Relational State Capacity

Relational State Capacity (RSC) is a European Research Council-awarded five year (2023-28) exploration of state capacity led by Dan Honig in collaboration with Mekhala Krishnamurthy and Rahul Karnamadakala Sharma.

We argue that we need to move beyond simply seeing state capacity as the technical ability of the state to "make" or "deliver" things. Public welfare improvement often involves not just technical, but also social, infrastructure (e.g. developing the best COVID vaccines or contact tracing system will not lead to desired public health outcomes without citizens taking vaccines or responding accurately to contact tracers). 

The RSC programme of work builds on and draws in a range of disciplines (including political science, sociology and anthropology, economics’ relational contracts, history, public administration, etc.) to renew our focus and revitalize our conceptual approach to an essential, yet often residual component of state capacity: the character and quality of relationships between citizens and public servants.

A central principle for us is that RSC sees both state agents and citizens not as ‘black box’ residual categories, or simple incentive-complying or objective function-maximizing calculations, but rather humans – individuals and groups of people who can and do exercise agency, and whose understandings and interactions with one another reciprocally shape expectations and ultimately society’s ability to organize to achieve collective goals. By centering relationality we focus on citizen-state relationships as a vital component of state capacity while exploring the ways in which state capacity exists and is expressed as a societal resource.

The Relational State Capacity (RSC) Forum is intended as a convening of scholars from across a range of disciplines from whose work RSC as a nascent concept draws inspiration. By bringing together scholars to share and discuss old and new insights on state-citizen relations, the social contract, trust in government, social accountability and community organizing, democracy, bureaucrat-citizen interactions, etc., we hope to help build and sustain an interdisciplinary community for thinking and learning far beyond the scope of the RSC project itself. At the same time, for the RSC team the Forum also provides an invaluable steering group as we test ideas, concepts, methods, and measurement tools, as this is all very much work-in-progress.

Hosted at University College London (UCL), the first RSC Forum was held in London on May 13-14, 2024.