Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on modalities of bottom-up statecraft as related to the “last-mile” problem of the efficacy of the state. How and why do non-state agents, despite their often negative perceptions of the state, contribute to the efficacy of the state in domains that are perceived as undergoverned?

Paper long abstract:

Urban environmental activists in Belgrade, Serbia, frequently invoke the state in their everyday activities. The idea of the state is important to them even though they critically perceive the actually existing state as internally fractured and limited in its capacities because various institutions have conflicting goals and many officials are corrupt or incompetent. To achieve their goals in the domain of environmental protection, they relate to the state in multiple ways, which I group in three categories. First, activists sometimes directly appeal to and cooperate with state institutions (e.g., by reporting wrongdoing). Second, they sometimes invoke the specter of the state without actually engaging with state institutions (e.g., by negotiating with wrongdoers directly while threatening them that they may report their illegal actions). Third, they can directly oppose state institutions by invoking higher-order justifications (e.g., by blocking the implementation of certain decisions by the city government when they perceive them as unconstitutional). Although superficially different, each of these ways of relating to the state produces a similar result: the activists help extend the reach of the state into a domain where they perceive the state as not present enough. In this paper, I ask what these modalities of bottom-up statecraft tell us about the “last-mile” problem of the efficacy of the state. How and why do non-state agents, despite their often negative perceptions of the state, contribute to the efficacy of the state in domains that are perceived as undergoverned?