【Seminar Report】Getting Legitimate?Implications of the Transforming Informal Actors

The workshop of the 11th of June 2019 was titled Getting Legitimate? Implications of the Transformation of Informal Actors. It consisted of three lectures: on the transition from guerrillas into political parties in Latin America by Professor Moreno; on the democratization and the changing face of gangsters in Indonesia by Professor Honna; and on the social mobility of drug traffickers by Professor Fukumi.

Professor Moreno focused his lecture on the transformation of guerrillas/ rebel groups into political parties. He provided the audience with a comprehensive overview of the nature of guerrilla groups in Latin America ranging from their objectives (e.g. political revisionism through violence) to their genealogy (distinguishing between the 1st wave of guerrillas of the 1960s which operated in rural areas and the 2nd wave of the 1970s with an increasingly urban character). Valuable insights to be gained from this lesson were manifold and included the need to consider not only the various non-state and state-actors as separate entities, but also their subtle links between each other and that, in fact, some might be components of the same agent.

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Professor Honna held a lecture titled Democratization and the changing face of gangsters in Indonesia. His talk centered on the manners and consequences of mobilizing gangsters by political elites in times of impactful political events in Indonesia such as elections. In a similar manner to Professor Moreno, Professor Honna thereby underlined the link between state- and non-state actors, as well as the need for perceiving them as one actor in certain contexts. This research by Professor Honna investigated, amongst others, a phenomenon known as the horizontal expansion of the role of gangsters in Indonesia. Thereby, Professor Honna found that significant sociological changes are taking place in regard to the ontology of gangsters ranging from a diversification of gangster-owned businesses to a local decentralization of gangs. This, in turn, can be said to have a decisive impact on the manner of future democratization in Indonesia.

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Professor Fukumi’s talk concerned the social mobility of (former) drug traffickers in Latin America – particularly in Columbia. Through her research, she provided the audience with very specific and detailed information concerning the (aforementioned) link between non-state actors within the realm of organized crime, on the one hand, and governments, on the other. Professor Fukumi’s research reveals the irony of how egocentric, non-philanthropic and illicit undertakings by drug cartels such as the provision of (selectively) meaningful infrastructure to the population in places neglected by the government can lead to political support for drug traffickers by the people.

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All in all, this workshopco-hosted by the College of International Relations and the Institute of International Relations and Area Studies underlined the stark interdisciplinarity between the various sub-disciplines as well as regional foci within the realm of Global Politics.

Written by YAMAMOTO Andrei ((Doctor Student at Graduate School of International Relations)