New Perspectives on the Comparative Politics of Cities in the Global South

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The world's population will be 90 percent urban by 2050. This demographic revolution is transforming the world, reshaping state-society relations and creating new political logics and modes of citizen engagement and collective action. Cities are significant political territories, sites of social mobilization, and repositories of new political movements. However, scholars approach these sites using different conceptual and methodological tools, while examining various levels and scales.

This panel brings together scholars with decades of experience working in more than a dozen cities, to begin developing a comparative politics of Global South cities. Empirical material draws from major ongoing research projects, including the African Cities Research Consortium (funded by the UK International Development) and Political Change in African Cities (funded by the Research Council of Norway).

The papers develop new concepts to the study of comparative politics, while also applying well-known analytical frameworks to the study of cities. For example, Mitlin and Weldeghebrael introduce the idea of “urban reform coalitions” – groups of diverse stakeholders who perceive benefits in coming together to achieve common goals – and assess when and how they can enable sustainable urban development. Drawing on a comparative framework of four capital cities, Bukenya et al. explain how party competition and regime type shapes the strategies residents and leaders use to demand public services. Similarly, Kelsall, Abdulai, and Collord explain how the political settlements framework helps us better understand the politics of urban Africa, while also uncovering limitations of inclusive development across the continent.

The final two papers shift attention to the local contexts in cities to better understand how it affects political behavior and mobilization. Dorward and Hoelscher assess how local demography shapes political participation and protest, drawing on fine-grained data from 347 different African cities. Finally, Ferreira finds that the narrative of land regularization as an environmental improvement to the existing condition legitimized the reconciliation of the two rules in Brazil, while in Mexico City, the discourse on their incompatibility was translated into the design of technical procedures that ultimately prevented land regularization from being enforced. Collectively, these papers introduce novel tools to uncover important relationships between residents, neighborhood groups, city-level administrative bodies, and national level political systems.

This panel offers new theoretical and empirical insights into how urban growth shapes variegated forms of mobilization, participation and political change, as well as the how local forms of politics transform national politics. By doing so, it aims to address new perspectives on reform and renovation of politics in Global South cities, situating it in APSA’s broader theme reimagining democracy for the future.

Sub Unit

• Related Groups / Comparative Urban Politics

Individual Presentations

• Contribution of Urban Reform Coalitions to Advancing Development in Africa - Ezana Haddis Weldeghebrael, University of Birmingham; Diana Mitlin, University of Manchester

• The Politics of Informal Settlements in Accra, Freetown, Harare, and Kampala - Sam Hickey, University of Manchester; Badru Bukenya, Makerere University, Kampala; Jamie Hitchen, Independent

• Rethinking Urban Reform in Africa: Insights from Political Settlements Research - Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai, University of Ghana Business School; Michaela Collord, University of Oxford

• Urban Demography and Political Mobilization in African Cities - Nick Dorward, University of Bristol; Kristian Hoelscher, PRIO

• Claiming the City: Political Connections in African Neighbourhoods - Taibat Lawanson, University of Lagos, Nigeria; Jeffrey W. Paller, University of San Francisco

Chair

• Jeffrey W. Paller University of San Francisco

Discussant

• Taibat Lawanson University of Lagos, Nigeria