ABSTRACT
Gaining constituent support and embodying peace commitments in legal documents—such as constitutions—are deemed to play a key role in legitimizing and stabilizing peace processes by lowering the chance of a recurrence of violence in transitioning settings. However, tensions might arise from intertwining between short-term peace accords’ goals and long-term purposes of legitimacy and constitution-building processes. These tensions revive and heighten debates on contentious issues, which might break the fragile political consensus necessary for successful peacebuilding in post-conflict settings. The Colombian peace process is a case in point, in which legitimacy endeavors and constitution-building processes have been intermingled in complex manners and sequences. This text intends to study some relevant theoretical and empirical elements to understand the interactions amongst legitimacy, constitution-making and peacebuilding in the current Colombian peace process between the Colombian government and the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army (in Spanish, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo, FARC-EP).
