My book project examines when and how civilians engage with state institutions to seek public goods and social services in contested territories, addressing the relationship between perceptions of state legitimacy, social ties, and individuals’ engagement with state institutions and welfare regimes in contexts of contested sovereignty. Specifically, the book project focuses on what drives Palestinians’ decisions regarding their selective engagement with the Israeli state in pursuit of public goods and social services in East Jerusalem. Namely, most Palestinians in East Jerusalem perceive the Israeli state to be governing illegitimately, and thus will only seek goods and social services from the state in select sectors, while rejecting state-provided goods and services in other sectors.

Based upon 14 months of fieldwork in East Jerusalem and drawing upon original survey and interview data, I find that two primary factors influence Palestinian engagement with state institutions and welfare providers. First, Palestinian East Jerusalemites are most likely to avoid engagement with goods, services, and institutions that legitimate the Israeli state’s claim to monopolized sovereign rule in East Jerusalem, without sacrificing essential services. However, data from my original survey suggests that a small subset of individuals continue to seek out and engage with the goods, services, and institutions that affirm the state’s claim to sovereignty. Thus, I find that individuals with strong family and clan social ties in their neighborhoods are most likely to avoid engagement with the state in the most controversial sectors, while those who live in demographically “mixed” neighborhoods are more likely to engage with the state in pursuit of the spectrum of available goods, services, and institutions. Further, I compare the case of East Jerusalem to that of Northern Ireland using data from the publicly available Northern Ireland Life & Times Survey, and find that my theory does in fact explain engagement patterns of civilians in the post-Good Friday Agreement period.