Population pressure, political institutions, and protests: A multilevel analysis of protest events in African cities

Rural underemployment and urbanization: Insights from a nine year household panel survey from Malawi

“…LandScan Global and WorldPop are the only databases that produce yearly data, but WorldPop provides the finest resolution, approximately 100m at the equator, versus one km for LandScan Global. Dorward and Fox (2022), in their study on population pressure, political institutions, and protests, favor the use of WorldPop over Landscan as it provides more consistent growth rates for the sample of African cities in their study. The high spatial granularity and relative superiority in performance leads us, also, to opt for WorldPop data.…”

“…From these comparisons, we can conclude that the population statistics of Africapolis likely overstate the actual population, while those of WorldPop (slightly) underestimate the population. This is most likely to be the result of the different estimation techniques used for the different data products, something also noted by Dijkstra et al (2021) and Dorward and Fox (2022). The WorldPop data product that we use applies an unconstrained approach that divides the population estimates over all 3 arc-second land-grid cells, in contrast with the constrained product that divides population estimates only within areas containing built settlements.…”

Cities, Urbanization and Political Change

“…While the contextual effects of urban living on political attitudes and preferences are ambiguous, the effects on political behavior are much clearer. Population concentration facilitates political engagement by minimizing the time-distance costs associated with attending rallies, signing petitions, organizing lobbying efforts, or joining protests that leverage the threat of proximate violence to influence rulers (Dorward and Fox 2022;Rodden 2010;Staniland 2010). Even for the urban poor, "spatial proximity to power increases political influence" (Ades and Glaeser 1995, 198).…”

“…In other words, the scale of a city, in terms of population size, changes the context by increasing the number of political actors and issues. This explains why protest incidence scales with both the size of urban populations at the national level, and with the size of individual cities (Castells-Quintana, Lopez-Uribe, and McDermott 2022; Dorward and Fox 2022;Eisinger 1973;Thomson et al 2023). Larger cities contain more potential protestors and potential reasons to protest than smaller cities and towns.…”

Official Turnovers and Economic Growth: Evidence from China

“…Many factors affect the economic development of cities, including institutions (Leibovitz, 2003) based on the assertion that an institution determines economic development (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2006). For instance, the political institutions are important in a city's system of institutions (Dorward & Fox, 2022). Studies on the political system of urban economic development include those on the structure of local political institutions (Lubell et al, 2009), political control (M. , and political decentralization (Goedeking, 2023).…”