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Current research on climate change adaptation in cities highlights the role of local governments in facilitating adaptation actions, but rarely assesses whether (and if so, how) local communities organise around emerging climate priorities to affect political change. This paper explores changing state–society relationships through the reconstitution of community collectives and advocacy organisations for advancing climate change adaptation in the Indian city of Indore. The paper shows that communities are indeed recognising the need for adaptation but are, at the same time, integrating adaptation actions with existing strategies for advocating development rights. Communities are also rebuilding alliances between municipal and local institutions for public service and infrastructure provision, which point to the centrality of community politics in urban climate adaptation processes. However, such mobilisations are often dependent on existing political networks and a legacy of advocacy around poverty alleviation needs, which sideline more transformative agendas around inclusiveness, equity, and resilient urban futures. 目前关于城市气候变化适应的研究注重当地政府在促进适应行动方面的作用，很少评估地方社区是否需要（如果需要，则应当如何）围绕气候变化优先议题组织起来，以影响政治变革。本文以印度城市印多尔通过重建社区集体和倡导组织推进气候变化适应为例，探讨不断变化的国家-社会关系。研究结果表明，社区已切实认识到气候变化适应的必要性，但同时，却把适应行动与倡导发展权利的现有计划混在一起。社区也正在重建市政和民间机构之间的联盟，以促进公共服务和基础设施的提供。这体现了在城市气候变化适应过程中社区政治的核心重要性。但是这种动员往往依赖现有的政治网络以及传统的扶贫倡导，并使得与包容性、公平性和未来城市复原力相关的、更具变革性的议程被边缘化。

While burgeoning research on China's state–society relations has paid attention to the Party, little is known about how the Party interacts with diverse actors and involves itself at the grassroots level in a specific region. This article delineates Party-advancement strategies at the community level in Shenzhen since 2013. To reclaim its leading role at the grassroots level, the Party opted for “Party–government disaggregation” by framing community governance as a Party-building affair, separating the government's affairs from those of the Party and “kicking” the government out of the community. Under the rubric of “reshaping Party–mass relations,” the Party penetrated deep into the community by innovating a “centre-periphery” organizational system, absorbing community elites in a top-down way and using a “service delivery taking the lead” method in a reciprocal exchange. In the end, the Party-governance structure, in which Party–mass relations are at the core, was reframed in the communities.

Based on an ongoing housing demolition and relocation project in Dalian, this article describes uncompromising nail households, who have resisted resettlement through intractable conflict and prolonged bargaining. Building upon a state–society approach, this article reveals a new relationship between state, society and governance in the institutional background of neoliberal urbanism in China. Uncompromising nail households within this transforming governance system are able to individually equip and maintain their resistance. The article identifies heterogeneous uncompromising nail households: ‘hard’, who maintain a firm stance throughout the bargaining process; and ‘hardened’, who increase resistance during the process of bargaining. These findings contribute to understanding of the reconfiguration of state–society relations, and demonstrate significant contradictions between the central and local states in the dynamics of change in neoliberal urbanism in China. 基于一个正在进行的大连房屋拆迁项目，本文描述了不妥协的钉子户，他们通过棘手的冲突和长期的讨价还价来抵制拆迁。本文从国家-社会的角度出发，揭示了在中国新自由主义城市化的制度背景下，国家、社会和治理之间的新关系。在这个变革的治理体系中，不妥协的钉子户能够作为个人武装自己并维持他们的抵抗。本文区分了异质的不妥协的钉子户类型：“强硬型”—他们在整个谈判过程中保持坚定的立场；以及“硬化型”—他们在谈判过程提升抵抗的力度。这些发现有助于理解国家与社会关系的重构，并展现了中国新自由主义城市化进程中中央和地方政府之间的重大矛盾。

The territorialisation of politics is a crucial transformation in state-society relations that has implications on how contemporary politics works. Defined here as the dispute for the physical control of space, be it a municipality, province or portion of land, within one or more politically constituted entities. It does not mean the emergence of a new regime type, but the process through which the territory re-emerges as a new cleavage after neoliberal reforms and authoritarian regimes have weakened/dissolved neo-corporatist arrangements for the resolution of socio-political conflicts in society. It is a cleavage because central political divisions are produced as a result of the physical encounter of or distance between political actors and of the dispute for the control of a territory for sociopolitical goals and causes that are not always territorially defined. Departing from this definition, I also raise potential explanatory hypotheses for the transformations that favoured this transformation in Argentina.

This article suggests that the lack of meaningful collaboration between the state and NGOs in China is not solely a result of the state seeking to restrict the development of the sector, or the fear of a potential opposing actor to the state; instead, interviews with NGOs in Beijing and Shanghai suggest that a lack of meaningful engagement between the state and NGOs can be partially attributed to isomorphic pressures within state–NGO relations, and insufficient epistemic awareness of NGO activities on the part of the state. In fact, the evidence suggests that once epistemic awareness is achieved by the state, it will have a stronger desire to interact with NGOs – with the caveat that the state will seek to utilize the material power of NGOs, rather than their symbolic, interpretive or geographical capital. 该论文指出, 中国政府与非政府组织 (NGO) 之间合作的缺乏并不能完全归咎于政府对该领域发展的限制, 或是出于对一个潜在的政府反对者的害怕。与北京和上海的 NGO 访谈显示, 政府与 NGO 之间缺乏有意义的合作的部分原因是同构压力, 以及政府对于 NGO 活动认知的缺乏。 事实上, 证据显示, 一旦政府获得了对 NGO 工作的认知, 它将会更加愿意与 NGO 建立联系。当然必须说明的是, 政府想要利用的是 NGO 的物质资源, 而非他们的象征性, 阐释性, 或是地理上的资本。

The past is continuously reinterpreted to serve the interests of the present. Over the last two centuries of turbulent Chinese history, the past has been redefined through narratives and categorisations. How does the party-state manage the diversity and complexity of China's past, and what implications does this have for state–society relations in China? Based on a case study of China's adoption of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention, this article argues that the Chinese party-state creates “infrastructures of memory,” which enable it to actively manage China's diverse past through selective institutionalisation. This process creates a “cognitive map” of tangible and rationalised relations and boundaries between vernacular memories as interpreted by the state. Although this map is to shape and direct Chinese collective memory and identity, it also sparks contestation among members of the populace who seek to preserve vernacular and multiple memories of their socio-cultural past.

The convergence of social movements in Bolivia was a decisive factor in bringing President Evo Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, hereafter MAS) to power in 2006. Yet in recent years, this convergence has become fraught with internal tensions as the state's extractivist development model and promises for plurinationalism and alternative forms of development reveal fundamental contradictions. This paper traces the formation of social movement alliances over time, revealing their power to effect change and their strength when there is unity in diversity. Rather than 'neoliberalism' which represented the injustice frame and united identity- and class-based politics during the rise of the MAS, the single greatest threat to the indigenous, peasants, originarios, women and the youth in the current context is extractivism.

This article complicates the conventional wisdom that Chinese lawyers are either politically liberal activists or apolitical hired guns by training our attention on the group of lawyers who choose to stand adjacent to the state and participate in governance. Through an examination of how and why winners of the state-sanctioned Outstanding Lawyer Award participate in politics, we illustrate how state-adjacent lawyers provide the state with information and persuade others to behave in ways the state considers appropriate. Although proximity to power affords some social and professional benefits, award winners are also motivated by a commitment to improving Chinese society. By highlighting the political role played by lawyers who serve as a bridge between state and society, we open the door to future research on the relationship between the state and professionals in other industries and countries, and call for continued attention to how inequality shapes opportunities for political participation in China.

Social contracts and state fragility represent two sides of one coin. The former concept highlights that governments need to deliver three “Ps”—protection, provision, and political participation—to be acceptable for societies, whereas the latter argues that states can fail due to lack of authority (inhibiting protection), capacity (inhibiting provision), or legitimacy. Defunct social contracts often lead to popular unrest. Using empirical evidence from the Middle East and North Africa, we demonstrate how different notions of state fragility lead to different kinds of grievances and how they can be remedied by measures of social protection. Social protection is always a key element of government provision and hence a cornerstone of all social contracts. It can most easily counteract grievances that were triggered by decreasing provision (e.g., after subsidy reforms in Iran and Morocco) but also partially substitute for deficient protection (e.g., by the Palestinian National Authority, in pre-2011 Yemen) or participation (information campaign accompanying Moroccan subsidy cut; participatory set-ups for cash-for-work programmes in Jordan). It can even help maintain a minimum of state–society relations in states defunct in all three Ps (e.g., Yemen). Hence, social protection can be a powerful instrument to reduce state fragility and mend social contracts. Yet, to be effective, it needs to address grievances in an inclusive, rule-based, and non-discriminatory way. In addition, to gain legitimacy, governments should assume responsibility over social protection instead of outsourcing it to foreign donors.

Under conditions of weak statehood, societal actors are supposed to assume functions usually attributed to the state. Social self-organization is expected to emerge when the state leaves important social problems unattended. Should social self-organization, therefore, be regarded as a reaction to state weakness and as compensation for state failure in the provision of basic services? Does society organize itself on its own in areas where the state is absent or ineffective? By the example of two Latin American social movements, this article aims to show that social self-organization—at least on a larger scale—is not independent of the state, but rather a result of a dynamic interaction with the state. The two examples this article explores are the middle-class Venezuelan neighborhood movement and the Argentine piquetero movement of unemployed workers. Both movements emerged as reactions to the state’s failure and retreat from essential social functions and both developed into extensive and influential social actors. For that reason, they can be regarded as crucial cases for observing the patterns and conditions of social self-organization and autonomous collective action within the specific Latin American context. Despite their different backgrounds and social bases, the two cases reveal remarkable similarities. They show that the emergence and development of self-organized social groups cannot be conceived simply as a reaction to state weakness, but rather should be viewed as a dynamic interaction with the state.