The state appears uniform while actually being fractured across many actors

Evidence

For as suggested above, the state may be thought of as the phantom of governance and authority, a territorial placeholder for sets of often competing and more or less local institutional interests and powers. In this sense, the state provides media and a measure of scope for the assertion and authorization, legislation and legitimation of institutional power(s). The latter two institutional practices offer to the former two a semblance of coherence, a singularity of style and voice, a common language and mode, the shadow of an institutional sphere in the face of prolific heterogeneous messiness. They offer, that is, the artifice of national, cultural, and expressive unity - community - in the face of fractured disunity and anarchy, the artifice of homogeneity in the face of proliferating heterogeneities. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1720 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: State actors manufacture folk devils that the media then amplify as secondary definers; The state’s apparent unity masks radically heterogeneous local power struggles — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1720; The state conceals rather than reveals actual political practice — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 633 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• The state’s apparent unity masks radically heterogeneous local power struggles #corroborates (0.96) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1720