Being enfranchised in driving the state is only important if the state has a significant impact in your life.
The lower the impact (read, the power) of the state, the lower the need to be enfranchised.
For your example: If the state didn't have law enforcing powers, the states policy on crime wouldn't matter much. You could just hire your own private police to protect your interests.
Then its not the state [0], whatever it calls itself, in the same way that Emporer Norton, despite his claimed title, was not the head of state of the United States.
[0] though it may be part of a larger structure involving elements formally outside of its bounds that together constitutes an effective state.
Plenty of states didn't have law enforcement powers, including the early US. Police is something that only really started showing up in the later half of the 1800s and even then only in certain places.