Politics in the Global South’s Small and Medium-Sized Cities

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Studies on urban politics in the Global South predominantly focus on megacities like Mumbai, Nairobi, and Rio de Janeiro. Yet most urban residents in the Global South live in small and medium sized cities (UN 2018; Kumar and Stenberg 2022). Scholars have found that smaller urban areas tend to differ from their larger counterparts along several important dimensions—state capacity, public service provision, and the presence of civil society organizations—suggesting that the former are distinctive political spaces (Post and Kuipers 2023). This panel brings together four papers that illuminate key facets of politics in small and medium-sized cities in the Global South. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork and experimental survey research, Auerbach, Singh, and Thachil demonstrate how soft skills among politicians—specifically, their interpersonal behavior (vyavhaar) with voters—shape local electoral politics in India’s small towns. Focusing on Brazil, Post and Montini examine the types of pork barrel spending projects that are disproportionately allocated to smaller cities, combining case study research with an analysis of aggregate spending patterns. Guillermo Toral also turns to the municipal level to explore ways to combat local corruption—examining the effects of public prosecutor proximity on levels of corruption in Brazil. Finally, Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro and Matthew Winters examine the extent to which voters emphasize social rights when trying to access social programs at the municipal level in Argentina. Together, these papers shed new light on voter perceptions and behavior and politician and bureaucratic responsiveness in small and medium-sized towns in the Global South.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Individual Presentations

• Candidate Choice in the Face of Dismissive State Institutions - Adam Michael Auerbach, Johns Hopkins University; Tariq Thachil, University of Pennsylvania; Shikhar Singh, Duke University

• Do Smaller Cities Get More Pork?: Evidence from Brazil - Alison E. Post, University of California, Berkeley; Isabella C. Montini, University of California, Berkeley

• Strategies for Seeking Access to Social Programs in Argentina and Brazil - Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro, Brown University; Matthew S. Winters, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Street-Level Rule of Law: Prosecutor Presence and the Fight against Corruption - Guillermo Toral, IE University

Chair

• Jonathan Rodden Stanford University

Discussants

• Elizabeth Mitchell Elder Stanford University

• Nicholas Lyon Stanford University