At the Margins of the State: Civic and political engagement in difficult settings

The poorest and most marginalised citizens of any country need the state the most. They require a strong social contract as they are the most in need of constitutional protection and basic social and economic rights such as social protection, healthcare, education, and housing. Yet, while this is the group of citizens that needs the state the most, it is often the one that exhibits the most fractious relationship with the state. Using data from the Governance at the Margins project (Anderson et al, 2023; Barnes et al, 2021), we suggest that in fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings poor and marginalised citizens and the state either do not engage with each other, do so through mediated engagement, or through coercive engagement. First, poor and marginalised are disengaged because of a lack of awareness of entitlements and rights, combined with an absence of interest to engage from the state. Second, this absenteeism makes them engage with intermediaries, their first port of call in the governance chain to access the state. Many intermediaries have an incentive to keep them disconnected for their own political reasons. As all information they receive is filtered through intermediaries’ political incentives, poor and marginalised never see the state; instead they see the intermediaries’ version of the state. Finally, in the rare moments when poor and marginalised mobilise and create a political movement to engage directly with the state to claim rights (at times with the help of intermediaries) the state either ignores their efforts or attempts to crush their movements through violence.