Control the Capital: Cities and Political Dominance

ESID Working Paper No 135. Manchester: Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre, The University of Manchester, 2020

36 Pages Posted: 19 Dec 2020

See all articles by Tom Goodfellow

Tom Goodfellow

University of Sheffield

David Jackman

SOAS University of London - SOAS

Date Written: February 13, 2020

Abstract

As optimism about the ‘third wave’ of democratization has waned in the face of continued and renewed authoritarianism across the world, analyses of authoritarian dominance remain focused primarily on the national scale. We are argue that cities, and especially capital cities, play crucial roles in the production of dominance and the politics of maintaining it, as well as being sites of popular resistance. However, the varying ways in which governing elites deploy their resources and strategies in the urban arena in pursuit of dominance remain underexplored. In this conceptual framing paper for a multi-country comparative study spanning Africa and Asia, we suggest that strategies for urban dominance can be analyzed in accordance with two overlapping modalities: interventions that are generative by design (their primary intention is to create some new form of support); and those that are repressive by design (their primary aim is to destroy or inhibit some form of opposition). We then present a typology of strategies that cut across these spheres of intervention and include co-optation, legitimizing discourses, legal maneuvers, coercive distribution and violent coercion. This framework is designed to inform empirical analysis of strategies of urban dominance, how these change over time and how they are deployed in varying combinations, facilitating a deeper understanding of how struggles for control shape urban outcomes.

Keywords: Political Dominance, Capital Cities, Authoritarianism, Political Settlements, Urban Governance, Africa, Asia

Suggested Citation

Goodfellow, Tom and Jackman, David, Control the Capital: Cities and Political Dominance (February 13, 2020). ESID Working Paper No 135. Manchester: Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre, The University of Manchester, 2020, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3716843 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3716843

Tom Goodfellow (Contact Author)

University of Sheffield ( email )

17 Mappin Street
Sheffield, Sheffield S1 4DT
United Kingdom

David Jackman

SOAS University of London - SOAS ( email )

SOAS University of London 10 Thornhaugh Street, Ru
London, WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom

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