 Claiming the city: Citizenship and political connections in African neighborhoodsDamilola Agbalajobi, Mohammed S. Awal, Taibat Lawanson and Jeffrey W. Paller World Development, 2025, vol. 192, issue C Abstract: Rapid urbanization is changing the way Africans experience and engage the state in their everyday lives, creating new opportunities for urban claim-making. But it also creates the conditions for local capture. In their quest for rights and services, how do neighborhoods navigate these rapidly changing political environments? How does this vary across poor, middle-class, and wealthy neighborhoods? Based on 16 focus group discussions and 87 key informant interviews in eight neighborhoods in Lagos (Nigeria) and Accra (Ghana), we find that residents in low-income neighborhoods seek direct connections through voting blocs and the instrumental use of their concerned youth associations, while high-income neighborhoods use personal connections and leverage their residence associations to influence state power. We argue that a neighborhood’s class structure shapes the political connections that residents have to the state, thereby shaping the everyday strategies that residents use to claim citizenship. Keywords: Social capital; Political capture; Claim-making; Public goods; Urban governance; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:192:y:2025:i:c:s0305750x25000956 DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107010 Access Statistics for this article World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes More articles in World Development from Elsevier |
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