Cities are political battlefields, where elites try to retain control, and people challenge this authority.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the world’s longest reigning female political leader, fled Bangladesh on 5 August 2024 for the safety of India. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of protesters descended on Bangladesh’s capital city, Dhaka. The crowds ransacked her official residence, occupied the nation’s parliament and burnt down her family home.
In our new book, Controlling the Capital: Political Dominance in the Urbanizing World, a diverse range of scholars argue that capital cities are crucial political sites. They’re where governing elites seek to assert and maintain political control, and they are also stages for political contestation. The authors also consider how urban populations have engaged with these efforts. People may resist authority, but they can also cooperate with it in ways that benefit themselves – which sometimes reinforces or supports authoritarian control.
Even where anti-authoritarian protests have proved futile time and again, urban populations rarely remain quiet. As urban protest seems set to continue and spread – often taking intentionally similar forms – techniques of urban authoritarian control are more varied and complex. The second are repressive interventions that aim to crush opposition. These are also diverse, and include violent crackdowns, but also surveillance and intimidation.
Cities Civil Society Dictatorship Protest Urbanisation William Ruto Youth Yoweri Museveni
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