Seminar Series: Urban politics and negotiated stateness: Comparative perspectives across Africa and Eastern Europe
Seminar Two: Civic Academy for Africa’s Future (CiAAF), Benin, Cotonou
16 – 20 February 2026
Despite growing calls to decenter knowledge production and move beyond dominant Western perspectives, theoretical work from underrepresented regions has received limited attention (Müller et al, 2025). Yet these contexts are far from lacking in theoretical innovation—they offer rich opportunities to deconstruct and challenge entrenched analyses (Pobłocki, 2013; Ferenčuhová, 2016; Müller and Trubina, 2020; Robinson, 2022). African and Eastern European urban scholars have both grappled with the complexities of state actors in urban development (Ion, 2014; Cirolia and Harber, 2022; Igué, 1999), positioning them to contribute valuable perspectives to emerging debates on the state’s role in urban development (Shatkin, 2022).
Understanding the nature of state agency in Africa and Eastern Europe requires new analytical approaches. We aim to foster interactions among scholars from both regions to develop insights and methodologies for cross-regional analysis of negotiated and emergent statehood in urban politics. Existing theories of urban politics, rooted in Western contexts, fail to capture the fluid and negotiated nature of statehood in regions where institutional structures and governance mechanisms intersect with diverse actor interests—including personal wealth accumulation, network building, and legitimacy projection (Kinossian, 2012; Hagmann and Péclard, 2010).
African studies offer rich literature on state power and state actors’ interests (Fourchard, 2024), while Eastern European scholars have examined transitional forms of statehood after socialism’s collapse (O’Dwyer, 2006; Ion, 2014). Colonial and socialist legacies have shaped current state formations in both regions, and both share experiences of rapid political transitions (Pienaar, 1995; O’Dwyer, 2004). This provides a strong foundation for “comparative conversations”—posing questions from each context to influence interpretations of the other (Ward, 2010).
In the Benin seminar, we will trace connections across contexts as a basis for comparative conversations (Robinson, 2022, Chapters 5 and 6). We will explore direct links between African and Eastern European contexts (e.g. Cibian, 2017; Pillay Gonzalez, 2024) and consider how wider connections and flows bring African urban experiences into dialogue with other regional contexts (Soderstrom, 2014; Dobler and Kesselring, 2019; de Boeck, 2011), revealing opportunities for comparative reflection.
By bringing these two contexts—each on the peripheries of urban studies and the global political economy—into closer dialogue (Stanek, 2022; Tuvikene et al., 2017), we hope to reinforce calls to learn from “ordinary” or “overlooked” cities and regions (Ruszczyk et al., 2020). More importantly, we aim to focus attention on neglected themes and theoretical debates in urban studies and inspire methodological innovation to support more global perspectives on key urban issues.
Call for Papers:
Call for contributions to Urban Studies Foundation (USF) Seminar Series in Benin
Appel à contributions pour la série de séminaires de l’Urban Studies Foundation (USF) au Bénin
We are pleased to invite you to submit a proposal to present a paper at or to attend our seminar and graduate workshop in Benin titled “Africa through connections: learning from elsewhere, theorising from Africa” as part of this Seminar Series.
The series brings together scholars from and specialising in Africa and Eastern Europe to engage with research and theoretical insights drawn from across these two contexts on analyses of urban politics, especially interrogating the nature of state agency in urban development. We will also be exploring innovative comparative methodologies for cross-regional analysis. The workshop in Benin will focus on how tracing connections from African contexts can help to build comparative insights on urban developments there, and how this methodology might be used to expand the conversation between scholars in Africa and Eastern Europe. Some key themes and references are indicated below, which could be useful in guiding abstract proposals. Some of the background readings which have informed the seminar series can be found here.
Themes
We welcome presentations that open up discussion about seeing “Africa through connections: learning from elsewhere, theorising from Africa”. Connections involving private sector investment in infrastructure and urban development; ODA and multilateral as well as sovereign government financing of urban developments; strategies to secure international financial investment in infrastructure; circulating urban and development policies (eg on climate change, localising SDGs etc); policies for trade and diplomatic collaboration; military support and technical exchanges; transnational initiatives involving precarious, informal, illegal or popular practices and investments transforming urban areas. Other relevant themes are also welcome.
Apply to attend
Formal papers as well as early-stage ideas, PhD proposals, or draft research results are all more than welcome. A specific one-day early career research (ECR) day workshop will be held after the formal academic event, at which support for early career and graduate students’ projects involving tracing connections and comparative analysis will be offered. Please indicate clearly in your application if you would like your proposal to be considered for this ECR workshop.
We encourage those interested in questions of states, urban governance, comparative or cross-regional urban politics, African, and Eastern European studies to attend.
Please send your abstract (max. 250 words) to Emmanuel Awohouedji: e.c.awohouedji@lse.ac.uk, with USF COTONOU BENIN in the email’s subject by December 31st 2025.
Selected References (key references can be found at this link)
Cibian, S. 2017. Central and Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa: Prospects for Sustained Re-engagement. Africa Programme, Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London.
Cirolia, L.R. and Harber. (2022) ‘Urban statecraft: The governance of transport infrastructures in African cities’, Urban Studies, 59, 2431–2450.
De Boeck, F. 2011. Inhabiting Ocular Ground: Kinshasa’s Future in the Light of Congo’s Spectral Urban Politics. Cultural Anthropology, 26: 263-286.
Dobler, G., & Kesselring, R. (2019). Swiss extractivism: Switzerland’s role in Zambia’s copper sector. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 57(2), 223–245. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26847122
Ferenčuhová, S., 2016. Accounts from behind the Curtain: History and Geography in the Critical Analysis of Urban Theory. Int. J. Urban Reg. Res. 40, 113–131.
Fourchard L (2024) Comparative Urban Studies and African Studies at the Crossroads. In Le Galès and Robinson (eds) Handbook Comparative Global Urban Studies, Routledge, 58–72.
Hagmann, T . and Péclard, D. (2010) ‘Negotiating Statehood: Dynamics of Power and Domination in Africa’, Development and Change, 41: 539–562.
Ion, E., 2014. Public funding and urban governance in contemporary Romania: the resurgence of state-led urban development in an era of crisis. Camb. J. Reg. Econ. Soc. 7, 171–187.
Igué, O. J. (1999). Le Bénin et la mondialisation de l’économie. Karthala.
Kinossian, N., 2012. ‘Urban entrepreneurialism’ in the Post-socialist City. Int. Plan.Stud. 17, 333–352.
Müller, M., Trubina, E., 2020. The Global Easts in global urbanism. Eurasian Geogr. Econ. 61, 627–635.
Müller, M., et al. 2025 Toward change in the uneven geographies of urban knowledge production. Nature Cities.
O’Dwyer, C., 2004. Runaway State Building: How Political Parties Shape States in Postcommunist Eastern Europe. World Polit. 56, 520–553.
O’Dwyer, C., 2006. Reforming Regional Governance in East Central Europe: Europeanization or Domestic Politics as Usual? East Eur. Polit. Soc. Cult. 20, 219–253.
Pienaar, S. 1995. South Africa and Eastern Europe: The challenge of multi‐ethnic societies in transition to democracy. SA Jnl Int. Affairs, 3, 76–93.
Pillay Gonzalez, S. (2024), Latent State Infrastructure and Financialisation: Insight from a Post-Apartheid Public Pension Fund and Real Estate. Antipode, 56: 603-627.
Pobłocki, K., 2013. Neither West nor South: Colour and Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Urban Poland. Przegląd Kult. 17, 205–215.
Polese, A. (2023) What is informality? (Mapping) “the art of bypassing the state” in Eurasian spaces – and beyond, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 64:3, 322-364.
Robinson, J. (2022) Comparative Urbanism. Wiley-Blackwell.
Robinson, J., Harrison, P., Croese, S., Sheburah Essien, R., Kombe, W., Lane, M., Mwathunga, E., Owusu, G., & Yang, Y. (2025). Reframing urban development politics: Transcalarity in sovereign, developmental and private circuits. Urban Studies, 62(1), 3-30.
Ruszczyk, H. A., Nugraha, E., & de Villiers, I. (Eds.). (2020). Overlooked Cities. London: Routledge.
Shatkin G (2022) Mega-urban politics: Analyzing the infrastructure turn through the national state lens. Economy and Space 54: 845-866.
Söderström, O. 2014. Cities in Relations: Trajectories of Urban Development in Hanoi and Ougadougou. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Stanek, L. 2015. Architects from Socialist Countries in Ghana (1957–67): Modern Architecture and Mondialisation, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 74 No. 4, (pp. 416-442)
Stanek, L. 2020. Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stanek, Ł. (2022). Socialist worldmaking: The political economy of urban comparison in the Global Cold War. Urban Studies, 59:1575-1596.
Tuvikene, T ., Neves Alves, S., Hilbrandt, H., 2017. Strategies for relating diverse cities: A multi-sited individualising comparison of informality in Bafatá, Berlin and Tallinn. Curr. Sociol. 65, 276–288.
Ward, K. (2010) ‘Towards a relational comparative approach to the study of cities’, Prog. human geography, 34: 471–487.