2026/03/16 by Andrea Novellis · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Political Conflict and Governance #Bangladesh Politics, Society, and Development #Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography
paper · doi:10.1080/13510347.2026.2643877
openalex publication_date 2026/03/16 · openalex created_date 2026/03/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
How defeated insurgencies adapt to democratic politics without a formal peace accord remains an under-theorized puzzle in post-conflict studies. Existing frameworks, focused on negotiated settlements or military victories, offer few tools for explaining this increasingly common pathway. This article addresses this gap by theorizing ideological compartmentalization: the structural separation of a protected, rigid ideological core from a flexible, public-facing front designed for broad electoral competition. This dual structure enables strategic oscillation: shifts in which ideological compartment is emphasized to respond to the political context. This article tests the argument through a longitudinal analysis of Sri Lanka’s JVP (2015–2024), drawing on party manifestos and official media. The findings reveal that the JVP’s official outputs deployed a universalist, anti-corruption technocratic populist register, while keeping Sinhala-nationalist commitments comparatively less visible in those same arenas, a pattern consistent with compartmentalized public signalling. This study challenges linear models of rebel-party moderation by offering a new theoretical framework for understanding how former insurgents may navigate ideological contradictions to achieve electoral success, providing a new framework for analyzing a growing number of post-conflict cases where defeated groups remain influential political actors.