State capacity to deliver public goods and services demanded by an electorate is key to the democratic process. This research cluster underscores pressing issues that diminish state capacity – such as weak fiscal capacity, lack of public action, bottlenecks in institutional accountability, and escalating conflict – and engages with challenges surrounding the political efficacy of policy reform in the context of these issues. Strengthening rule of law and democratic participation is critical for effective citizenship rights, creating socio-economic mobility and catalysing economic growth. This cluster adopts interdisciplinary approaches that emphasize intersections between institutions, interests, and processes on the one hand and structures of political power and social relations on the other to evolve a socially relevant discourse on governance and institutional reform. The cluster projects focus primarily on empirically analysing the effectiveness of reform options, and will specifically focus on issues of equity and access to policing and justice.