Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

How does rapid urban growth affect the risk of electoral violence in African cities? Across the continent, societies have been undergoing simultaneous processes that may affect the risk of violent upheaval: democratic change and urbanization. However, although electoral violence often disproportionally affects cities, we do not know if and how the process of urban growth in itself impacts such violence. Existing research highlights that urbanization holds a strong potential for progress and democracy-enhancement, but also for destructive and violence-inducing dynamics. Drawing on collective action theory, I develop a theoretical argument about the relationship between urban growth and the mobilization of electoral violence. I hypothesize that rapid city growth conditions elites’ strategic incentives to employ electoral violence, and may increase the risk of such violence through two mechanisms: by increasing uncertainty about local election outcomes, and by making it easier for politicians to mobilize violence based on grievances among urban groups. I assess these expectations by using georeferenced data on electoral violence, covering democratic elections in Africa (1990–2012), and matching it with data on the urban growth pace of all cities with at least 50,000 inhabitants. This approach avoids the pitfalls of focusing only on major cities, and enables an analysis of both cross- and within state dynamics. Using this approach, I identify a robust correlation between the pace of urban population growth and the risk of electoral violence in the city. Extended analysis indicates that urban growth is associated with a higher risk of election violence in larger, more established cities (including both major and secondary cities), but not in smaller, emerging cities.

Which cities become arenas for violent contestation after war? A growing literature has documented how conflict-related violence often continues after the formal end of armed conflict, and also that such violence often is particularly prevalent in urban areas. Such urban unrest cannot simply be understood as a continuation of violence, however: Oftentimes, the cities that see high levels of violence after war were relatively unaffected, or even “safe havens”, during the war. In addition to spatial shifts, the dynamics and actors involved also tend to change in the postwar context. This study seeks to contribute to understanding such patterns. We suggest that a combination of the city’s political importance and the particular characteristics of postwar contestation help explain why some cities are affected by high levels of violence after war. We test this argument using a global sample of postwar cities 1989–2020. We match these cities to data on wartime dynamics, postwar city growth and political context, as well as different forms of violence in the postwar context. We find clear evidence of discontinuity: wartime violence does not predict postwar urban violence. Instead, our results indicate that the likelihood of urban postwar violence is shaped by the city’s political status and the way that the war ended, which condition the intensity and dynamics of continued contestation in the postwar context. In-depth analysis of dynamics of conflict-related violence in five postwar cities (Benghazi, Bujumbura, Colombo, Imphal, and Jaffna) provides additional support for this argument.

In contexts of high insecurity and mistrust in the police, how and why do local residents still choose to collaborate with the police, and what is the role of community policing in such considerations? Research on policing in Africa has emphasized the structural and macropolitical barriers to effective police reform, including institutionalized cultures of impunity and corruption. Less attention, however, has been paid to the contextual and relational dynamics that shape police-community collaboration. We argue that a relational perspective, which centres local residents’ interactions with police and community policing structures, provides novel insights into the challenges of policing reforms. This perspective also demonstrates how contingent and incremental trust can be built in very challenging circumstances. We study these dynamics in Karagita and Kaptembwo, two low-income urban settlements in Nakuru County, Kenya, that have experienced violent crime and repeated electoral violence. Despite considerable challenges of crime, police misconduct, and political interference in these settlements, our findings point to how positive everyday interaction and community policing structures can contribute to incremental improvements in police-community relationships. In contrast to existing work on African policing that primarily highlights the challenges of police reform, this study offers insights into when reform has the potential to be effective.

How can attention to spatial dynamics improve our understanding of where, how, and why conflict-related violence (CRV) concentrates within postwar cities such as Mitrovica? Like many other postwar cities, Mitrovica – one of Kosovo’s largest cities – remains affected by violence connected to the preceding war. This violence is not equally distributed across the city but rather concentrates to certain flashpoints while other sites are comparatively calm(er). To date, however, research on postwar cities has not fully explained such patterns, partly due to limitations in microlevel data. In this article we rely on novel georeferenced data on CRV, in combination with in-depth fieldwork, to map CRV in Mitrovica and explore the causes for its spatial clustering. Using this approach, we show that CRV concentrates at Mitrovica’s Main Bridge and explore this concentration using relational space as an analytical lens. The analysis contributes new insights into patterns of violence in Mitrovica, demonstrates the value of combining systematic data on the patterns of CRV with in-depth exploration into its underlying dynamics, and contributes to existing research on Mitrovica as well as on postwar cities and postwar violence more broadly.

The police occupy a central role in the functioning of the state by being tasked with upholding security, law and order. Across the African continent, the public has little trust in the police, but such perceptions are subject to considerable subnational variation. In this study, we are interested in how the different contexts in which the police operate affect police-citizen relations. We ask: How does an urban versus rural environment shape citizens’ trust in the police? We address this question within the context of Kenya, using geocoded survey data from Afrobarometer. We theorise that the rural versus urban environment will shape citizens’ experience with the police in ways that affect their attitudes toward the police. Specifically, we argue that in a context where the police have frequently been employed to repress specific sociopolitical groups, urban residents, living in denser and more diverse environments compared to rural residents, are more prone to have first- or second-hand experiences of the police that result in diminished trust towards them. Our results support these propositions: We find a strong and robust relationship between urban residence and lower levels of trust in the police. The relationship holds when controlling for respondents’ political alignment, which likely conditions people’s perceptions of state institutions. Qualitative evidence from interviews provide additional understanding of the urban-rural divide we identify. Our results provide important insights into the contextual dynamics that shape individuals’ trust in the police, and underline the importance of efforts to improve police-community relations in urbanising contexts.

This paper maps the distribution of post-conflict violence in Belfast and how it has restructured socially, economically and spatially. An end to hostilities and stable transition produces and is produced by a more complex set of distinctly urban assemblages, actors, resources and places. Bringing the ideas of ‘ordering’ into relation with assemblage theory, the paper suggests that explanations for the survival, volume, type and distribution of violence cannot be understood within exclusively ethnonational frames, identarian politics or military logics. In Belfast, the data reveal a more variegated map of peace and consumption; inner-city alienation and the intensification of division; as well as the emergence of new geographies of displaced violence. The paper concludes by emphasising the need to understand how urban processes and competing ethnic orders create highly differentiated spaces that explain the resilience of violence after hostilities have formally closed.

How does rapid urban growth affect risks of communal violence in cities? In rapidly growing cities, poor planning and weak institutions combined with an unregulated influx of migrants can create a potent recipe for violent mobilization. In addition, politicized identity groups often compete for resources and interact in close proximity in urban areas. Despite a growing research agenda on the relationship between rapid urban growth and urban violent unrest, findings remain inconclusive. One explanation for the disparate conclusions is that the theoretical pathways connecting urban growth and unrest largely fail to consider both the violence-generating and violence-stemming effects of urban growth. With a focus on conflict-ridden societies, we theorize processes through which urban growth influences different aspects of group relations in the city, and thereby contribute to prevent, suppress or generate communal violence. To illustrate the framework, we draw on insights from Nairobi, Kampala and Addis Ababa. By paying attention to processes, we are able to identify a range of developments associated with city growth which in turn have different implications for communal violence.