State Legitimacy and Sector-Level Claim-Making: Evidence from East Jerusalem

In East Jerusalem, the vast majority of Palestinians contest the legitimacy of the Israeli state’s claim to sovereignty. This necessarily affects how Palestinians engage with the state in pursuit of goods and services. But how? Using data from 55 interviews and original observational and experimental survey data from a representative sample of East Jerusalemites, I show that civilians’ engagement with each good, service, and institution of the state is a function of their perceptions of the state’s legitimacy, or right to rule, in that sector. Civilians will avoid engagement with goods, services, and institutions that explicitly affirm the state’s claims to monopolized sovereign rule, without forsaking essential goods and services. This article empirically illustrates that the same individual will make different choices with respect to each state sector, and in doing so builds on the burgeoning recognition of sector-level choices in the citizen claim-making literature.