The Struggle of State-Building in Palestine: Exploring "State-less"-Society Relations in the West Bank

In his seminal work Strong Societies and Weak States, Joel Migdal (1988: 15) argues that, “for those of us in the West, the state has been part of our natural landscape. Its presence, its authority, its place behind so many rules that fashion the minutiae of our lives, have all been so pervasive that it is difficult for us to imagine the situation being otherwise.” This project aims to shed light on precisely the situation where a state is not in sight – the struggle of state-building in Palestine and its impact on stateless-society relations in the West Bank (WB), a problem area that thus far remains under-researched. We aim to fill this gap through a thorough literature review of the existing debates on state-society relations and intensive fieldwork in the WB. Our analysis will build on our engagement with the ongoing literature and will create state of the art knowledge in this field (see below).