Introduction. The political mobilisation of criminal law and its resistance in the Global South

Abstract

The articles presented in this special issue explore the relationship between politics and law in the context of the Global South. While some of the contributions examined this relationship through the symbolic power of the law, others focused on how violence is embedded into the relationship between law and politics. The first group, which focused on the symbolic dimension of power relations, dug into struggles to either accommodate political projects into the existing law or whenever such interpretation was not possible, to propose new legislation consistent with those political goals. Meanwhile, the other group of contributions, those who paid special attention to the association between law and violence, described how the relationship between politics and law is centred disputed legitimacy of law in those societies. This introduction discusses how these two approaches complement each other and offer us a better understanding of the particular role law plays in societies in the Global South.