Why Political Scientists Should Study Smaller Cities

Abstract

In the past 20 years, Political Science research has increasingly focused on urban and local politics. We systematically review this literature and find that smaller cities are disproportionally underrepresented, particularly outside the United States. Smaller cities exhibit economic, social, and political patterns that differ from those in large metropolitan areas. Using administrative data and existing research, we show how cities of different sizes vary in their demographic characteristics; citizens’ preferences; resources and capacity; intergovernmental relationships; and electoral politics. These patterns indicate the potential to update existing theories in Political Science, including those about gender and political participation, second-order elections, and intergovernmental relationships. We suggest that scholars consider how smaller cities might differ from larger cities and include smaller municipalities in their case study research. We also highlight political issues unique to small cities as new areas of inquiry.

Who Knows How to Govern? Procedural Knowledge in India's Small Town Councils

“…By contrast, 6 in 10 Indian urbanites live in towns with under 500,000 people. 2 This pattern is replicated outside of India: while much of the world's urban population resides in small towns, most scholarly analyses and policy debates focus on large cities (Kumar and Stenberg 2022). 3 Our study yields four key findings.…”

“…A recent study of urban Brazil and Indonesia finds that non-state service providers also disproportionally cluster in larger cities (Post and Kuipers 2022). Scholars further point to low levels of state capacity in small towns, undermining their ability to govern (Kumar and Stenberg 2022;Kundu 2014). Small cities and towns thus tend to be less developed and have weaker state capacity than their larger counterparts.…”

Green Dreams, Concrete Realities: Overcoming Climate Hurdles in American Middle Cities

“…I also respond to a push from (Kumar and Stenberg, 2022) to focus on smaller municipalities due to those municipalities differing from larger cities on key determining factors for governmental outcomes, such as citizens preferences, resources, and capacity. In the following pages, I build on Kumar and Stenberg (2022), to argue that these middle cities are distinct from both smaller and larger communities on a set of intersectional factors that make the implementation of climate policies uniquely difficult. It is worth examining, therefore, the degree to which findings from Hughes, Bayulgen, and others applies to the implementation of climate action in American middle cities, and the degree to which additions to the literature are necessary.…”

“…In order to document the challenges to climate transition in American middle cities, it is important to first define what a "middle city" is. The literature differs on what qualifies as a "small" or "medium city" (Kumar & Stenberg, 2022). For the purposes of this paper I define middle cities as communities with between 50,000 and a million residents.…”

“…Hughes, 2019, Bayulgen, 2020. At the same time, the urban politics literature has highlighted the heterogeneity of American cities, in a way that can limit the generalizability of explanations derived from a single set of case studies (Kumar and Stenberg, 2022). This poses a potential challenge to municipal climate politics since key explanations in the literature for the success or failure of climate policy-the strength of institutions, state capacity, and pro-climate coalitions-are largely derived from research on very large cities (e.g.…”