Wolfgang Minatti
I am a PhD Researcher at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. With a background in Political Science and International Relations, I work on legitimacy and governance in international politics with a particular focus on violent non-state actors and governance in civil wars.
My PhD project investigates the legitimation of armed actors during civil war, focusing on the Colombian conflict. For the project, I am advised by Professor Jeffrey Checkel.
Before joining the European University Institute in 2019, I obtained a Bachelors’ degree at the University Innsbruck (Austria) and a Masters’ degree at Leiden University (The Netherlands). I was visiting scholar at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota (Colombia) where I conducted several months of fieldwork.
Research
In my dissertation, I ask: how do governing armed actors within civil war become legitimised on a local level? Current theorisations of legitimacy in International Relations face difficulties in grasping processes of legitimation in contexts of complex governance systems as they treat legitimacy as a unidirectional and static process which neglects how legitimacy is always embedded in relationships. Proposing an alternative approach, I develop a relational theory of legitimation that allows to map the micro-dynamics of legitimacy and elaborates on the processes that lead to the legitimation of certain actors in the eyes of a population.
I empirically illustrate this theory by investigating the legitimation of the FARC rebel group within the Colombian conflict, using a qualitative methodology. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Colombia, where I interviewed inhabitants of two communities within the Sumapaz region about their experiences with the various governance providers to study the congruence between the communities’ normative expectations and those propagated by the Colombian state and the FARC insurgency.
Legitimacy
How can we theorise and operationalise legitimation in contexts of complex governance such as international politics or civil war?
Civil War
Governance
How do armed actors govern in civil war? How is governance co-constructed between civilians and governance providers?