| 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 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. |
