structures and control mayorships.75

PCS: We enter 1991 with an accumulation of democratic and revolutionary cadres with strategic value. They have been developed under the conditions of dual political-military power, which puts us in a very good position to succeed. We will promote a sustained policy that includes all existing sectors . . . to decisively influence the advancement and success of our political strategy.76

PRTC: There are still five different organizational realities. They exhibit different levels of development, different levels of force, we have worked in different areas and different sectors. Some have the means of communication and others do not. The challenge now is to know how to manage all those differences while trying not to erase them with the stroke of a pen.77

On the other side of the transformation, we find the ERP. The content of the ERP’s organizational assessment strikes a very different tone from the documents and interviews quoted here. The following quotes are excerpts from an internal memorandum addressing the ERP’s organizational strategy for party formation. In line with my expectations—and contrary to the audits depicted previously—its postconflict assessment revealed a dearth of structures with postwar utility; most of the tasks it outlines focus on what to build, rather than what to keep.

[W]e need to discuss . . . how we are going to shape political structures.

We need to discuss the principles of political party organization in general and create the functional structure that binds the union, social, judicial, and electoral struggles into a single effort.

Until now . . . we have fundamentally been a military and peasant force.

We need to . . . redesign the political forces in service of two grand objectives: fulfillment of the accords and to win the national government in the ’94 elections.

We recognize that many of the organizational lines we have promoted have been in service of the war.78

The ERP has established that it is being reimagined in light of the new struggle. . . . We humbly recognize that we need other capacities for the new challenges.79

The single most notable thing about this document is that it tracks perfectly with expectations from the literature. At the end of the war, ERP leaders assembled, assessed what they had and what they needed, identified that they were lacking in party-relevant structures, and made a plan to build them now that the war was over. ERP leaders noted that in addition to building these structures they had to “relate more with the masses,” “integrate ERP cadres into the unions,” and “get grassroots leaders to convert to leaders of the party.”80 In short, after building the structures, they needed staff and votes. The ERP’s party-building strategy is quite literally a good idea on paper. The problem is that it proved to be too little, too late.

THE TRANSFORMATION

Starting at the top, the five-member General Command was expanded into a fifteen-member Political Commission.81 With an eye toward promoting unity and reducing conflict, the initial plan gave each OP-M equal representation across the party, irrespective of its size. Yet, when it came time to appoint personnel to specific tasks and nominate candidates for office, a different dynamic emerged. In line with the theory’s predictions, the organization quickly moved away from what Luciak describes as the “artificial balance” in representation. Instead “other factors, such as a potential candidate’s political experience, began to take precedence.”82 Spence’s account elaborates: “Candidates were selected by departmental committees of the party where historical roles were debated against current performance in new kinds of tasks. Thus, being a good guerrilla or underground operative did not guarantee selection.”83 The new balance of power in the nascent party thus came to reflect wartime political legacies. As Tommie Sue Montgomery recounts, “The FPL emerged in 1992 as the largest and best organized politically. Of the five [OP-Ms], the FPL and the PCS made the quickest and most effective transition to electoral politics, the FPL because it could draw on years of political organizing and because it began transforming itself before the peace accords were signed. . . . In contrast, the ERP . . . was slow to organize politically.”

Ralph Sprenkels later confirmed this dynamic, noting that the specific “political accommodations” in the settlement “resulted in former FPL and PCS cadres becoming the FMLN’s backbone.” Moreover, evidence from the inside strongly suggests that organizational repurposing was as intentional as it was common. “In the context of transitioning to legality, the [PCS] Central Committee made a marked effort to regularize its operation, giving continuity to a process that had already begun even under the precarious conditions of illegality.”84 The balance of power that emerged in the wake of the settlement strongly supports the mechanism driving the theory.

Below the leadership level, the same dynamics play out. Individuals and subdivisions that took on proto-party roles during wartime persisted through the transformation. Leaders who managed governance projects during the war were tapped to take on formal governance and administrative roles in the new party.85 At the subdivision level, the FMLN’s press and propaganda divisions exhibit some of the clearest evidence of repurposing. As they looked ahead to the campaign trail, the burgeoning party had nearly twenty years of experience communicating with the people. In an internal memorandum addressing the organizational tasks ahead of the 1994 elections, FMLN leaders dedicated a section to the role of propaganda structures in the postwar environment, and Sprenkels reveals a similar process in recounting his work with the FPL during the transformation period:

The communication capacity of the revolutionary movement is one of the key elements for its development [into a party]. During the first years of the dictatorship and the later years of the war, the popular forms of propaganda—the mural and the flyer—had a profound impact because they were new methods of breaking the censorship and defying the military. Now, it is important that we design new forms of propaganda that are in tune with the conditions of the new period.86

Together with a comrade . . . we had to collect the different materials (paper, ink, typewriters, stencil machines) leftover from the wartime propaganda units active in Chalatenango and bring these to the new office of the FMLN to be opened in the city. At the same time, we were charged with designing a new propaganda strategy for the FPL around the FMLN’s new image as a soon-to-be-legal political party.87

Note that in the first excerpt, Oscar Miranda (one of the directors of the PRTC’s Political Commission during the war) not only speaks to the wing’s critical role in the transformation process, but also addresses how only the form of the message must change (as does Sprenkels).88 In doing so, both accounts lend strong support to the repurposing mechanism underlying the theory. The leadership further confirms the intentionality driving the reorganization: “It is essential that each commission dedicates their efforts to their specific expertise. [We must] avoid the dispersion and disintegration of these skills in order to achieve the most optimal results for each cadre.”89

Similar examples of repurposing come to light across the FMLN. Community organizations and insurgent cooperatives that coalesced under Poder de Doble Cara during the war went on to form affiliated NGOs.90 They took on governance and development projects in service of both the nascent party and the communities from which they came, forming what Wood characterizes as “a dense [FMLN] network of civil society organizations.”91 Miranda of the PRTC explicitly confirms this mechanism:

Everyone is going to be left with something in their hands. All our structures and our men will follow three paths. The fighters . . . will go to agricultural production on the lands we have left.92 A percentage of the structures will go to the National Civil Police, and another [percentage of the structures] will go to the political party organization into which we are going to transform.93

Crucially, organizational repurposing is not just an exercise in vanity—living on for the sake of living on. Instead, relevant structures are allocated to address real needs. The Salvadoran Association for Local Development and Democracy (ASPAD) is a prime example. Ahead of the 1994 elections, voter registration was one of the primary obstacles the FMLN faced—especially in rural areas (i.e., where most of its supporters and ex-combatants resided). Over one-third of the voting-age population was unregistered and lacked sufficient identification to register in the first place.94 While the settlement created a tribunal dedicated to election oversight (TSE), according to Montgomery its members proved both unwilling and unable to “handle the logistics of a massive registration process.”95 The problem, of course, was that the TSE was a government agency, and the incumbent government (which was also up for reelection in 1994) had few incentives to ensure people who had lived under the FMLN for the past twelve years could now vote.

To fill in the logistical gaps, the FMLN spearheaded a massive repurposing of wartime municipal community organizations to form ASPAD.96 This NGO not only facilitated a massive voter registration campaign but also conducted in-depth analyses on the process and problems with voter registration more broadly. Even here, the same suborganizational dynamics are present. As Rachel A. May, Alejandro Schneider, and Roberto González Arana argue, “The different factions of the FMLN varied in experience and success in organizing voters. The PCS, as the most established politically . . . was the most successful, and the ERP was the least [politically] experienced and . . . the least successful electoral faction of the FMLN.”97

The same transformation mechanism also shaped postwar life beyond the party. Although the firsthand accounts of the organization’s diversity are critical, the content of the negotiations is equally telling. Beginning with the counter-factual, if the organization itself were as homogeneous as rebellions are portrayed, we would expect the rebels’ demands to center primarily on amnesty for ex-combatants; resources, both for demobilization and party formation; and context-specific concessions (e.g., land reform). The FMLN, however, came to the table with demands that laid bare its organizational diversity: reintegration scholarships and teaching certifications for “popular teachers,” and legalization of its press divisions, including ¡Radio Venceremos!.98 Figure 4.5 is an excerpt from an FMLN-affiliated newspaper, Equipo Maiz, outlining the tenets of the peace accords.99

FIGURE 4.5. Excerpt from Equipo Maiz’s popular edition explaining the terms of the settlement. Los Acuerdos de Paz: Cuaderno No. 5, David Spencer Collection, box 7, folder 7.15, Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

Wartime subdivisions that did not qualify for demobilization, yet did not directly serve a party function, transformed into postwar roles, fully intact. In the social-service sector, the FPL’s medical wing was converted into PRO-VIDA (the Salvadoran Association of Humanitarian Assistance), an NGO dedicated to health care.100 FMLN cadres in charge of territorial administration during the war were tapped to facilitate the land transfer program during the demobilization and transition process.101 Finally, the postwar trajectories of ¡Radio Venceremos! and the FPL’s Radio Farabundo Martí are worth elaboration. While the OP-Ms kept many of their press wings intact, radio stations did not fill the bill for party operations. Yet the thought of disbanding them was anathema to the FMLN. The Venceremos member José Ignacio López Vigil details the station’s plans in his 1991 memoir: “Venceremos is on the agenda in the negotiations. They want us to return to civilian life, do they? Gladly, but we’re taking our equipment with us, because that’s how we’ll take part in public debate. . . . It’s time we dealt with all the interference by getting our broadcast license instead of using barbed wire.”102

Both wartime radio stations successfully negotiated licenses. Sprenkels describes the sanguine “descent” of the stations “from the mountains to new outfits in the capital city,” where the goal was to continue their political role.103 In light of their prestige and a newfound international patron, the other OP-Ms sought to get radio stations off the ground as well. In line with the predictions from my theory, these attempts at building new organizations from scratch failed.104

1994 AND BEYOND

Objectively, the FMLN made an impressive showing in the 1994 elections. Despite running against eight other parties, the FMLN took over a quarter of seats in the legislature and won thirteen mayorships, making them the second-largest party in the country.105 Unsurprisingly, the party was disappointed with the results, and attributed what it considered a modest performance to systematic voter disenfranchisement and intimidation. Nevertheless, from an electoral standpoint, the FMLN transformed its organization and made a successful transition into the electoral arena, where it remains a persistent contender in Salvadoran politics.

With the benefit of time and some existential security following its relative electoral success, the FMLN spent the following years working to create a more unified and effective party. FMLN leaders decided the best way to forge a unified path forward was to dissolve the remaining lines between the OP-Ms. While this decision was likely beneficial for party cohesion, the obstacles to unification track with the theory’s predictions. Consider Nidia Díaz’s 2006 account of the PRTC’s history:

When the PRTC was dissolved, I appointed a team for the transition which did not work efficiently. When dissolving our structure, FMLN institutions lacked the specificity and scope needed to properly engage with the politics and ideology of the PRTC’s historical bases.

There has been a lack of attention to political training and organization. Each of the organizations that dissolved have faced this problem: FMLN institutions were insufficient to replace the specific focus that derived from each group.106

As these quotes illustrate, attempts to erase lines between the groups came with the added pressure of creating new subdivisions and new institutions while simultaneously trying to achieve new goals. Díaz articulates the organizational inefficiencies with textbook acuity. While these new structures did not result in the party’s demise, the fact that they were inefficient to a level worthy of documentation hints at the problems with building an entire party this way.

Notwithstanding the OP-Ms plans for total dissolution, their organizational legacies persisted.107 Press wings that originated in Chalatenango under the FPL continued to print FPL-branded messaging more than ten years after the FPL “dissolved.”108 More broadly, Carlos Guillermo Ramos, Roberto Oswaldo L´opez, and Aída Carolina Quinteros are unequivocal in their characterization of the party, even twenty years on:

In is . . . interesting to observe that the FMLN as a political party has not managed to establish any clear processes aimed at generational renewal. The leaders of the Front are basically the same political and military leaders of the war period. Indeed, the Vice-President for the 2009–2014 term and President elected for the 2014–2019 period was one of the principal members of the Front’s General Command during the war and a signatory of the Peace Accords. The same is true for the deputies and internal party authorities.109

This excerpt speaks directly to the assumption at the heart of the rebel-to-party literature. Scholars and analysts find the FMLN’s lack of an organizational upheaval remarkable. Rather than remarking on the fact that some rebel groups don’t establish processes of renewal, what we should remark on instead is how any group survives them and why some rebel groups don’t need them. The fact is, for many groups, operating as a political party is often not the sharp discontinuity it is so often framed to be.

Partido Democratica: A Shadow Case in the FMLN’s Shadow

The FMLN’s general success in electoral politics is not the end of its rebel-to-party story. Shortly following the 1994 elections, enduring rivalries led to a split in the FMLN in which the ERP and the RN broke off to form a party of their own, the Partido Democratica (PD). The ERP was by far the dominant force in the PD. Thus, from an analytic standpoint, the splinter presents an opportunity to test alternative explanations for and mechanisms of rebel-to-party transformation within the same case. The ERP’s dominance means the PD is an example of attempted party formation by the most homogeneous of the FMLN’s organizations. Alternative explanations of the outcome would predict likely rebel-to-party success. The ERP consistently held the most territory, it established the clearest rearguard, and it had no profound dearth of material resources.110 It leaned heavily on local populations to support the war effort—a dynamic purported to translate into postwar political capital.111

From an organizational standpoint, however, the PD was lacking. This party was forged out of players who were marginalized during the FMLN’s transformation in part because they lacked relevant political experience.112 While the ERP emerged from war with a critical organizational resource—the voice of the resistance—it no longer had the control over ¡Radio Venceremos! that it once did. At this point in El Salvador’s history, Venceremos was already set up in the capital broadcasting an unobjectionable mix of revolutionary songs, news, and Madonna. The ERP and the RN had distanced themselves from their other proto-party structures as well. Even after the FMLN’s 1984 shift toward a political strategy, the ERP often used its affiliated political organizations as sources of military recruits.113 While these allied organizations worked to boost their political influence throughout the war, their success came in spite, rather than because of, their ERP ties.

In the case of the RN, the group’s wartime political resources would have been ripe for postwar repurposing into party structures. The problem was a lack of foresight. Consider FENASTRAS, the Salvadoran Federation for Union Workers. FENASTRAS, according to Sprenkels, was the “crown jewel in the RN’s civil-political front” during the war, supplying funding, recruits, and spearheading political initiatives in concert with the RN’s views.114 Yet, as the war came to a close, RN leaders “had little clarity” on whether and how to continue their relationship with the union, and in the throes of indecision, they quietly went their separate ways.115

The ERP’s hegemonic control over its political affiliates gave rise to severe tensions in its areas of control. Thus, in spite of the rich civil society that emerged among the population in Morazán and Usulatán, the ERP was largely unable to benefit from it. While the PD made it as far as the ballot, the party never garnered enough votes to win any seats. After its failure, the organization quietly disbanded and many members sheepishly returned to the FMLN.

Building on Wartime Legacies

The ERP did not harbor different goals from the other OP-Ms. Each group initially sought to overthrow the government and each intended to take power after the revolution. They had comparable prewar experience and comparable material resources. Although occupying the same ballot as the incumbent government was not always part of the plan, politics was in everyone’s future from the outset. What differed across the OP-Ms were their paths and their success. Successful postwar parties are often built on wartime legacies—and when the wartime legacies are absent, so too are their electoral prospects.

The mechanism by which rebels transform into political parties is elusive when we analytically bracket the organization during war. This is not to say that researchers are not acknowledging that war happens, but existing approaches provide only a narrow view of what wartime organization entails. The result is a set of technically true, but holistically misleading conclusions: “It is not easy to transfer the skills from organizing a war to organizing a political campaign” and its corollary, any rebel group that wants to form a political party “must learn the art of non-violent politics.”116 Neither my theory nor the empirics dispute this premise; instead, they account for the pivotal fact that some groups learn it earlier than others. The next chapter addresses the final theoretical question: are wartime organizational legacies as compelling to voters as they are to scholars?