The theory posits an indirect negative consequence of informality on economic development. I first identify the type of informality that will have this effect and then argue that embedded informality slows the development of state capacity, mediated by politics. Two distinct accountability-capacity equilibria – a non-programmatic, weak state and a programmatic, strong state – support this logic. When given the choice, voters in a weak state will discipline politicians along particularistic rather than programmatic criteria, but only the latter generates incentives for politicians to invest in state capacity. In non-programmatic elections, informality instead creates incentives not to invest in the state or even quash such investments, keeping the state weak. First, large-scale economic informality reduces expectations that the state can deliver on programmatic promises and the likelihood that a majority of voters will coordinate around programmatic claims. Second, a constituency opposed to state-building is more likely to form where contact with the state is frequently facilitated by intermediaries who benefit from their role in discretionary politics.

If a mobilized constituency for programmatism is one way out of a weak-state trap, then the state or external actors pushing for increased state capacity is another. I argue that intermediaries who informally link the state to citizens comprise a constituency against such a change, and may block this pathway out. The empirics in this chapter travel outside Senegal because observing resistance from intermediaries requires a real or perceived shock to state capacity. A within-country analysis in Mali first explores the types of local actors who would be willing to participate in a forthcoming local governance initiative to limit corruption and discretionary spending: performance-based financing of municipalities. The most embedded local leaders (who have operated longest and have the most social ties in the community) benefit more from clientelistic transfers from the mayor and are least willing to agree to monitor mayoral performance under the new initiative. Then, leveraging a recent coordinated set of field experiments evaluating formalization interventions, I tell the stories of backlash in three of the six country cases by intermediaries who benefit from the status quo.

If clientelistic politics are standing in the way of the potential for electoral competition to induce investment in state-building, might the decline of clientelism be a way out of the weak-state trap? This chapter considers the case of urban Senegal, where the role of informal intermediaries as political brokers has been on the decline – at least in Dakar, which is home to most informal businesses. Using historical, geographic, and electoral data, I first show that collective clientelism, while still a prominent phenomenon in rural Senegal, has declined over time in Dakar, where it used to be a dominant strategy. Interview data suggest this is due to the decline in demand for locally excludable goods and the decline in reliance on social networks and local leaders. Instead of turning to programmatic candidates, the case indicates that many urban voters instead move from patronage politics to populism, attracted by charismatic leaders and populist promises. This suggests that programmatism is not a necessary substitute for clientelism and that the reduction of clientelistic politics is not sufficient to spur a programmatic transition.

Intermediary actors are key catalysts in accelerating sustainability transitions. Since 2019, the academic literature on intermediaries and intermediation has expanded rapidly, leading to inconsistent usage, proliferating lists of activities, and questions about their impact on transition processes. These challenges risk making the concept fuzzy and less accessible while limiting its practical relevance. This chapter provides an accessible introduction to intermediaries in sustainability transitions, followed by a historical account of the concept’s development. It then presents empirical examples of intermediaries and their activities, highlighting a key gap: the lack of an explicit theory on why intermediaries exist in transition processes. To address this, we position intermediaries alongside other actors, such as system entanglers, orchestrators, and champions. This chapter concludes by outlining future research directions, emphasizing the need to move beyond individual intermediaries to ecologies of intermediation as transitions accelerate and interact.

Sustainability transitions involve complex, long-term societal changes shaped by diverse actors within dynamic structural contexts. This chapter takes a role based perspective, distinguishing between social roles, which evolve with societal values and priorities, and transition roles, which reflect actors’ engagement with transition dynamics. It explores conceptual and empirical applications, highlighting research trends and gaps. Social roles provide insights into institutional change over time, while transition roles reveal how actors strategically position themselves within transitions. Emphasizing the fluid and negotiated nature of roles, the chapter concludes by advocating for longitudinal studies on social roles and the use of transition roles as a boundary object for action-oriented, transdisciplinary sustainability research.

Chapter 2 lays the foundation for the book’s theoretical framework by introducing the collective action problem and examining how protest mobilization unfolds in practice. Drawing on global literature and empirical examples, it demonstrates that elite-driven protest is a widespread and influential form of collective action. It shows, however, that successful elite mobilization requires deep local knowledge, strong community networks, and trust – resources that many elites lack. To overcome this gap, the chapter introduces the concept of the protest broker: an intermediary who facilitates connections between elites and potential protesters. It explores who protest brokers are, what they do, and why their role is central to protest mobilization. It argues further, that existing theories of elite mobilization implicitly assume the presence of such intermediaries, yet rarely acknowledge them explicitly. By making protest brokers visible, this chapter reframes key assumptions in the protest literature and connects them to broader research on political and vote brokers. It also situates protest brokers among other grassroots actors – such as shop floor stewards and activists – clarifying their unique but overlapping functions in enabling protest and shaping its location and form.

Chapter 3 deepens the theoretical framework by examining variation among protest brokers and exploring how different types of brokers shape protest dynamics. It identifies two central relationships that define broker behavior: the broker’s connection to elites and their ties to the communities they mobilize. Building on these two dimensions, the chapter introduces four key types of protest broker – Issue, Elite, Group, and Independent – and demonstrates how each type influences patterns of protest. Specifically, the chapter explores how broker type affects the variety of issues protested, the likelihood of protests becoming violent, the duration of protests, and the mobilization tactics most likely to succeed. It also investigates the contextual and structural factors that give rise to different broker types within communities. By unpacking the causes and consequences of broker-level variation, this chapter shows that protest brokers are not a monolithic group, and that their differing motivations and positionalities significantly shape protest outcomes. This framework helps explain diverse protest patterns across geographic and political contexts, offering a more nuanced understanding of how collective action is organized and sustained.

In the digital age, the landscape of information dissemination has undergone a profound transformation. The traditional boundaries between information and news have become increasingly blurred as technology allows anyone to create and share content online. The once-exclusive realm of authoritative media outlets and professional journalists has given way to a decentralized public square, where individuals can voice their opinions and reach vast audiences regardless of mainstream coverage. The evolution of the digital age has dismantled the conventional notions of journalism and reshaped how news is obtained and interpreted. This shift has paved the way for the proliferation of fake news and online disinformation. The ease with which false information can be fabricated, packaged convincingly and rapidly disseminated to a wide audience has contributed to the rise of fake news. This phenomenon gained global attention during the 2016 US presidential election, prompting nations worldwide to seek strategies for tackling this issue.

Today is a time of retrogression in sustaining rights-protecting democracies, and of high levels of distrust in institutions. Of particular concern are threats to the institutions, including universities and the press, that help provide the information base for successful democracies. Attacks on universities, and university faculties, are rising. In Poland over the last four years, a world-renowned constitutional law theorist, Wojciech Sadurski, has been subject to civil and criminal prosecutions for defamation of the governing party. In Hungary, the Central European University (CEU) was ejected by the government, and had to partly relocate to Vienna, and other attacks on academic freedom followed. Faculty members in a number of countries have needed to relocate to other countries for their own safety.

In April 2023, the Government of India amended a set of regulations called the Information Technology Rules, which primarily dealt with issues around online intermediary liability and safe harbour. Until 2023, these rules required online intermediaries to take all reasonable efforts to ensure that ‘fake, false or misleading’ information was not published on their platforms. Previous iterations of these rules had already been challenged before the Indian courts for imposing a disproportionate burden on intermediaries, and having the effect of chilling online speech. Now, the 2023 Amendment went even further: it introduced an entity called a ‘Fact Check Unit’, to be created by the government. This government-created unit would flag information that – in its view – was ‘fake, false or misleading’ with respect to ‘the business of the central government’.

This chapter explores the different types of illicit and informal economy in the two migrant communities and examines why and how Sanhe gods get involved in the gray economy. It also discusses state intervention in the communities through surveillance, raids, and compaigns as well as through gentrification projects. It ends with a discussion on Sanhe gods’ friendships in the community.

Mainstreaming urban nature and nature-based solutions requires that we understand the key challenges and opportunities that are facing projects on the ground. This chapter revisits the main themes of the textbook, providing concise conclusions about the key points, arguments, and findings presented in the previous chapters and summarising the key implications for urban nature and nature-based solutions in the context of transformative pathways for sustainability. To break the dominance of grey infrastructure, new approaches are needed for the development, implementation, and mainstreaming of nature in cities. The chapter engages with two case studies to illustrate its key messages: Barcelona, Spain, and Sofia, Bulgaria.

Chapter 2 examines the ways in which French botanists obtained information about plant cultivation. It sheds light on the exploration and collection of plants and related knowledge about them, which was made possible with the assistance of local populations in Madagascar and East Asia. It develops an argument against the prevailing historical myth the eighteenth-century naturalists were only interested in classification. The focus of the chapter is on utility and especially how useful knowledge might be communicated to French naturalists. Mauritius’s intendant’s plan to domesticate staple crops could only be conducted because of multidirectional and multinational networks consisting of French, non-French, and above all non-European assistance. These actors used several types of plant knowledge, communication systems, languages, negotiation practices, often leading to cultural misunderstandings. The chapter highlights the significance of knowing a plant’s native/local name, so that Europeans could return and access that same plant again. Here, European naturalists followed a twofold strategy to document and interpret knowledge. Exploring these details neglected in grand narratives of colonial science challenges Eurocentric narratives, the presumed superiority of European science, and the centralisation on the Parisian acclimatisation garden in particular.