State-society relations in authoritarian settings are a recurrent topic in the respective literature. Phenomena ranging from loyalty and apathy to dissent, open protest, and resistance have been widely researched. The different patterns of regime response or the way authorities mobilize forces themselves have been discussed to a much lesser extent. This contribution analyzes the gradual deterioration of the state-society relationship in Belarus. These fragile relations have been brought to the brink of collapse by the authorities’ mishandling of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the fraudulent presidential election in August 2020, which became a catalyst for the eruption of mass protests in the country. As a consequence, Belarus has developed into a state obsessed with security concerns. The pretense of legitimacy and the promise of a social welfare state have been replaced by an unvarnished clientelist dictatorship, relying on an inflated security apparatus. The article identifies indicators for an increased “securitization” of state politics in recent years and corresponding measures that guided authorities in their endeavor to counteract societal resistance. The aim is to shed light on how securitized interactions have become emblematic of dysfunctional state-society relations in Belarus.

Scholarship on Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) increasingly recognizes that even weak states targeted by TANs may respond, and subvert, transnational norm socialization campaigns. It examines both the conditions conducive to such responses and the range of policy instruments available to these states. Yet this emerging work lacks a robust, contextualized account for how states devise the strategy and the content of their responses. This article builds on the policy-learning literature to elucidate the process through which states construct their antiTAN approaches. It suggests that states’ policy paradigms in the field of domestic security largely shape those responses, with different paradigms offering distinct priorities and instruments. The comparison of the divergent impact of the Guatemalan state’s contrasting responses to two similar legal-political challenges, undertaken in the context of the same anticorruption TAN campaign, illustrates the argument.

Can popular organizations engage with the state in a lasting collaborative interaction that benefits their interests without being politically co-opted or captured? This article addresses this question by analyzing the interaction between cartonero organizations and the PRO administrations in Buenos Aires City between 2002 and 2018. It shows how cartoneros managed to prompt a change in the PRO’s policies on recyclable waste collection. The article’s main arguments are that popular organizations’ opportunity to gain formal access to the state without losing their autonomy is related to the strategic orientations of both the popular organization and the ruling party, and that such a possibility increases when the popular organization is not part of the incumbent party coalition. The “troubled collaboration” between cartoneros and the PRO was possible due both to the cartoneros’ combination of contentious and institutionalized actions and to an important change in the PRO’s strategic orientation toward cartoneros.

Despite historic increases in crime and violence, Latin America’s police forces are characterized by long periods of institutional weakness punctuated by rare, sweeping reforms. To understand these patterns of institutional continuity and change, the author applies the concept of structural power, demonstrating how police leverage their control of coercion to constrain the policy options available to politicians. Within this constrained policy space, politicians choosing between continuity and reform assess societal preferences for police reform and patterns of political competition. Under fragmented societal preferences, irrespective of political competition, reform brings little electoral gain and risks alienating a powerful bureaucracy. Preference fragmentation thus favors the persistence of institutional weakness. When societal preferences converge and a robust political opposition threatens incumbents, politicians face an electoral counterweight to the structural power of police, making reform likely. Using evidence from periods of continuity and reform in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, the author traces both outcomes to shifts in societal preferences and political opposition. Despite the imperative to address citizens’ demands by building state capacity in security provision, these cases show that police reform is often rendered electorally disadvantageous.

The mediation of disputes by community leaders in China has deep historical roots and has long been among the responsibilities of neighbourhoods and villages. While most research on the topic has looked at cities, mediation is in fact more common in the countryside. This paper draws on a survey conducted in 2002 (n=2,164) and repeated in 2010 (n=2,659), covering 23 villages in five provinces, which provides detailed data on conflict from disputants themselves. We examine the evolution of this much-debated mode of conflict resolution and assess its prevalence and effectiveness relative to alternatives. We find that, even as overall rates of disputing declined, seeking intervention by village authorities remained as common a response to disputes in 2010 as it was eight years prior. The paper thus sheds light on a primary means through which the party-state has tried to maintain stability, tamp down strife, and assert its primacy at the community level.

When state capacity dissolves, we ordinarily assume that violent conflict will break out, and then spiral towards a high degree of intensity. However, this is not always the case. Rather, on occasion, states suffer a sharp and severe loss of capacity, but little or no collective violence follows. And, on other occasions, violent conflict erupts, but that conflict does not escalate into civil war; rather, it plateaus, and then recedes. This article offers an analytic framework for explaining such variation in the presence, absence, and intensity of violent conflict following a dissolution of state capacity. I argue that the strength of state and societal organs prior to a loss of state capacity shapes the broad trajectory of violence after such a loss. In making that claim, I associate three state-society dynamics before state dissolution with three levels of violent conflict, post-dissolution. Drawing on multi-country fieldwork, I illustrate the proposed framework by presenting three diverse cases of dissolving state capacity and conflict: Georgia (1991–3); Albania (1991–2); and Yemen (2011–13).

The familialist orientations of the Singapore state on issues of social welfare ought not be taken for granted as static reflections of ‘culture’. Instead, it is a dynamic realm, and a useful site for analysing how and what sorts of state-society relations are forged. We can, moreover, deepen our understanding of governance in Singapore by looking beyond repression and discrimination and paying more attention to the processes of production and differentiation. In this article, I draw on examples from housing, healthcare, and childcare support, to understand how specific social identities and practices are marked as deserving public support. I argue that the logic and practices embedded in policies – what I call ‘differentiated deservedness’ – can be read as a productive and profound form of governance in which specific performances of the familial are generated, and through which norms about state-society relations and citizenship are forged. Scholars and activists who are oriented toward expanding social security and social justice should scrutinise reforms for the extent to which the logic of differentiated deservedness persists or changes.

Within Latin America, Chile is distinguished by its stable trade policies and rapid negotiation of trade agreements with countries and regions all over the world. Explanations for these phenomena often point to the stable pro-free trade coalition established in the aftermath of the shock-therapy pursued in the 1970s, and Chile's professional government bureaucracy. Although both of these elements are important, this article shows how the rapid integration of Chile into the world economy has also depended on the existence of business associations with expertise on trade issues. Through the process of integration, a close policy network has evolved between key public officials and business representatives. This is premised on the mutual recognition of expertise in the public and private sectors, and is held together by close personal networks of loyalty and trust across the public-private divide. However, while the development of such a policy network has been highly favourable to the process of negotiating trade agreements, it has also contributed to the de-facto exclusion of societal actors that have less to contribute to trade negotiations than business sectors.