Mechanisms behind the expansion of the last insurgency organization ELN despite the peace agreement of Colombia

This thesis aims to explore the sufficient causal explanation for the expansion of the last leftist insurgency organization, Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), despite the Colombia Peace Agreement. It has already been four years since the government signed the Peace Agreement and the largest insurgency organization in Colombia, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). Following the primary articles of the Peace Agreement, the FARC disarmed and got the right of political representation and took its place in the political sphere of Colombia; the rural economic reforms have started to be implied, countering to drug trafficking has accelerated, the transitional justice policies have been already welcomed. However, the remaining last leftist insurgency organization, the ELN, now with the most extended history, has continually expanded in Colombia as well both across the border of Ecuador and Venezuela. On the other hand, in 2017, the ELN accepted the formal peace talks with the Colombian government as similar to previous peace talks that began in the 1980s. However, one more time, the peace talks were ended because of the disagreements with the newly elected government and the ELN's car bombing at a police academy in Bogotá, 2019. Followingly, under the conditions of the Peace Agreement, which ended the armed conflict with the largest insurgency organization, ELN continues to expand throughout the new presence with a more significant number of members. Either this question or even the ELN itself is still not well-scoped and inquired in the literature. In this thesis, the implicit interacting causal mechanisms, the ideology of ELN, the organizational strategies during its existence, and popular support for the ELN are observed by the causal process tracing. In the end, through the evidence of these causal mechanisms and the causal relations among them, the sufficient explanation for the expansion of the ELN despite the Peace Agreement provides more details than before in the literature.