For any given area, you will always be able to find an answer to "who's in charge here?," but I think there needs to be some degree of comprehensiveness and inclusion to call that authority "society."
For instance - in colonial states the "authority" is the colonial administrator - who are almost totally separate from the "society" of the country. I should have been more clear with terms in my first post. Trying again:
Strong human rights protections help guarantee that the administrative power of a state spends some time including all the people within its borders. Once those rights fall away, the chance of the state becoming more exclusionary and focused on the rights of a limited subset of the people within its borders seems high.
A military junta, for instance, is primarily concerned with keeping the military in power and doesn't devote attention or resources to much else.
For instance - in colonial states the "authority" is the colonial administrator - who are almost totally separate from the "society" of the country. I should have been more clear with terms in my first post. Trying again:
Strong human rights protections help guarantee that the administrative power of a state spends some time including all the people within its borders. Once those rights fall away, the chance of the state becoming more exclusionary and focused on the rights of a limited subset of the people within its borders seems high.
A military junta, for instance, is primarily concerned with keeping the military in power and doesn't devote attention or resources to much else.