Why do people turn to personal connections to get things done? Challenging widespread views of favors as means of survival in transitioning contexts, this volume demonstrates that these contemporary globalized forms of flexible governance are not contradictory to one another, but often mutually constitutive. Managing Ambiguity follows how citizenship was redefined as an ethical category during transformations of social protection in Bosnia and Herzegovina, showing how favors offered people a way to navigate the resulting ambiguity over welfare responsibilities. Rather than being the result of a "transitioning" and "flawed" statehood, favors evinced global tendencies to insert individual ethics and compassion into the heart of organization of welfare.