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Primacy and Polity: the Role of Urban Population In PRIMACY AND POLITY: THE ROLE OF URBAN POPULATION IN POLITICAL CHANGE Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Robert Michael Anthony, M.A. Sociology Graduate Program The Ohio State University 2009 Dissertation Committee: Professor Edward M. Crenshaw, Advisor Professor J. Craig Jenkins Professor Kazimierz Slomczynski Copyright by Robert Michael Anthony 2009 ii ABSTRACT The study of political change, and in particular the causes of democratization, has a long history within the social sciences among cross-national comparative scholars interested in international development. Most often political change has been explained in terms of its connection to a nation’s level of economic development. Although the exact nature of the development/democracy relationship has been a point of disagreement among social scientists, the premise that there is a relationship is widely accepted, debated and tested. Early explanations for the development/democracy relationship focused on a broad set of explanatory variables (Lipset 1959). Since then most cross-national development scholars have reduced the concept of “development” to mean economic development—at least in terms of their empirical measures. In simplifying this concept, the role of other contributing factors which were once understood to be central components of the overall development process has been largely ignored and side-lined in empirical analyses. This has been especially true of urban population. In light of the above, this dissertation is aimed at challenging the notion that the relationship between development and democracy should be understood only as a relationship between level of economic development and democratization. Even more broadly, this dissertation challenges the notion that economic factors are the iii most important for understanding macro political change. Indeed, while economic factors are certainly a central contributing factor for political change, urban populations and their social contexts are equally important since it is urban dwellers who are predominately engaged in modern exchanges rather than abstract “markets.” Thus, this dissertation explores the role urban populations and their contexts within nation-states play in eliciting political change. In particular, it focuses on the dimensions of urban population within nation-states including; the absolute size, the degree of concentration, the degree of urban primacy, and the balance of the urban hierarchy. The empirical analyses reveal that indicators for each of the above dimensions perform as well or better than economic indicators when explaining political change in developing nations. In short, the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence generated in this dissertation make it clear that cross-national comparative scholars cannot afford to ignore the role that urban populations and their contexts play in eliciting political change in an increasingly urban world. iv Dedicated to my wife v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS1 I wish to thank my wife and family for their continued support over the course of my graduate studies. I wish to thank my advisor, Edward M. Crenshaw, for intellectual support, encouragement, and direction which made this dissertation possible, and for his patience in correcting my theoretical insights. I thank J. Craig Jenkins for his efforts to support my tenure as a graduate student in the department in difficult financial times. I also wish to thank Kazimierz (Maciek) Slomczynski for his insights on the comparative methodology which were used for designing this study. I am grateful to the entire Sociology department and faculty who gave me the opportunity to grow my intellectual abilities. I wish to thank Kristopher K. Robison who provided assistance with data collection and management. Finally, I wish to thank the Mershon Center for International Security Studies for funding as well as Elizabeth Cooksey and Canada Keck at the Center for Human Resource Research who provided me with funding and a quite office space in my final year as a graduate student. vi VITA February 12th, 1976………………………...............Born – Sidney, Ohio 1998………………………………………………………..B.A. Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 2002………………………………………………………. M.A. University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio 2002-Present…………………………………………..Independent Instructor, Research Assistant, Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Sociology Topics of Interest: Sociological Theory, Social Change, International Development, Urban Sociology, Political Sociology, Epistemology, Identity, Group Behavior, Sociobiology, History of Sociology vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………………...iii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...v Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………………………..vi Vita……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………vii List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………………………….xi List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………………………………xiii Chapters: Part I……………………………………………………………………………………………………………...........1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………......2 1. Classical Theories and the Role of Population in Social Change……………………7 1.1 August Comte: The Law of the Three Stages…………………………………………..7 1.2 Herbert Spencer: Population Pressure and Compounding……………………...9 1.3 Emile Durkheim: Population Pressure and the Role of Specialization…...14 1.4 Marx and Engels: Population Concentration as an Economic Outcome….19 1.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………22 2. Contemporary Theories and the Role of Population in Social Change…………23 2.1 Modernization Theory…………………………………………………………………….....23 2.1.1 Modernization and the Demographic Transition…………………….24 2.1.2 Technology and the Organization of Population…………………......30 2.1.3 Population Size, Density, and Production Systems………………….32 2.2 Dependency and World-System Theory………………………………………………39 2.2.1 The World-System………………………………………………………………..40 2.2.2 The Capitalist World-Economy……………………………………………...44 2.2.3 Stratification in the Capitalist World-Economy………………………46 2.2.4 Uneven Development and Population…………………...……………….49 2.3 Human Ecological Theory…………………………………………………………………..54 2.3.1 The Ecological Complex …………………………………………...…………..56 2.3.2 The Role of Population in System Change………………………………66 2.4 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………77 viii Part II………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..87 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………88 3. Economic Development and the Urban Transition…………………………………….89 3.1 Urban Areas and Economic Systems……………………………………………………90 3.2 Theoretical Approaches to Urbanization and Economic Development.....93 3.2.1 Dominant Schools of Thought…………………………………………….....94 3.2.2 Economies of Scale and Agglomeration Effects……………………..103 3.2.3 The Urban Bias Hypothesis………………………………………………….107 3.3 Overurbanization and Economic Development………………………………….110 3.4 Urban Primacy, Concentration, and Economic Development……………...114 3.4.1 Empirics of Urban Primacy and Economic Development………119 3.5 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….123 4. Economic Development and Democratization…………………………………………125 4.1 Economic Development as a Cause of Political Democracy…………………128 4.1.1 Development and Democracy Studies………………………………….130 4.2 Political Democracy as a Cause of Economic Growth………………………….142 4.3 A Critique of Development/Democracy Studies…………………………………149 5. Urbanization and Political Systems………………………………………………………...153 5.1 The Effects of Political Systems on Urbanization………………………………..158 5.2 The Effects of Urbanization on Political Systems………………………………..168 5.2.1 Indirect Effects of Urbanization on Political Systems…………….169 5.2.2 Linking Urbanization to Political Systems…………………………….176 PART III…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...196 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………….197 6. Measures, Data, and Methods…………………………………………………………………206 6.1 Analytical Variables and their Measures……………………………………………206 6.1.1 Measures of Political Systems……………………………………………...206 6.1.2 Measures of Urban Population and its Structure…………………..212 6.2 Other Important Independent Variables……………………………………………226 6.2.1 Geographic Controls……………………………………………………..…….226 6.2.2 Urban Population Controls..………………………………………………...228 6.2.3 Kilometers of Paved Roads………………………………………………….228 6.2.4 Real Gross Domestic Product per Capita………………………………230 6.2.5 Education…………………………………………………………………………...230 6.2.6 Colonial History………………………………………………………………….232 6.2.7 Exports, FDI, and Primary Commodity Exporters…………………233 6.3 Statistical Methodology…………………………………………………………………….235 ix 6.3.1 OLS with Panel-Corrected Standard Errors…………………………..237 6.3.2 “To lag or not to lag?”………………………………………………………….242 6.3.3 Testing and Correcting Serial Correlation…………………………….245 6.3.4 Heterogeneity in Time-Series Cross-Section Data…………………247 7. Results………………………………………………………………………………….......................249 7.1 Main Findings……………………………………………………………………………….…249 7.2 Alternative Models…………………………………………………………………..………264 7.3 Exploratory Models………………………………………………………………………….270 8. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………...................282 8.1 Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………282 8.2 Discussion……………………………………………………………………………………….285 Appendix A………………………………………………………………………………………………………291 Nations and Years of Urban Dataset………………………………………………………..291 Polity IV Dataset (Dependent Variable)…………………………………………………..295 Urban Population (Primacy)
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