ABSTRACT
Choice-theoretic accounts of urban bias (UB) in LDCs are popular, because they also ‘explain’ rural bias in richer countries. Such misguided elegance notwithstanding, class-theoretic (not simply Marxist/productionist) accounts are preferable. Why? (1) UB alleges persistently inefficient and/or unfair (i) anti-rural outcomes, (ii) intra-rurally, biases towards rural elites who in return deliver surpluses townwards. (2) If UB declines for one outcome, it must increase for others – unless pro-urban classes weaken relative to pro-rural. Thus farm-price UB fell in 1975–90 in many LDCs, but – with urban–rural class/power balances little changed – public-expenditure UB rose to compensate. (3) Yet long-term development transforms such balances, shifting many outcomes from UB to rural bias. (4) Explaining (2) and (3) involves understanding urban–rural class relations. When, and to obtain which, outcomes, do rural elites seek rural rather than urban alliances? Choice/game/coalition theories help, but only within institutionally dense, localised, historical analyses of why classes cohere or disintegrate.
