Statehood Without Capacity

TL;DR

This paper presents a theory explaining how states can maintain nominal sovereignty without effective capacity due to institutional, geopolitical, and recognition dynamics, with Palestine as a key example.

Contribution

It introduces a novel political-economy model of statehood without capacity, highlighting the divergence between symbolic recognition and actual state functions.

Findings

States can remain recognized without effective capacity due to external transfers and weak incentives to consolidate.

Recognition and legitimacy can increase independently of domestic administrative performance.

The model explains phenomena like fiscal fragility, corruption, and conflict vulnerability in weak states.

Abstract

This paper develops a political-economy theory of statehood without capacity. I argue that under specific institutional and geopolitical conditions, a polity can become trapped in an equilibrium of nominal statehood: a state in which claims to sovereignty, external recognition, and symbolic legitimacy persist or even strengthen while the coercive, fiscal, administrative, and legal capacities required for effective statehood remain weak. The mechanism is driven by three forces. First, fragmented elites may privately benefit from preserving autonomous control, patronage, and localized rent extraction rather than consolidating authority into a unified state. Second, externally mediated transfers can reduce the immediate costs of institutional non-consolidation and thereby stabilize a low-capacity equilibrium. Third, international recognition and symbolic endorsement may be only weakly conditioned on domestic administrative performance, allowing recognition capital to accumulate more rapidly than capacity capital. The theory generates a dynamic divergence between juridical or symbolic statehood and effective statehood, with implications for investment, fiscal fragility, corruption, and vulnerability to conflict shocks. The paper derives testable predictions and then interprets Palestine as a flagship application of the broader mechanism. The central implication is that statehood is not only a question of recognition or territorial claim but an equilibrium outcome of institutional consolidation. Where the incentives to consolidate remain weak, sovereignty may be asserted without becoming viable.