The final chapter of Persistent Citizens summarizes the book’s key contributions. It reaffirms the importance of state-centric persistence as a concept and the value of an attitudinal explanation for variation in citizens’ willingness to persist when seeking access to social programs. The authors discuss the scope conditions of their argument, noting that it is most relevant in "intermediate states" where access to promised benefits is possible but not guaranteed. The chapter concludes by exploring the distributive and normative implications of the findings. It suggests that the need for persistence may have a mixed impact on inequality. The chapter also considers how technological advances and policy changes might affect citizen–state interactions and outlines several areas for future research, including applying the "2ei" framework to domains beyond social welfare.

Drawing on a series of sixteen focus groups with Brazilian and Argentine citizens from low-income groups in four cities, this chapter documents the challenges individuals face when trying to access public health and early childhood education benefits. The chapter provides a conceptual framework for classifying citizen responses to these challenges. It argues that while some citizens exit from seeking access to public services, an important response is what the authors call "state-centric persistence": the act of repeatedly and directly engaging with government offices or officials after an initial failed attempt. The focus group narratives illustrate that this form of persistence is often necessary for successful access and that it is distinct from other options like giving up or turning to private alternatives. The chapter also uses survey data to show widespread belief in the usefulness of state-centric persistence.

This chapter presents Persistent Citizens’ central theoretical framework: a psychological explanation for state-centric persistence. The chapter highlights the significant psychological costs associated with engaging the state, including feelings of stigma and shame and the loss of autonomy and control.  The authors identify three domain-specific attitudes that they argue can both reduce these costs and otherwise directly increase the likelihood of persistence: entitlement, indignation, and self-efficacy. The book refers to these attitudes collectively as "2ei." The chapter defines each of these attitudes, explaining that entitlement is the belief that one has a right to a benefit; indignation is the emotional response to a violation of that right; and self-efficacy is the belief in one’s ability to successfully interact with the state. The chapter hypothesizes that individuals who possess these attitudes are more likely to engage in state-centric persistence.

The introductory chapter of Persistent Citizens lays out the core conceptual, theoretical, and empirical claims of the book. It begins by highlighting that expanded social policy commitments in countries like Brazil and Argentina do not always translate into consistent access to social programs for all eligible citizens. The authors introduce "state-centric persistence" as a key behavior that explains who ultimately receives benefits. The chapter then previews a psychological theory that explains persistence based on three attitudes: entitlement, indignation, and self-efficacy, collectively termed "2ei." The chapter reviews the scope conditions of the argument and outlines the empirical approach of the book, which involves original qualitative and quantitative research in Brazil and Argentina, focusing on health care and early childhood education. The chapter concludes by discussing the book’s contributions to literature on social policy access, claim making, and administrative burden.

This chapter provides an empirical test of the psychological theory presented in Chapter 4 of Persistent Citizens. The authors use original survey data from Brazil and Argentina to analyze respondents’ willingness to persist in seeking public health care and early childhood education services. The results of the quantitative analysis demonstrate a statistically significant positive relationship between the three "2ei" attitudes – entitlement, indignation, and self-efficacy – and the likelihood of engaging in state-centric persistence. The chapter provides robust evidence supporting the book’s core theoretical claim that an individual’s attitudes are a crucial determinant of their actions toward the state. It explores and finds limited evidence for alternative explanations for persistence, such as socioeconomic factors. The chapter also shows that 2ei uniquely predicts state-centric persistence versus other types of behavior.